a Kiwi digger
Atop the Masterton War Memorial
I hope it's okay to quote this article that appeared in the Wairarapa Times-Age newspaper on 27 March 1999 (online version here)
A Kiwi digger looks back as he is about to evacuate Gallipoli. His face has that bony quality, with high cheekbones, which Department of Internal Affairs historian Jock Phillips, an expert on war memorials, calls the Edmund Hillary look.
His clothes are creased, his buttons are undone, his socks are dishevelled, his bootlaces untied …
In his hand he holds his army hat, his rifle is slung on his back with bayonet fixed.
Real Test
This soldier who failed the spit and polish exam, but passed the real test of battle, looks out through his bronzed eyes over Masterton, ironically in the direction of the War Memorial Stadium, from where he has stood for nearly 80 years on top of 60 tonnes of concrete and granite in Queen Elizabeth Park.
What is not recorded on the cenotaph is that this “untidy soldier”, as the statue became known, is modelled on a real Gallipoli veteran – Joseph Lynch – brother of the sculptor Frank Lynch, taken from a photograph actually taken at Gallipoli.
The original casting stands in Devonport, on Auckland’s North Shore, as that district’s war memorial.
Masterton secured the second casting after a committee searching for a suitable memorial settled on the bronze figure in 1921. Frank Lynch had been born in Australia but moved with his family to Auckland from where he enlisted in 1914.
He served in Egypt, Gallipoli and in France and it is said that whenever there was clay about he would model the heads of his comrades-in-arms.
After the war he set up a studio in Ponsonby with Joseph, who was also an artist, and who later became a cartoonist on a Melbourne newspaper.
Image
The statue was deliberately designed to do away with the image of a stiff-upper-lipped soldier and was meant to portray a digger in trench kit about to evacuate Gallipoli.
“As he leaves his unfinished job, he takes a last look back at the heights and doffs his hat to the memory of his dead cobbers.”
a Kiwi digger
Atop the Masterton War Memorial
I hope it's okay to quote this article that appeared in the Wairarapa Times-Age newspaper on 27 March 1999 (online version here)
A Kiwi digger looks back as he is about to evacuate Gallipoli. His face has that bony quality, with high cheekbones, which Department of Internal Affairs historian Jock Phillips, an expert on war memorials, calls the Edmund Hillary look.
His clothes are creased, his buttons are undone, his socks are dishevelled, his bootlaces untied …
In his hand he holds his army hat, his rifle is slung on his back with bayonet fixed.
Real Test
This soldier who failed the spit and polish exam, but passed the real test of battle, looks out through his bronzed eyes over Masterton, ironically in the direction of the War Memorial Stadium, from where he has stood for nearly 80 years on top of 60 tonnes of concrete and granite in Queen Elizabeth Park.
What is not recorded on the cenotaph is that this “untidy soldier”, as the statue became known, is modelled on a real Gallipoli veteran – Joseph Lynch – brother of the sculptor Frank Lynch, taken from a photograph actually taken at Gallipoli.
The original casting stands in Devonport, on Auckland’s North Shore, as that district’s war memorial.
Masterton secured the second casting after a committee searching for a suitable memorial settled on the bronze figure in 1921. Frank Lynch had been born in Australia but moved with his family to Auckland from where he enlisted in 1914.
He served in Egypt, Gallipoli and in France and it is said that whenever there was clay about he would model the heads of his comrades-in-arms.
After the war he set up a studio in Ponsonby with Joseph, who was also an artist, and who later became a cartoonist on a Melbourne newspaper.
Image
The statue was deliberately designed to do away with the image of a stiff-upper-lipped soldier and was meant to portray a digger in trench kit about to evacuate Gallipoli.
“As he leaves his unfinished job, he takes a last look back at the heights and doffs his hat to the memory of his dead cobbers.”