ABSTRACT
New Zealand’s small population of 1.641 million at the outbreak of the SecondWorld War inevitably meant that in the make-up of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2nd NZEF) would be a significant number of sportsmen. In many instances these were team sportsmen, rugby and rugby league, soccer and cricket players who made the adaption from civilian life when volunteering for the military relatively seamlessly. New Zealand had little in the way of a professional Army and initially many of those chosen to lead were veterans of the First World War. Sportsmen, who were used to working for one another in a team environment, were equally able to transfer that allegiance from sport to a military sphere. As it was for the Second World War, so it had been in South Africa in the Boer War and in the First World War. Two of the greatest sportsmen produced in early New Zealand, the captain of the 1905-1906 ‘Originals’ to tour Britain, France and North America, Dave Gallaher, and the All-England singles, and Australasian Davis Cup winning star, Anthony Wilding, were two of the most prominent casualties in First World War battles. Wilding served with the British forces and died in France in May 1915, while Gallaher, a Boer War veteran, died at Passchendaele in October 1917. His memory is honoured with the Dave Gallaher Trophy contested by New Zealand and France in rugby internationals.1
