Profile

CROSS, Harold Victor
(Service number 2/1398)

Aliases
First Rank	Gunner	Last Rank

Birth

Date	28/03/1890	Place of Birth	Oamaru

Enlistment Information

Date		Age
Address at Enlistment	Wellington (YMCA)
Occupation	Coach builder
Previous Military Experience
Marital Status
Next of Kin	William CROSS (father), 9 Haast Street, Linwood, Christchurch
Religion	Methodist
Medical Information

Military Service

Served with	NZ Armed Forces	Served in	Army
Military District

Embarkation Information

Body on Embarkation	4th Reinforcements
Unit, Squadron, or Ship	New Zealand Field Artillery
Date	17 April 1915
Transport	Willochra or Knight Templar or Waitomo
Embarked From		Destination

Other Units Served With
Last Unit Served With

Military Awards

Campaigns
Service Medals
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		Reason

Hospitals, Wounds, Diseases and Illnesses

Post-war Occupations

Death

Date		Age
Place of Death
Cause
Notices
Memorial or Cemetery
Memorial Reference
New Zealand Memorials

Biographical Notes

Harold Victor Cross was the third son of William and Mary Ann (née Morris) Cross. His registered name at birth was Arnold Victor Cross. He was educated at Oamaru North School, leaving when he turned 14½ to go out to work. Harold’s parents had moved to Christchurch some time after 1914. Harold was the best man for his brother Edric Stanley Cross in January 1915 at the Linwood Methodist Church. The New Zealand Divisional concert party presented a pantomime – “Achi Baba and the Forty Thieves” - on 26 December 1917. A member of the orchestra was Private H. V. Cross. Private Harold Victor Cross came home per the “Maunganui”, arriving in June 1919 at Port Chalmers. Mrs Mary Ann Cross died at their residence on 18 March 1926 and was buried in Bromley Cemetery. William Cross, who was probably an early settler in Otago, had gone to live with his daughter Vera at Dannevirke and, dying in 1951, he was buried in Greytown Cemetery. What became of Harold Victor Cross after the war? Harold Victor Cross, born 28 March 1890 at Oamaru, New Zealand, enlisted at Sydney, Australia, in the Army Citizen Military Forces for World War II. It appears that Harold had spent time in the Timaru area. The Methodist Church of Timaru placed a handsome window in the Bank Street Church as a memorial for the war victims of the congregations. Apart from the names of the fallen appearing on the window, the names of all who served were inscribed in a book which was to be preserved in the Church. Included in the names was that of Harold Victor Cross.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [24 March 2020]; NZ BDM Indexes (Department of Internal Affairs) [30 March 2020]; School Admission record [30 March 2020]; Australia World War II Military Service Records Index (ancestry.com.au) [30 January 2020]; Star, 13 June 1919, Timaru Herald, 5 July 1922, Auckland Star, 23 December 1939 (Papers Past) [24 & 30 March 2020]

External Links

Researched and Written by

Teresa Scott, 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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