Mystery of the Gallipoli Bugle Solved

MEDIA RELEASE – 25 APRIL 2013
Seven Sharp

Mystery of the Gallipoli Bugle Solved

The mystery surrounding a World War I bugle played on the battlefields of Gallipoli may have been solved after a viewer recognised it on TVOne’s Seven Sharp last night.

The battered bugle is hand-inscribed with the places it had been and was handed in to the Auckland Regiment by a retired plumber, Paul Winstone. Mr Winstone found it while working under a Grey Lynn house while doing a job in 1963. Over the years he approached the Army Museum in Waiouru and the Auckland War Memorial Museum but neither was interested in it. It wasn’t until he approached the Auckland Army Centre that its significance was recognised.

Regimental Archivist Capt (Rtd) Blake Herbert says finding the bugle was very special. "When Paul contacted the Army Unit in Great North Road it sent chills up the back of my neck. You touch something like that and it's quite ghostly and spooky. To think the bugle has come back home - really just around the corner from where it lay under a house, it's amazing.”

Mr Herbert believes the bugle went to war in the possession of Sgt Sydney Postlewaight and would have been Army issued. It bears the crest of the Auckland Regiment and is hand inscribed with on the bell the ships that carried Sgt Postlewaight to Gallipoli. “It's a taonga.
It's covered in tiny engravings made by pin pricks. It tells a story.” He says the bugle probably survived the battlefields of Gallipoli the Somme and possibly Passchendaele.

Mr Herbert says it’s been a mystery as to how the bugle ended up under a house. However when it was featured on Seven Sharp last night it was recognised by Graham Milne of Hillcrest. Mr Milne believes his father Allen Milne took it on his tour of duty in World War II. He says he remembers it being played at Anzac services around Auckland in the 1950s and has a newspaper photo featuring it. It went missing from the family in the early 60s and it wasn’t until last night that Mr Milne realised it had survived.

Today Seven Sharp reunited an emotional Mr Milne and the bugle at the Auckland Army Centre. Mr Milne believes he still has the original mouth piece that went with the bugle and while he’ll keep that to remember his father by, the Auckland Regiment will keep the bugle so it can continue to be played.

Blake Herbert with bugle talks to Jesse Mulligan

bugle inscription

Ken Davie plays bugle

Ali Mau holds bugle

ENDS

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