RICHMOND, Major J M, DSO, MC, RNZA – “Few people in NZ will realise” writes Brigadier General G N JOHNSTON, Commander, Royal Artillery, NZ Division “that in Major J M Richmond, who was killed by a 5.9 shell on the high road between Soleames and le Quesnoy on the afternoon of Sunday, 27 October, 1918, New Zealand lost one of her most promising staff officers. Leaving NZ with the Main Body in October 1914, he served with the NZ Field Artillery without a break until the day of his death. He landed in the first boat conveying NZ troops to the shore at Gallipoli and remained at Anzac till the final day of evacuation, when he embarked in the last boat, having volunteered to assist in the blowing up of an old 5 inch howitzer which was kept in action till the last moment. His orders were models of what orders should be; lucid and concise, they were never misunderstood. In thirty years’ experience I have never known an officer who could so quickly grasp a complicated tactical situation and make it appear simple in orders. He also had a capacity for mental endurance and could continue working for 24 hours at a stretch during operations, only giving in when the critical stages of a battle were over, when it was his habit to sleep for some 12 to 16 hours at a stretch. His eye for country was excellent; he could walk over a new bit of country, go back to headquarters and draw a very accurate panoramic sketch of it from memory. On ordinary days he visited the batteries, brigades and observation stations and never shrank from carrying out his duty, no matter how dangerous. He hated bloodshed and the writer well remembers his horror as seeing blood during the first day of landing at Gallipoli. When inoculated he always fainted and yet there were few braver men in the division. On one of the last occasions on which the writer saw him he was trying to stem the flow of blood from a horse which had just been wounded near Havricourt Wood. Should some future NZ artillery officer wish to get a thorough knowledge of modern war in so far as it effects artillery, and to learn how to write orders, he could do not better than to take as his model those written by Major J M Richmond, RNZA.” [AWN 06.03.1919] p.22