Relatively little is known about Private Harry Reid. A 21 year old farm labourer, Harry Reid had been born at Fendalton and educated at Harewood School. He worked on a relative's farm at Lyndhurst and enlisted in October 1915. He was posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Canterbury Infantry Regiment and arrived in Egypt a month before the New Zealand Division transferred to France. He survived his initation in trench warfare around Armentieres before being killed in action in the Somme on 21 September 1916.One curiosity about his death is that though he is buried at Ovillers Cemetery on the Somme, he is the only New Zealander among the 1080 Allied soldiers lying on that gently sloping hillside some distance from where the New Zealanders were fighting at Flers (see his headstone below). It is possible that he was acting as a runner, detached from the rest of his unit, and was killed while undertaking this dangerous role.
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