George was born in Kopu, Thames on 8 June 1894, the son of George John Fisher and Mary Fisher (nee Hutchison). He was the youngest of eleven children.
His father, George John Fisher, was born 21 November 1843 at Bentley in the Parish of Bentley with Arksey, Yorkshire, England. On 15 November 1875, he married Mary Hutchison in Shortland, Thames. Mary was born 20 May 1855 at Birkenhead, Cheshire, England.
After the marriage, George and Mary lived in Paeroa. It was at this time that he was operating a passenger service/livery stable, called Fisher’s Nonpareil, during the Ohinemuri gold rush. He owned/leased part of the township of Paeroa, and they lived at the northern end of ‘Fishers Hill’ behind the site of Paeroa Furniture and Flooring (formerly Faber’s Furniture). Paeroas first twins, Jessie and Thomas Fisher were born on the hill.
George was a distinctive individual and, with his polished manner and the white suits he preferred, this may have led to him being chosen to take part in two very important events for the area.
Karangahake was visited by the Governor- General of New Zealand, the Marquess of Normanby, in April 1876, and George was engaged to provide transport for the vice-regal party. On 5 October 1876, he was the Waitekauri Mining Company’s ‘horseman’ and transported the first shipment of gold from Waitekauri to Paeroa in his saddlebags. Unfortunately gold mining in the area dropped off, and traffic through Paeroa declined. This, along with George’s dependence on his whiskey flask in his hip pocket led to them losing the land.
In the following years, George worked at several sawmills as a mill hand. Birth and school records show the family lived in Thames, Turua, Kopu (Kirikiri and Parawai Schools), Auckland (Wellesley Street School), Aoroa in Northland (Aoroa School) and Netherton. It was at Kopu that the youngest, George John, was born.
Four of the boys in the family followed their father into milling, including George, and they worked at many mills, from Rawene and Te Kopuru in the north to Putaruru and Taringamotu/Taumarunui further down the island.
George and his brother Edward were both working in the Taringamotu/Taumarunui area when WWI started. Their mother Mary was housekeeping for them.
In George’s army records, it shows he enlisted on 18 August 1914 in New Plymouth. There is a record that shows Edward also tried for enlistment with his last address as Taringamotu, so it is possible they went together. No further records have been found for Edward.
Their elder brother, David also wanted to enlist but he had respiratory problems from an earlier illness which prevented him from doing so. He wanted to be able to ‘watch over George’. He went to Australia and enlisted there in the Australian Military on 30 October 1915, embarking on the “HMAT Aeneas A60” from Sydney on 20 December.
At the time of enlistment, George was a member of the Taranaki Territorials and so became a member of the 11th Taranaki Company (shortened to Taranaki Company) of the Wellington Infantry Battalion. They were sent to camp at the Awapuni racecourse in Palmerston North for training. On the 22nd September, after very strenuous training, they travelled to Wellington to embark on their transport ships. Taranaki Company was on the 'Arawa' and the other companies on the 'Maunganui' and 'Limerick'. With the fanfare of a final parade and speeches, the convoy started out but then sailing was cancelled due to the lack of a sufficient naval escort. Three weeks later on the 16th October, when suitable escorts had arrived, they departed once again for the Red Sea and Suez.
The troops must have felt great excitement, especially the young men like George who had lived their lives in small towns, often working in the bush. After the enlistment and parades, travel to places they had never been lay ahead of them. The residents of Hobart gave them drinks, cakes, fruit and bouquets of flowers. There was the excitement when one of their escorting warships the “Sidney” went after the “Emden”, a German cruiser, and they then learnt she had caught it, the crossing of the equator with its associated ceremonies, Colombo with its ‘seething mass of humanity clad in all colours of the rainbow’, the amusement caused when upon reaching Aden when the 'Arawa' failed to drop anchor within the prescribed limits, and promptly got a shot across the bows. The 'Arawa' men then claimed the distinction of being the first contingent under fire. Finally they arrived in Suez with its ‘Egyptian light and colouring, the golden sands of the desert, and the brown of the hills’, a sight for those seeing Egypt for the first time. They looked upon it as a great adventure, not realising the terrible horrors that were to come.
On the 3rd December, they reached Alexandria where they commenced training in the desert. In February, they proceeded to the Suez Canal to assist Indian soldiers against the Turkish Army, their first taste of being under fire. There was training at Lemnos, where they had relentless training at climbing up and down the ship’s side on rope ladders with a rifle and full marching order,and then on 25 April 1915, George and the regiment arrived at Anzac Cove at Gallipoli. Their positions there being sufficiently stabilised, they then sailed from Anzac Cove and landed at Cape Helles where they fought in the 2nd Battle of Krithia. After heavy losse,s they returned to Anzac Cove in May.
Conditions here were now atrocious with heavy rain ‘melting bivvies’ down the hillside. There was the constant threat of Turkish snipers, and trenches were very insanitary. Fina;lly Colonel Malone turned the post from the most dangerous, insecure and insanitary into a clean, well organised post.
In August, the NZ Infantry Brigade, including George, were involved in the Battle of Chunuk Bair. It was here that George was wounded. His papers show he received a spinal concussion. He was admitted to St Georges Hospital in Malta on 13 August 1915, and then on 21 August moved to St Patrick’s which was used for minor walking cases.
Ii is not certain whether this worsened as he was admitted to the Church Lane Military Hospital in Tooting, England in November, and then after being discharged was transferred to the Hornchurch home depot.
When the orders came to withdraw from the Gallipoli Peninsula, the casualties had been very high. The battalion left for the defence of the Suez Canal but no attack eventuated while they were there so they were able to train for a different type of fighting in France and get some much needed rest. It was to here that George rejoined his unit in early March 1916.
In February, the New Zealand Army decided, with the reinforcements they had received, they could organise a full Division. The old battalion became the 1st Battalion of the Wellington Infantry Regiment, and to form the 2nd Battalion ‘only officers and N.C.O.’s of ability’ were drafted. George was transferred to the new Battalion on 13 March 1916.
On 9 April, George and the 2nd Battalion embarked on the 'Llandovery Castle' troopship and reached Marseilles, France on 18 April 1916. They entrained for the British Sector in the North of France the same day.
They moved to the front line in Armentieres on 14 May. They fought under very heavy shell fire in positions such as 'Pigot’s Farm' and 'The Mushroom' which jutted into No Man’s Land within a few yards of the enemy front line.
On 14 June 1916, George was appointed the rank of Lance Corporal. His brother David voiced the opinion that George was a very good soldier and would have continued to rise through the ranks if he hadn’t been killed.
In August, the 2nd Battalion withdrew from the Armentieres sector for training at Airaines for the coming offensive in the Somme area.
From 14 September to 3 October, the New Zealand Division fought in three battles. The first was the Battle of Flers-Courcelette 15-22 September, the second the Battle of Morval 25-28 September and the third was part of the Battle of Transloy Ridges 1-3 October.
During the first, the 2nd Battalion started in the Tea and Carlton Trenches and moved forward into Seaforth Trench then Otago Trench. They moved into Flers also. In the second battle, the 1st Battalion captured Grid Trench, Grid Support Trench and Goose Alley, and 2nd Battalion relieved them later. In the third battle, the battalion was involved in the attack and capture of the ruins of Eaucourt L’Abbaye which was identified as a key German strongpoint. This consisted of a large farm complex built on top of an old Augustine Abbey, and one report said the immense cellars hadn’t been cleared properly and some soldiers were cut off as the enemy was still in their rear in the Abbey buildings. Whether George was one of these, it will never be known but on 2 October 1916, a miserable wet day, he was reported missing. The next day, the New Zealand Division’s infantry, having been relieved, turned its back on the Somme Trenches.
The division had been relatively successful in achieving its objectives, but at a cost of some 6000 casualties, including more than 2100 fatalities.
At a Board of Enquiry held at Sailly- Sur-La-Lys on 4 December 1916, Private Hector Duncan George stated: 'On the afternoon of 2.10.16 at Eaucourt l’Abbaye, I saw this N.C.O. lying dead with a wound in the stomach. I knew this N.C.O. well and am sure of his identity'. The Enquiry's finding was: 'Dead, Killed in action in the field, France, October 2nd 1916.'
According to family, the Commanding Officer for George’s unit knew his brother was in an Australian unit so he contacted them to let David know his brother had been killed. David’s Commanding Officer showed a lot of compassion and allowed him to take a couple of days to go and bury George. David made a wooden cross and carved his details into it. Thankfully it survived, and George was exhumed and reburied in the Warlencourt British Cemetery on the road to Bapaume. Graves from surrounding cemeteries were concentrated into Warlencourt.
Another family account tells of a letter the officer, who was recording the grave positions to be exhumed, wrote to the family. He was so moved by what David had carved that he drew a picture in the letter so that they would have a record of it. Unfortunately at some time over the years, this was lost. George was awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He was only 22 years old when he died, one of around 18,000 New Zealand soldiers who died in or because of the war.
We pay tribute to two relatives who have helped make it possible to trace the lives of George and his family: