item details
Overview
A soldier's portrait
This photographic portrait is of Sergeant Harry John Laurent (Service no. 24/213) of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, dressed in the New Zealand Rifle Brigade uniform. It was originally donated to the Dominion Museum in 1919 as part of a project to collect photographs of New Zealand's war heroes.
Harry Laurent's war service
Born at Tarata in Taranaki on 15 April 1895, Laurent had prior military training, having joined the Territorial Force at 16 years of age. He worked as an engineer in Tokaora, south Taranaki before enlisting in May 1915, before his 20th birthday. Laurent embarked with the New Zealand Rifle Brigade, 2nd Battalion, A Company on 9 October 1915, bound for Suez, Egypt. He served in Egypt and on the Westen European Front.
In France, Laurent was awarded the Victoria Cross 'for conspicuous bravery, skill and enterprise', when he led an advance group twelve-man party during an attack at Gouzeaucourt Woods on 12 September 1918. He also received the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal for his service in the war. Laurent also served in the Second World War, and died in Hastings in 1987, aged 92.
A National War Museum
This photograph was intended for display in a gallery of New Zealand's war heroes. The gallery was to feature in the National War Museum, a project planned by the New Zealand Defence Department. Gathering portraits of men who had won medals for gallantry was a major task for the Dominion Museum around 1917 through to the early 1920s. They were to hang in the planned National War Museum in Wellington, but this museum was never realised.