The Great War
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Select the portrait to enlarge it.Photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain

New Zealand

Te Rangi Hīroa

1877–1951 Medical officer, Māori Contingent, 1915; later second-in-command, Pioneer Battalion

Te Rangi Hīroa, also known as Peter Buck, was a physician, politician and anthropologist, born at Urenui in Taranaki to an Anglo-Irish father and a Ngāti Mutunga mother. He qualified in medicine at the University of Otago, became a medical officer to Māori in 1905, and sat in Parliament for Northern Maori from 1909 to 1914. In the First World War he helped recruit the Māori volunteer contingent and sailed with it as medical officer in 1915. At Gallipoli he was twice mentioned in dispatches and awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He later became a major and second-in-command of the Pioneer Battalion in France and Belgium. Knighted in 1946, he directed the Bishop Museum in Hawaii from 1936 until his death in Honolulu on 1 December 1951.

In the chronicle

Sources

Sources

Wikidata Q1396630