Alexander Ormond fought on the Western Front in France. Photo / Auckland Museum
Alexander Ormond fought on the Western Front in France. Photo / Auckland Museum
Alexander Ormond is commemorated with a statue on the Mahia Peninsula.
88 Almost 100 years after he died in the uniform of another country, soldier Alexander Ormond stands firm in relief beside the pounding Pacific.
Ormond was a scion of a settler family who took up land at Mahia Peninsula, which juts into the ocean at the northern end of Hawkes Bay.
The second son of George and Maraea Ormond, Alexander, who was born in 1890, was sent away like many boys from the land to Wanganui Collegiate. He stayed for seven years, cutting his teeth in school cadets and earning selection in the rugby and cricket teams.
After his secondary education, Ormond headed south and enrolled at what was then Canterbury Agricultural College (now Lincoln) outside Christchurch.
He kept up his rugby, and was selected for the red and blacks before he took up the reins running one of the Ormond family properties.
The family had extensive holdings, built up through the efforts of John Davies Ormond, a powerful politician and sheep farmer in late 19th century New Zealand, and one-time superintendent of Hawkes Bay.
Young Alex stuck with his military training and in early 1915 left for England where he received a commission in the 27th battalion of the Manchester Regiment. A year later, Ormond went to the front in France as an officer with the 11th Battalion Manchester Regiment.
The action which claimed his life occurred during the Battle of the Somme. Ormond and a dozen men were instructed to hold a bombing post, which came under intense German shelling.
Cenotaph records say the 26-year-old was in charge of the redoubt near Mouquet Farm, scene of fierce fighting involving British, Australian and German forces.
Alexander Ormond's statue stands on the Mahia peninsula. Photo / NZME.
Charles Bean, the Australian war correspondent, wrote about conditions at Mouquet Farm: "The reader must take for granted many of the conditions - the flayed land, shell-hole bordering shell-hole, corpses of young men lying against the trench walls or in shell-holes; some - except for the dust settling on them - seeming to sleep; others torn in half; others rotting, swollen and discoloured."
At some point on the evening of September 30, 1916, Ormond was killed by a direct hit from enemy artillery.
His commanding officer wrote a letter to Ormond's school, saluting the courage of the young New Zealander.
"I only met him two days before, when I was sent to take over command of the company, but I never wish to go into action with a braver man or a better officer.
"He was perfectly cheerful under the heaviest fire, and I can't speak too highly of the way he commanded that bombing section. Although he had been such a short time with the battalion everyone liked him - officers and men - and he will be very much missed in this battalion."
Lieutenant Ormond is commemorated with the fine statue at Mahia Peninsula, and on the now quiet battlefield at the imposing Thiepval Memorial, a Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, which bears the names of more than 72,000 Allied men who have no known grave.
