BRIGADIER PUTTICK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1941, Page 4

BRIGADIER PUTTICK

LEADER OF NEW ZEALAND TROOPS IN GREECE. DISTINGUISHED MILITARY CAREER. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. According to a cablegram from London. the New Zealand troops in Greece were led during their heroic rearguard action by Brigadier Edward Puttick. D. 5.0.. who was in command of the first echelon of the N.Z.E.F. to leave New Zealand. Since then he has been second in command to Major-General B. C. Freyberg, V.C. Earlier this year Ihe was mentioned in General Freyberg's dispatches for distinguished services. Officers who have served with Brigadier Puttick describe him as a man who has always been quick to win the confidence and respect of his troops. They say that he has for long been recognised as one of the most able leaders New Zealand has possessed. Brigadier Puttick was born in Timaru in 1890 and in 1906 joined the engineering branch of the roads division of the Public Works Department. He was a keen Territorial officer, and was mobilised on August 5. 1914. to go to Samoa as a captain in the Expeditionary Force which occupied Samoa. On returning to the Dominion in 1915 he was appointed to the Rifle Brigade. with which ho served in France, being promoted major the following year. He reached the rank of lieuten-ant-colonel in 1917 with command ol the 3rd Battalion. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was twice mentioned in dispatches. In 1920 he commanded the small field force which New Zealand sent to restore order in Fiji when there had been trouble with the Indian population. Brigadier Puttick married Miss I. L. Dignari, member of a well-known Auckland family, in 1919. and later during the usual varied duties of an officer in the New Zealand Staff Corps spent some years in Auckland as officer commanding the district. Later he became adjutant and quartermaster-general to the New Zealand Military Forces and second military member of the Army Board. On the outbreak of war in 1939 he was officer commanding the Central Military District.