AN ANZAC STORY
Patrick Edward Kyne lived in the south island of New Zealand. When World War I arrived, Patrick joined the Canterbury division of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles. He was a single, 18 year old labourer from Temuka. As part of the NZ Expeditionary Force, he began duties on the 14th December 1914 , later embarking together with colleagues and horses, from Lyttleton Harbour on either the Taihiti or the Athenic. They stopped in Wellington then later in Hobart, Tasmania before pushing on towards Albany on the south west coast of Australia. Here, they gathered a contingency of Australian troops and, together with other ships, the convoy set course for Egypt.
As Patrick waited in Egypt in April 1915 with other members of the Canterbury Division for their orders, allied troops including Australians and New Zealanders launched an attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula on the 25th April, attempting to overrun Turkish troops and capture the Peninsula. Meeting overwhelming resistance from the Turks, losses of allied troops were enormous. On the first day of the assault, it is reported that 2,000 Australian and New Zealand lives were lost. This day became etched in history.
Patrick's orders to board ship in Egypt arrived on the 5th May. Leaving his beloved horse behind, he traveled overland to Alexandria and boarded a transport ship with approximately 600 men and officers and set course for the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Patrick arrived on the 12th May, equipped with a rifle, 200 rounds of ammunition, a mess tin, a tool for digging trenches and a haversack. With others in the division, Patrick came under fire as the men approached the coastline aboard destroyers and proceeded to Walker’s Ridge where they relieved British troops who were established there.
Patrick, together with his division, also found himself involved in the bloody fight for Hill 60 that took place. Surviving each one of these offensives, Patrick returns in 1916 with other surviving men from his division to Egypt, spending a further two years engaged in hostilities in the defence of Egypt against the Ottoman Turks. Possibly one of Patrick’s enjoyable moments in the blazing heat of the Egypt day, was when the division moved to an encampment beside the Suez Canal and the men took a dip in the cool waters of the canal.
Patrick lived to tell the tale of both Egypt and Gallipoli and is officially discharged on the 8th March 1918. He is one of the lucky ones who made it out of the Great War and Gallipoli alive. As luck would also have it, Patrick’s elder brother James also returned in one piece from the War in Europe where he had served as a Corporal in the New Zealand Field Artillery and was twice mentioned in despatches. Hundreds of men of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, together with every one of their horses who embarked with them, never returned. By the end of the year, more than 56,000 allied troops, including 8,709 from Australia and 2,721 from New Zealand had been lost.
Now at home, in the strange and no doubt unsettling peace and tranquility with his family in Temuka, Patrick meets his future wife Margaret , already known to him through friends of the family. The couple marry in 1919 and just two years later their son Denis Patrick is born on the 4th March 1921.
Above, is a picture of Denis Patrick Kyne who attended Timaru Boys High School and joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force when World War II arrived. A keen rugby player, representing his school and South Canterbury, Denis became a pilot, having trained in New Zealand and Canada before joining the Royal Air Force. Stationed with No.21 Advanced Flying Unit and during a night exercise, Denis flew off course in bad weather and crashed his Oxford Airspeed LX518 into remote countryside. His body lay undiscovered for five days before he was eventually recovered and brought for burial to Stonefall Cemetery . Pilot Officer 421380 Denis Patrick Kyne was aged 22 when he died. He lies with his comrades at Stonefall. His father, having survived the horrors of Gallipoli, survived his son Denis by some 30 years.
PILOT OFFICER 421380 DENIS PATRICK KYNE
