Profile

NEYLON, Norman
(Service number 4/1533)

Aliases
First Rank	Sapper	Last Rank	Sapper

Birth

Date	27 June 1893	Place of Birth	Arrowtown

Enlistment Information

Date	7 October 1915	Age	22
Address at Enlistment	Waiuta, Westland
Occupation	Miner
Previous Military Experience
Marital Status	Single
Next of Kin	Mrs Alice NEYLON (mother), Waimate, South Canterbury
Religion	Presbyterian
Medical Information	5ft 6in, 130lbs, dark complexion, grey eyes, dark hair

Military Service

Served with	NZ Armed Forces	Served in	Army
Military District

Embarkation Information

Body on Embarkation	New Zealand Engineers, Tunnelling Company
Unit, Squadron, or Ship	Headquarters, No 3 Relief
Date	18 December 1915
Transport	Ruapehu
Embarked From	Auckland	Destination	Plymouth, Devon, England

Other Units Served With
Last Unit Served With	New Zealand Engineers

Military Awards

Campaigns	Western Front
Service Medals	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	13 April 1919	Reason	Termination of period of engagement

Hospitals, Wounds, Diseases and Illnesses

5 June 1916 - Shrapnel wound to head, France, rejoined unit 7 June 1916

Post-war Occupations

Butcher

Death

Date	6 July 1962	Age	69 years
Place of Death	Christchurch
Cause
Notices
Memorial or Cemetery
Memorial Reference
New Zealand Memorials

Biographical Notes

Norman Neylon was born at Arrowtown, Otago on 14 June 1893, the son of William John and Alice (nee Grigg) Neylon. He attended Arrowtown School.

Norman was a miner at the time of his enlistment, working for Mr Morrison of Waiuta, Westland. He was described as single, aged 22, 5ft 6in, 130lbs, of dark complexion, with grey eyes, and dark hair, and a Presbyterian. His next of kin was his mother, Mrs Alice Neylon of Waimate. He was attached to the NZ Engineers Tunnelling Company. Norman embarked on 18 December 1915 and sailed on the Ruapehu for Plymouth, leaving for France 9 March 1916. The New Zealand Tunnelling Company formed in October 1915 was made up mainly of experienced miners. It worked exclusively on the Western Front from March 1916 until the end of the war, serving separately from the rest of the New Zealand Division. It conducted mine warfare in 1916 before switching to preparing underground caverns around Arras. Norman was briefly wounded on 5 June 1916 with a shrapnel wound to the head, but returned to the front line two days later. Later that year he was also treated for appendicitis. Neylon served out the rest of the war on the Western Front, embarking for New Zealand on the SS Hororata 1 February 1919. He was discharged on 13 April 1919.

After the war Norman married Marjorie Elizabeth Purkiss in 1921 and worked as a butcher in Christchurch. He died in Christchurch in 1962.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [14 December 2018]; NZ BDM Indexes (Department of Internal Affairs) [14 December 2018]; Timaru Herald, 5 March 1919 (Papers Past) [14 December 2018]; Assorted records at Ancestry.com [August 2021]; "Specialist Units of the NZEF", New Zealand History at https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/specialist-units/tunnelling-company

External Links

Researched and Written by

Teresa Scott, SC branch NZSG; Sahiban Kanwal; Carol Bell, SC branch NZSG

Currently Assigned to

Not assigned.

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

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