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Lord Bernard Freyberg
Photo Credit: Kippenburger Collection, Army Museum Waiouru

New Zealand Defence Force
Te Ope Kaatua O Aotearoa

Media Release

24 September 2007

CEREMONY TO HONOUR LORD BERNARD FREYBERG

New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel will attend a special ceremony in Surrey, England on 30 September to honour one of New Zealand’s most famous soldiers and military commanders.

The ceremony at Lord Bernard Freyberg’s gravesite will be attended by the Prime Minister Helen Clark, Chief of Army Major General Lou Gardiner, and NZDF personnel from the UK and New Zealand.

The ceremony, which has been organised by the New Zealand High Commission in London, will be officiated by NZDF Chaplain Donald Parker.

The Prime Minister will lay a special wreath on Lady Freyberg’s grave. Lady Freyberg is well known for her welfare work with the New Zealand troops during WWII, for which she was awarded an OBE in 1943.

The ceremony is the result of a three-year campaign by Christchurch WWII veteran Earle Crutchley to have the graves of Lord and Lady Freyberg repaired. Mr Crutchley made the graves his personal project when he found them in poor repair after attending the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Cassino in 2004.

The graves have been repaired and cleaned and a plaque to Freyberg has been installed in the church.

ENDS

Background

Lieutenant-General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg VC, GCMG, KCB, KBE, DSO and three Bars is New Zealand’s most decorated soldier who served in the First and Second World Wars.

Freyberg was born in 1889 in Richmond, London and moved to New Zealand with his parents at the age of two. His family lived in Hawker Street, Mount Victoria and he attended Wellington College from 1897 to 1904.

In 1915 Freyberg became involved in the Dardanelles campaign. During the initial landings by Allied troops following the unsuccessful attempt to force the straits by sea, Freyberg swam ashore and began lighting flares to distract the defending Turkish forces from the landings taking place at Gallipoli. It was for this action he received his first Distinguished Service Order (DSO).

In the final stages of the first battle of the Somme, he so distinguished himself in the capture of a strongly fortified village that he was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC). By the end of the war Freyberg had added another two DSOs and the French Croix Militaire de Guerre to his name.

It was during WWII that his leadership skills came to the fore as commander of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force and of the New Zealand 2nd Division. He was a popular commander who showed a notable concern for the welfare of his soldiers, regarding it as his duty to conserve New Zealand’s scarce manpower.

Following his retirement from the Army, Freyberg served as Governor-General of New Zealand from 1946 to 1952. In this post he played an active role, visiting all parts of New Zealand and its dependencies. In 1951 the Crown raised Freyberg to the peerage taking the title Baron Freyberg ‘of Wellington in New Zealand and of Munstead in the County of Surrey’.

Freyberg died at Windsor on 4 July 1963 following the rupture of one of his Gallipoli wounds, and was buried in the churchyard of St Martha on the Hill in Guildford, Surrey.

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