Codford bell

  • Height  438 mm
  • Width  533 mm
  • Weight  103 kg
  • Note  G#
Bell Inscription

Codford
In Memory of Garfield Alexander Warin
and Nurse Kathleen Mary Hollis.
Given by James Gordon Finlay.

The 'Codford' bell was given by returned soldier James Finlay in memory of his friend and fellow soldier Garfield Warin, and Kathleen Hollis, an English nurse who worked at the New Zealand Hospital in Codford, south-west England.

James Finlay and Garfield Warin

James and Garfield had worked together in Edward Morrison’s orchard business in Warkworth before the war. They enlisted with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force within days of each other in July 1916. They joined the Auckland Infantry Regiment and left New Zealand for service overseas. 

James almost immediately became dangerously ill with pneumonia and was transferred to New Zealand’s war hospital in Codford, Wiltshire, England, known as No. 3 New Zealand General Hospital. He spent several months in hospital before he was deemed ‘no longer physically fit for war service on account of illness contracted on active service’. He was sent home to New Zealand on a hospital ship and discharged from the army.

After his final training at Sling Camp on Salisbury Plain, Garfield left England in March 1917 and spent the next several months at the New Zealand base in Etaples, northern France. He finally joined his battalion at the front in mid-August and soon became involved in the Passchendaele offensive. On 4 October, during the capture of Gravenstafel Spur, Garfield went missing. He was later reported as killed in action, one of around 500 men killed or mortally wounded that day. His parents were not given final confirmation of his death for several months. He is buried in Dochy Farm New British Cemetery, Belgium.

Kathleen Hollis

Kathleen Mary Hollis lived in Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire, and in January 1917 started working as a nurse for the British Red Cross’s Voluntary Aid Detachment at the New Zealand Hospital at Codford. It is presumed that James met Kathleen while she was nursing at the hospital. 

It was a tough and extremely cold place to work – in the month after Kathleen arrived ten nurses died of influenza and bronchitis. Kathleen survived the war, but in 1919, while still nursing recuperating New Zealand soldiers at the hospital, she died following surgery. She was 23 years old. Aside from her service at the New Zealand Hospital it is not known if Kathleen had any other connection to New Zealand. An anonymous ‘In Memoriam’ advertisement was placed in her memory in the Dominion in 1920, on the first anniversary of her death.

Almost ten years later, when the opportunity to purchase a bell in the Carillon arose, James Finlay donated a bell in both Garfield and Kathleen’s memory. The bell is named Codford for the place in England where the hospital was based.

In 1932, during a special celebration of the New Zealand nurses who served in the war held at the Carillon, two bells were sounded – the one given in memory to Kathleen, and the 'Nurses’' bell

Further information:

Auckland War Memorial Museum Online Cenotaph record – Garfield Warin
Auckland War Memorial Museum Online Cenotaph record – James Finlay
Commonwealth War Graves Commission record – Garfield Warin

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