PATHE GAZETTE NO. 541, BROCKENHURST & LYMINGTON. A TOKEN OF APPRECIATION (NEW ZEALANDERS PRESENT FLAGS PRIOR TO THEIR DEPARTURE FOR HOME)

Large crowds of public and hospital staff gather outside the town hall in Lymington to watch the principal matron present the New Zealand flag to the Mayor.

The film “opens with Lieutenant-Colonel Percival Fenwick, Commanding Office No. 1 New Zealand General Hospital, Brockenhurst, and his principal matron who is presenting a New Zealand flag to the mayor of Lymington outside of the town hall in front of a large crowd made up of hospital staff and the general public. We then see similar scenes at the church at Brockenhurst where New Zealanders who died in hospital are buried in the church grounds. Fenwick and a member of the nursing staff present a New Zealand flag into the safekeeping of the church. The final scenes show Fenwick and his staff walking among the graves of the New Zealanders buried in the churchyard as the camera pans across the graves and the church.” The Camera in the Crowd, p.415

The no.1 New Zealand General hospital at Brockenhurst opened in June 1916 after moving from Abasseyeh in Egypt. By 1919 when it closed, 21,000 patients had been treated in the hospital.