.LynEve

gallery

Continuing . . from the Te Papa exhibition :Gallipoli:The Scale Of Our War

This was Lieutenant Colonel Percival Fenwick (1870 -1958), New Zealand Medical Corps. He was born in England and had been a military surgeon in the Boer War.He was among the first New Zealanders to land on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. Throughout that day and night, he treated hundreds of wounded Anzacs on the beach, describing the scene as 'hellish' He was evacuated from Gallipoli, ill and exhausted, after two months, soon commanding New Zealand military hospitals in England. At Christchurch Hospital in the 1920s, he pioneered the use of radium and radiotherapy.He repeatedly offered his services to the country during World War II, but these were refused, as his medical work was deemed too valuable.