Soldier's identity disc returned after 92 years

Zoë Corselle with Richard Kemp's identity disc displayed on a map showing where she found it.

Richard Kemp's story

Richard Kemp's identity disc

More than 90 years after the Battle of the Somme it is still possible to find the physical traces of the hundreds of thousands of men who fought and died there in 1916. In 2007 a French family unearthed an identity disc belonging to New Zealand soldier Richard Kemp, and in 2008 the disc was returned home.

Richard Kemp (or Keepa Horo), of Te Aupouri iwi, came from the small Northland settlement of Te Kao. He was in his mid 20s when war broke out in 1914, working as a porter on the railways, based at Takapau in the Hawke’s Bay.

He probably signed up with a group of mates — nearly a dozen men from Takapau sailed off to Egypt with the Main Body of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force on 16 October 1914.

Richard served in the Wellington Infantry Battalion, and was one of the few Maori involved in the initial landings on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. His battalion played a key role in the attack on Chunuk Bair in August 1915. He then joined the Engineers, and at some point was wounded and shipped to England for treatment. Back in Egypt at the end of 1915, Richard waited for the New Zealanders to return from Gallipoli.

Early the following year, he became a sergeant and transferred to the Maori (or Native) Contingent. In February 1916 this was reorganised into the New Zealand Pioneer Battalion for service on the Western Front.

Notice of Richard Kemp's injury in NZ Free Lance, 13 July 1917

On the Somme from mid 1916, the Battalion built communication trenches, and their digging, cooking, cleaning and other tasks maintained the forces. As a bombardier (an artillery rank, equivalent to corporal), Richard may have been involved in the difficult job of bringing ammunition up to the artillery. Day after day from mid September 1916, the New Zealand and German forces shelled each other. Perhaps it was in one of these attacks that Richard lost his identity disc; perhaps he just slipped in the rain and snow that swept the Somme during those months.

In early 1917, with the new rank of 2nd lieutenant, Richard and the battalion headed north into Belgium. Around Messines they built rail tracks and communication lines. It was here that Richard suffered a wound to the chest and back that saw him sent to hospital in England.

He remained there for the rest of the war, being declared permanently unfit for general service. He was made lieutenant later in 1917, shortly before his transfer to a discharge hospital at Torquay. He embarked for home on 14 March 1918 and was discharged in April 1919. He married an English nurse he had met while in hospital, and they had one son. Richard died in 1964 and is buried in his hometown of Te Kao.

The identity disc was formally returned to the Kemp family in December 2008.