January 13th 1915, Zeitoun Camp
Major William Henry Cunningham
Zeitoun Camp.
January 13th 1914 [sic]
Dear Colonel,
Having a free afternoon to-day I am starting to do that which should have been done before, write up the dairy [diary] of the doings of the Detachment of the 7th Wellington, West Coast, Regiment, serving with the Wellington Infantry Battalion in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (Main Body). Up to the time of commencing this Dairy [Diary] there is nothing to chronicle of actual fighting, though much of interesting manoeuvres and travel. It is my intention to write up the dairy [diary] in duplicate so that one copy may go to you while the other is kept with the detachment. At present our doings are humdrum and insignificant but at no very future date you or perhaps your successor may see fit to collate a small history of the Regiment and our smallest doing’s may interest future members of the Regiment. I hope you will put your copy safely in the archives of Regimental Headquarters in case as is not unlikely the original may got [sic] lost in the Field.
Yours very sincerely
WH Cunningham Major
Cmdg Wgtn W.C. Coy
To Lt Col R Hughes
Cmdg. 7th Wgtn.W.C.Regt.
Wanganui NZ.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
“January 13th 1914″
It’s not uncommon for people to write the year wrongly in January. After all he’d just spent a whole year writing “1914″. I’m sure we’ve all done something similar.
August 13th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Great interest story. Any chance of a posting it to an email account.
August 13th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Yes, you can set up an RSS feed from this site to your email page that will automatically let you know when content is updated or added to this site.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Nice blog and fascinating content. Thanks Wanganui District LIbrary.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:37 am
You’re welcome! What this shows most of all is that providing online access to material in public collections needn’t always cost huge sums of money – or even small sums of money – as there are tools available that will do the job at little to no cost other than modest amounts of staff time.
We are hopeful that at some point we wil also be able to provide access to scans of the original diary pages as well, either directly here or through our Flickr pages.
June 4th, 2011 at 9:40 am
Hi
I was wondering who Major Cuningham’s parents and siblings were. I suspect he may be by grandfathers brother.
October 12th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Dear Pauline, William Henry Cunningham was the son of William Henry and Elizabeth Harriett nee Smith. He had a brother George Harold Cunningham who married Catherine Margaret Stallard in 1920, and a sister Ethel Elizabeth Cunningham who married James Brownlie in 1910. Lieut Colonel Cunningham married Grace Winifred Luke in 1919.
I hope this helps you with your research.
Lynley