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Portrait of Sapper Francis Harold Morgan, service number 4/44, Royal New Zealand Engineers, his brother Private Edmund Guthrie Morgan, service number 10/1927, Wellington Infantry Batallion , and their niece Joyce Vida Morgan.
Francis Harold Morgan (right), a sapper in the Royal New Zealand Engineers, and his younger brother Edmund Guthrie Morgan of the 4th Reinforcements were from a large Wellington family. Irish-born John and Scottish-born Christina Morgan had eleven children - six boys and five girls - and three of the boys served in the war. Francis, who enlisted in 1914, was part of the Samoa Advance Party. He re-enlisted in 1915, along with Edmund, and both sailed from Wellington on 17 April, destined for Egypt and Gallipoli. This portrait was probably taken shortly before they left.
The young girl, holding a swagger stick topped with a rifle cartridge case and bullet, is Francis and Edmund's niece Joyce. Born in 1912, Joyce was the daughter of Grosvenor William Morgan, Francis and Edmund's elder brother, and his wife Pearl. Both soldiers named Grosvenor as their next of kin when they enlisted, as their parents had by then passed away. Their older brother Allan, a married tram conductor, embarked with the 32nd Reinforcements in November 1917.
Francis, who before re-enlisting worked as a clerk at the New Zealand Express Company, was the first of the brothers to land at Anzac Cove in June 1915. Edmund follwed in July, but his stay was short: after suffering a severe hernia on 27 July, he was invalided back to New Zealand. Edmund was discharged in August 1916 as 'no longer physically fit for active service.' He would die of tuberculosis in Wellington in 1930, aged forty-five.
Francis was also evacuated from Gallipoli, on 10 August 1915. In September, he was hospitalised in Malta with dysentery, an extremely common illness at the front. Francis served a full four years and 184 days. When the Second World War broke out, he enlisted for a third time. By then he was forty-eight years old, married and working as a salesman; on account of his age he was placed in the reserves and not mobilised. Francis died on 1 June 1957.