Private captured scene of heroism and sacrifice

By ANNE BESTON

After making his way onto the beach, Private Joseph Bell McBride turned back towards the sea, pulled out his hidden camera and captured one of the most significant moments in New Zealand's history.

No one really knows what the young New Zealander felt that day at Gallipoli, how badly his hands might have been shaking, how many of his comrades he saw die.

"He was always upset that most of those guys in the photo were killed, although not necessarily that day," says 75-year-old Patricia McBride, a niece of Private, later Sergeant, McBride.

No one knows either what possessed the 22-year-old to smuggle a camera ashore hidden in a sock. He was a keen amateur photographer during his days as a student at Otago University, but cameras were strictly forbidden in the Army.

He was a private in the Medical Corps attached to the Auckland Infantry Battalion and the pictures he took were of the first New Zealand troops arriving at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915.

They would be reprinted down through the decades but earned him a severe reprimand from his commanding officer who discovered their existence after the private was evacuated from Gallipoli.

Although some of the history of the photographs and how they came to appear in the Weekly News on March 16, 1916, has become blurred with the passing of time, Miss McBride says she thinks it was her father, who met up with his brother in Cairo after the evacuation, who had them developed and printed.

The story the two brothers later told was that their commanding officer was the one who sent the photographs back to New Zealand.

"That's what my father told me, although he and Uncle Joe didn't really talk about the war at all," Miss McBride said.

"There is no mention of the incident in Uncle Joe's military records but he told us he was 'on the mat' with his commanding officer over it."

Private McBride survived the Great War and was discharged from the Army in April, 1919. He qualified as a teacher and was later principal of Papanui High School, Christchurch. He retired to Invercargill.

Of the 11,600 New Zealanders who eventually served at Gallipoli, 2721 died on active service and 4752 were wounded.

Many later died from their wounds.

Herald Feature: Anzac Day

Highlights of the 2002 Anzac photo exhibition: