Robert Northleigh Gidley 1886 - 1918

Robert Northleigh Gidley was a Private in the Canterbury Regiment of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He was the only non-British born Gidley to be killed in the First World War. His death from wounds occurred on September 2, 1918. According to the New Zealand History Online website, conscription for military service was introduced in 1916. More than 30,000 conscripts had joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force by the end of the war.
Robert Northleigh Gidley was born in 1886 in Christchurch, New Zealand, where his father, Northleigh Bartholomew Gidley and his wife Mary Ann, formerly Gates, had both emigrated. Northleigh Gidley was born in Plymouth, Devon, the son of a Plymouth solicitor. He and his younger brother emigrated as young men to the South Island of New Zealand, where Northleigh was living by 1886 when he married. The name Bartholomew shows that his family originally came from Winkleigh, Devon.
Northleigh Gidley founded an apiary business, and was joined in it by his son, Robert Northleigh, who became an apiarist of some skill and distinction. The New Zealand newspapers report that in 1913, when Robert Northleigh was still only 27, he had obtained "5 tons of honey during last season". In this year his father, Northleigh, died, and Robert was in charge of the business. He was held in such high esteem that in 1913 he was invited to be one of the provisional directors of the Canterbury Honey Producers.
However, Robert Northleigh embarked on August 15, 1917 from Wellington, New Zealand for Britain. By the following year he was at the front where he died of wounds in the final Advance to Victory. He is buried in Adanac Cemetery, Miraumont, and it seems he may have been moved there from Grevillers. The Commonwealth War Graves site records that Adanac cemetery (the name is Canada, reversed), whilst holding mainly Canadians, also has the graves of nineteen New Zealand soldiers who fell between August - September 1918 and who had been buried firstly in the New Zealand cemetery in Grevillers. The New Zealand Division had recaptured Grevillers on August 24, 1918, after it had been in German hands since March of that year. By September a New Zealand Casualty Clearing station had come to Grevillers.
Robert Northleigh Gidley was unmarried. His parents had both died by 1918, and he was survived by his younger brother, William Gustavus Gidley, and a half-sister, May.