Ref. No. 1078. BRITISH WAR MEDAL AWARDED TO 11/4 OSCAR FREDERICK ANDERSON, NZEF, KIA ON CHUNUK BAIR 9 AUGUST 1915. 

Anderson was born in Palmerston North circa 1876. He was the eldest son of Mrs H Segren (formerly Anderson), 133 Rangitikei St (later North Road), Palmerston North. He first served in the Anglo-Boer War (also known as the Second Boer War) with the 1st Scottish Horse. When war broke out, volunteers from the Empire (Australia, Canada and New Zealand) who were not selected for the official contingents from their countries traveled privately to South Africa and joined local units in South Africa. In Anderson’s case, he was in South Africa at the time war began (age 23).

He stayed with the 1st Scottish Horse and was selected, along with others, to represent them at the 1902 Coronation of King Edward in London. After this, he returned to South Africa and served with the Repatriation Department until the close of the war. He held the Queen’s Medal and three bars for his war service.

 Following the Boer War, he supplied horses to the German authorities in South West Africa for some time but, not liking the service, he left and returned to New Zealand in 1908. Living in Palmerston North, he joined the Manawatu Hunt and was stud master, a skilled huntsman and a popular member.  He was also well-known in the Manawatu area.

Anderson departed Wellington on 16 October 1914 with the Main Body onboard the Orari. The Orari was one of 12 transports carrying the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and carried the most horses – 730 in all. When conditions allowed, horses were led from their stalls and walked around the deck. The seven week journey to Egypt took its toll however and 25 horses from the Orari died. The Orari arrived in Alexandria on 3 December 1914. After arriving with another 26 transports from Australia, the horses were unloaded – some stampeding in the process. Camp was then set up and training in the desert began. Anderson remained in Egypt before going to the Gallipoli Peninsula. His horse would have been left in Cairo as the terrain at Gallipoli was generally unsuitable for horses.

Details of Anderson's time at Anzac Cove are not known but he certainly would have been involved in various actions prior to the August Offensive.

 Although some authors have described Chunuk Bair as New Zealand’s “finest hour”, the carnage was horrific. The Australian war correspondent, C E W Bean wrote of the survivors: “They could talk only in whispers; their eyes were sunken; their knees trembled; some broke down and cried like children.”

 In his book Gallipoli – The New Zealand Story military historian Christopher Pugsley wrote: “The soldiers who fought upon Chunuk Bair performed one of the outstanding feats of arms in New Zealand history. It was a soldier’s battle.” He went on to write: “But on Chunuk Bair, New Zealand soldiers gave up their amateur status and found an identity as fighting men. For an army ‘is also a mirror of its own society and its values, in some places and at some times an agent of national pride or a bulwark against national fears, or perhaps even the last symbol of the nation itself.’ On Chunuk Bair we demonstrated our nationhood to the world for the first time in a manner which we in New Zealand have only just begun to appreciate. It would be seen again on the Somme in 1916 and 1918, at Messines and Passchendaele in 1917. It would also become the hallmark of Freyberg’s New Zealanders in the Second World War.”

 O E Burton, author of The Silent Division wrote: “There was no power of command; in the nature of things there could not be; but every man on that ridge knew that the thin line of New Zealand men was holding wide the door to victory . . . How men were to die on Chunuk was determined largely by how men and women lived on the farms and in the towns of New Zealand. . . . But the way men died on Chunuk is shaping the deeds yet to be done by the generations still unborn . . . When the August fighting died down there was no longer any question but that New Zealanders had commenced to realise themselves as a nation.”

 In the Official War History of the Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment, Major A H Wilkie wrote: “The fact that the small force on Chunuk Bair was the only one which held its ground on 9th August against the enormous weight of the Turkish attacks, unsupported by the two columns (some 10,000 troops), which had been intended to co-operate, speaks volumes for the tenacity and determination of the defenders.”

 Having no known grave, Anderson was probably buried in the Chunuk Bair Cemetery. Of the 632 graves in this cemetery, only ten are identified and eight of these are named to New Zealanders. His name appears on the Chunuk Bair Memorial on panel No. 5. This memorial commemorates 856 New Zealanders who have no known graves. Most of these died on and around Chunuk Bair summit on 8-9 August.

Anderson’s death was announced in the Auckland Weekly News on 2nd September 1915.

In World War I, New Zealand lost 18,166 service men and women, out of a population of approximately 1,089,825. Nearly all those killed were buried overseas. 5325 of these New Zealanders have no known grave.

Arthur Thomas Hall was killed in action on 4 October 1917, age 34, during the successful Battle of Broodseinde, one of eight battles that took place during Third Ypres (sometimes known just as the Battle of Passchendaele).

Hall was the son of Achibald and Katherine Hall of Hill St, Wellington, and husband of Jessie Catherine Hall, of 252 Somme Parade, Aramoho, Wanganui.  Being with the 1st Battalion, New Zealand Rifle Brigade (part of 3rd New Zealand Brigade of the New Zealand Division), he would have left Wellington on 8 October 1915 and arrived in Cairo on 14 November 1915 - too late to see action at Gallipoli, which was evacuated the following month. The 1st and 2nd Battalion were joined on the 13th and 15th March 1916 by the 3rd and 4th Battalions and together they left Alexandria on 7 April for France. They entered the line on 13 May 1916 east of Armentieres.

Hall would have taken part in the Battle of the Somme when it attacked on 15 September 1916 as part of the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, as well as the Battle of Messines in 1917.

The Battle of Messines in September 1917 (in which large mines were detonated under the German troops) and the Battle of Broodseinde (4 October, in which Hall was killed) were successful advances from the Ypres Salient (undertaken in part to "flatten" the line). The reason for success was due to careful planning, good tactics and favourable weather. Each advance was preceeded by a heavy artillery barrage which cut the wire and made life miserable for the German defenders. When the advance was made, soldiers advanced behind a "creeping" barrage. This required careful coodination and ranging from the artillery. The Battle of Broodseinde was seen as a textbook operation and the New Zealand Division was justifiably proud of achieving all its goals. To that date, the New Zealand Division had not experienced military failure.