Profile

EVANS, Hugh McAlpine
(Service number 23/417)

Aliases	Hughie
First Rank	Rifleman	Last Rank	Sergeant

Birth

Date	04/01/1898	Place of Birth	Maerewhenua, Otago

Enlistment Information

Date	29 May 1915	Age	17 years 4 months
Address at Enlistment	Wellington St, Timaru
Occupation	Tailor
Previous Military Experience
Marital Status	Single
Next of Kin	Thomas EVANS (father), Wellington Street, Timaru; 9 Hereford Street, Timaru
Religion	Church of England
Medical Information

Military Service

Served with	NZ Armed Forces	Served in	Army
Military District

Embarkation Information

Body on Embarkation	1st New Zealand Rifle Brigade
Unit, Squadron, or Ship	1st Battalion, B Company
Date	9 October 1915
Transport	Maunganui or Tahiti or Aparima or Navua or Warrimoo
Embarked From	Wellington	Destination	Suez, Egypt

Other Units Served With
Last Unit Served With	New Zealand Rifle Brigade

Military Awards

Campaigns	Egypt, France
Service Medals	1914-1915 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
Military Awards

Award Circumstances and Date

No information

Prisoner of War Information

Date of Capture
Where Captured and by Whom
Actions Prior to Capture
PoW Serial Number
PoW Camps
Days Interned
Liberation Date

Discharge

Date	28 February 1919	Reason	On account of wounds received in action

Hospitals, Wounds, Diseases and Illnesses

26 September 1918 - Reported wounded

Post-war Occupations

Musician

Death

Date	18 October 1973	Age	75 years
Place of Death	Christchurch
Cause
Notices
Memorial or Cemetery	Christchurch Crematorium - Woodlawn Memorial Gardens
Memorial Reference
New Zealand Memorials

Biographical Notes

Hugh McAlpine Evans, born on 4 January 1897 at Maerewhenua, North Otago, was the youngest son of Welsh-born Thomas Henry Evans and his wife Mary née Attiwell, and a brother of Eyre Llewellyn Evans who was killed in action in 1918 in France, and of Owen and Harold Thomas Evans who also served in World War One. The family moved to Timaru in 1910 where Mary Evans ran a tea rooms in Timaru called the Kia Ora Tea Rooms, near the Theatre Royal. Thomas and Mary were married on 11 October 1883 in Oamaru. Hugh entered Waimataitai School in Timaru, after previously having a brief stint at Papakaio School, North Otago and prior to that a time at Oamaru Middle School.

Hugh was only 17 years old when he enlisted early in the war, though he did give his age as two years older. He was a tailor living at home in Timaru, and nominated his father as next-of-kin. Hugh arrived Suez in November 1915, then sailed to France in April 1916. Later he was invalided to NZ in December 1918 and was subsequently discharged in February 1919.

Hugh married Ethel May Fielding in 1922, and the couple had three children. According to family lore she left in 1928 to either Australia or USA, leaving her children, but no further information on her has been found. They divorced in 1935 and Hugh then married Edna Olive Page 27 April 1938 in Christchurch and two more children were born.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [26 December 2016]; NZ BDM Indexes (Department of Internal Affairs) [23 December 2016]; NZ Electoral Rolls (ancestry.com.au) [28 December 2016]; School Admission records (South Canterbury & Oamaru branches NZSG) [28 December 2016]; Archives New Zealand, Evans family records; SCRoll web submission by R Evans, 4 August 2018

External Links

Researched and Written by

Liz Shea, SC branch NZSG; Teresa Scott, SC branch NZSG; Carol Bell, SC branch NZSG

Currently Assigned to

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License unless otherwise stated.

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