. Gunner Oliver Martin Todd was killed in action on 18 June 1917, the same day as another man from Coutts Island Joseph Cooksley. He had been born in Kaiapoi in 1886 and before the war he worked as an engine driver before the war and was one of the minority of married men serving at that time. He was nearly thirty when he enlisted in May 1916, having been recently married to May Wilson in Kaiapoi. He arrived in France in March 1917 and commenced service with the 6th Battery of the 2nd New Zealand Field Artillery. He died leaving a son Kelvin, who was born in September 1916. Oliver Todd is buried at Pont d'Achelles military cemetery near Nieppe in Northern France and is commemoration for four other men, including his brother Ernest, on the Coutts Island memorial. (see below)
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