TROOPER DOUGLAS PARK.
Private advice has been received in Dunedin that Trooper Douglas Park, younger son of Mr. J. A. Park, former Mayor of Dunedin. has been killed in action in France. He was engaged farming in Kelso district, and left with the mounted section of the Fifth Reinforcements. He served in Gallipoli till it was evacuated. -Auckland Star, 28/9/1916.
ROLL OF HONOUR.
TROOPER DOUGLAS PARK.
Trooper Douglas Park, who was engaged fanning in the Kelso district before enlisting, and is well known in that locality, is reported as having been killed in action. He was a member of the mounted section of the 5th Reinforcements, and served through the Gallipoli campaign, after the evacuation being transferred to the Pioneer Corps. He is the youngest son of Mr J. A. Park, of Dunedin. -Clutha Leader, 29/9/1916.
Douglas Park was part of the Otago Mounted Rifles contingent who were transferred to the Pioneer Corps to make up numbers. The Corps' Official History contains this account of the day, just before the opening of the Somme battle, on which he died:
About a dozen tanks, the new armoured caterpillars, passed the camp on their way to Green Dump ready for the next day's work. This diary entry of the C.O. indicates that these engines of warfare had then been seen for the first time by the Battalion: — “They are weird-looking things and ought to scare hell out of Fritz.” That evening the camp was shelled from the direction of Morval, and the bombardment while it lasted was severe. Six men were killed, 2nd.-Lieut. Henare Mokena Kohere was severely wounded, and ten other ranks were wounded. The casualties were sustained mostly by C Company.
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