Tpr. William Harcourt Lochhead

William Harcourt Lochhead was born in Te Puna, Tauranga on 28 June 1895. His parents were Thomas and Elizabeth Wilson Lochhead (nee Low) who married at Dunsandel in Canterbury on 2 September 1885, but were located in Te Puna, Tauranga, by the time of William's birth. William was an athlete as well as farming on his parents farm. He had previously been a member of the Waikato Mounted Rifles. He enlisted on 8 March 1916 in the Auckland Mounted Rifles, Machine Gun Squadron (Service No. 16103). In camp at Featherston in April 1916 he appears to have been severely reprimanded for misconduct. On 5 November 1917 William received a gunshot wound to his left thigh in Cairo. He was admitted to hospital and then to the Aotea Convalescent Hospital at Heliopolis, being discharged on 15 December 1917. On 2 April 1918 he sustained gunshot wounds to his head in Egypt and was again admitted to hospital in Cairo. William died of his wounds on 11 May 1918, aged 22. His last rank held was Trooper. He was buried in the Kantara War Memorial Cemetery located at Kantara East on the eastern side of the Suez Canal in Egypt. On 26 August 1918, just three months later, his older brother Thomas Leslie Lochead was killed in action at Bapaume in France. Source: Biography by Debbie McCauley. Part of the Tauranga Roll of Honour: World War One project http://tauranga.kete.net.nz/remembering_war/topics/show/2354

Documents:

• Military Personnel File Links:
• Cenotaph Record
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission Record
• New Zealand War Graves Record