Farmer wanted to soldier on
World War 1 never ended for a young farmer from Waikouaiti, who was one of the first to join up. Ron Palenski looks at Guy Bridgeman’s war.
SOME civilian soldiers were glad to be home from the war, happy to put it behind them and to seldom, if ever, talk about it.
But some arrived home wounded and could not wait to go back, a sense of duty or comradeship compelling them to return.
Such a soldier was Guy Bridgeman, in peacetime a farmer at Waikouaiti and a son of widely travelled banker Frederick Bridgeman and his wife Florence, who was a daughter of Percival Neill, one of the wellestablished merchants in Dunedin and virtual founder of the city’s warehouse precinct. (Actor Sam Neill is a descendant).
The war was not quite a fortnight old when Bridgeman signed up, giving his age as 20, a year younger than he really was.
He became a trooper in the Otago Mounted Rifles and was shipped off to Egypt and took part in New Zealand’s first action of the war — aside from the peaceful occupation of Samoa — defence of the Suez Canal against an Ottoman attack.
By May, Bridgeman had joined the fighting on the Gallipoli peninsula and within a month, he was laid low by diarrhoea — a toocommon complaint there — and sent to a tented hospital at Mudros on the island of Lemnos, the northern Aegean staging point for the campaign.
Within a week, he was back in action but during the failed assault on Chunuk Bair in August he was shot in the chest by a sniper.
The bullet went through a lung and Bridgeman was listed as dangerously ill, eventually being admitted to a military hospital on Malta.
Once he was off the dangerously ill list, he continued his recovery in England and was then sent back to Alexandria to rejoin his unit, by which time the Gallipoli campaign was over and New Zealand troops were training and being reorganised for a move to the Western Front.
He was still not completely fit and spent time in hospital in Cairo in February 1916 and when he was discharged, he transferred to the Field
Artillery and was commissioned and put in charge of a howitzer battery.
Then followed the trail that’s become familiar for the men of the New Zealand Division — Armentieres, the Somme, Messines, Passchendaele — places that signposted both the commitment and cost for a young country.
If there’s reward in war, Bridgeman gained his at Messines where his sustained work earned him a Military Cross, an officersonly award for bravery in the field. His citation, as printed in the London
Gazette, read:
‘‘February 26th to September 20th 1917. An exceptionally plucky young officer. He has done very good work as Forward Observation Officer at different times. He was F.O.O. for his battery at Messines and established an observation post well forward when the infantry reached their final objective. During a counter attack the enemy put down a barrage which wounded one of his two telephonists and, under fire, Lieutenant Bridgeman dressed the man’s wound and carried him back to a dress station.’’
Bridgeman’s war came to an end towards the end of September 1917 during preparations for the Passchendaele offensives of early October. He was shot in the left shoulder and chest and lay, unable to move, in a shellhole in the Frezenberg area, about 6km from Passchendaele.
Bridgeman could well have owed his life to an Englishman who was a driver and servant at Government House in Wellington before the war, Sydney Vine.
Word somehow got back to the battery that Bridgeman was lying seriously wounded and Vine and another NCO went out to try to find him.
Vine subsequently earned the Military Medal for his action and his citation said, in part: ‘‘after a long search under heavy fire, found him and brought him safely back to a dressing station’’.
Bridgeman was evacuated from aid posts to hospitals and back to England and by the end of the year, it was decided he was no longer fit for active service and sent home.
With other wounded and ill soldiers, he arrived in Dunedin by train from Christchurch on March 19, 1918; a grateful
populace was at the station to welcome them and two nights later, they were guests at a crowded reception in the King’s Theatre in Dowling St, where the mayor, James Clark, observed, probably correctly, ‘‘that what the men desired more than anything else was to get away home and not be kept listening to speeches’’.
He said the men ‘‘had fought for this land and let them now take their place as citizens and share in the government of it’’.
But Bridgeman wasn’t yet ready for that, even though it was becoming increasingly clear that the war might not last much longer.
He was chafing to get back to the front. He had a regular examination as an outpatient at Dunedin Hospital and at the start of June, a doctor reported considerable improvement but that he was still unfit for active service ‘‘indefinitely’’. More outpatient treatment was recommended.
After another examination a month later, Bridgeman was recommended for discharge from the army.
But Bridgeman was not happy and he wrote to Major Norton Francis, the director of Base Records in Wellington: ‘‘On Friday last I attended a Medical Board the result of which was that [I] was recommended for discharge. I wish to state that I don’t want my discharge, and wish to return to France. I certainly have a slightly stiff arm but I am sure it would in no way effect [sic] the carrying out of the duties of an artillery officer. Trusting I may have your help in this matter.’’
(Bridgeman could have pointed out, but obviously chose not to, that at least two serving officers had been onearmed).
The army’s surgeongeneral, Colonel Robert Henderson, was not impressed with Bridgeman’s plea, which had been referred to him.
He commented drily in a letter to Francis: ‘‘The medical officers are better judges than Lieut Bridgeman of his condition.’’
But Henderson held out a lifeline and suggested the assistant director of medical services might want to comment. He did and allowed Bridgeman another month of outpatient treatment.
Bridgeman moved to Wellington, perhaps so he could argue his case directly, and continued treatment while being officially on leave and living in a city centre hotel.
The leave was extended into October as sick leave and then, finally, after another appearance before a medical board, he was given the glad news he’d sought: ‘‘Progress — good.’’ ‘‘Recommendation — return to duty.’’
He was ordered to report for duty at Featherston camp in the Wairarapa on October 4, just over a year after sustaining the arm and chest wounds. He was made an acting captain and put in charge of an artillery detail which was part of the 46th Reinforcements being prepared to go to Europe.
Bridgeman had his wish and was readying to go overseas again when he became a victim of the influenza pandemic and died of bronchialpneumonia on November 14 — three days after the Armistice on the Western Front.
He was one of 148 soldiers to die in the camp after the fighting on the other side of the world had ended.
Footnote: Bridgeman’s 1917 rescuer, Sydney Vine, died of pneumonia in Wellington in 1922, his service record noting the death was due to war service.
❛ I wish to state that I don’t want my discharge, and wish to return to France
Guy Bridgeman