New Year Honours: A long lifetime of serving his comrades

Lawrence "Curly" Blyth has capped off a remarkable decade of achievement by becoming, at 104, one of the country's oldest New Year Honours recipients.

Lieutenant-Colonel Blyth (retired), of Auckland, was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in recognition of his work for First World War veterans and the community.

His daughter, Margaret, said yesterday that he did not want the credit for himself. "It is for the men who fought and died."

She said it was remarkable that much of his work for recognition of the 18,000 New Zealanders who died in the First World War occurred when he was in his 90s.

In 1990, he went to Turkey for the 75th Gallipoli commemorations.

A year later, he returned to the French battlefields of his youth and was given the honour of rekindling the flame which burns on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

During the visit he returned to the fortress town of Le Quesnoy, where in November 1919 he and other New Zealanders freed 5000 citizens from four years of German occupation.

He discovered that a nearby town had named its square Place du Col Blyth. When he was 100, 34 citizens of the French district flew here to visit him, and in 1998, the President of France appointed him a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur.

Colonel Blyth first went to France in 1916 and took part in the second phase of the Battle of the Somme.

He was commissioned from the ranks and received the Military Medal for his part in the Battle of Messines on June 7, 1917.

During the Second World War he commanded the 2nd and 5th Battalions of the Auckland Regiment.

On Remembrance Day 1993, Colonel Blyth called on New Zealanders to strive to return to Christian standards of morality.

He was concerned that during his lifetime society had become less orderly.