Private Henry Apanui Broderick - Palmerston North Memorial

Private Henry Broderick was born on 16 October 1892.  His parents would have been blissfully unaware that on the 16 October 1914 his 22nd birthday their son would be part of New Zealand Main Body that embarked for World War One, from which he would never return. 

Private Broderick took part in the landing of the Gallipoli peninsular on the 25 April 1915 where his received a gun shot wound to the foot.  He was invalided to Alexandria but was back in Gallipoli by June 1915.  A month later he fell sick with diarrhoea and was transferred to Malta and eventually found himself in hospital in Leicester, England and then at a convalescent home in Epsom, Surrey.   During this time he met a young 19 year old girl, Ethel Florence Vaughan from Islington, London.  Romance obviously blossomed as they were married on the 14 November 1915 in Hoxton, London.  They spent precious little time together as a married couple as Private Broderick was posted back to the Middle East disembarking on the 23 January 1916.   However by May 1916 he was posted to the Western Front where he spent most of his time as a company cook.  

Private Broderick's busy war ended on the 31 July 1917 at Ypres, Belgium where he was killed in action, initially being reported missing. He is remembered on the Messines Ridge (NZ) Memorial.  

I wonder what happened to his young wife and if they ever had a child? One assumes like so many young girls who were swept off their feet by young soldiers during the war and who never returned, she most likely remarried.  Private Broderick medals were sent to his young wife a lasting memory and reminder of the her short marriage to a young New Zealand soldier.