Wireless Troop in Mesopotamia

Title page of ‘Some Mesopotamian and other memories, New Zealand Wireless Troop, No. 1 Pack’, a sketchbook by Sapper Francis Ledingham McFarlane. The badge of the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Corps appears at the top of the page, between a typical local scene and a typical local. Below the title a troop member is depicted at work and play. Note the size of his radio equipment, which had to be split up into several loads (‘packs’) for carriage by horse or mule.

The 62-man New Zealand Pack Wireless Troop arrived in Basra in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in April 1916. These men – most of them staff of the Post and Telegraph Department and members of the Post and Telegraph Corps in New Zealand’s Territorial Force – were responding to an appeal to New Zealand and Australia from the Viceroy of India for wireless operators and signallers. In late 1915 an Indian division attempting to capture Baghdad, the second city of the Ottoman Empire, had bogged down well short of its goal. It desperately needed effective means of communication.

Most of the initial members of the troop were wireless operators or drivers. Thanks to constant practice at Trentham Camp and Basra they were able to get a radio set into action in the field within eight minutes. With little to do in the early months, they staved off boredom by copying Turkish wireless signals; once the code was cracked, these provided valuable information.

Because of the wear and tear of near-desert conditions on equipment and horses, the troop was later bolstered with mechanics, farriers, saddlers and carpenters. Heat, dust and disease took their toll on the men too – 13 of the 179 New Zealanders who eventually served in the troop died, most of fever or dysentery.

The New Zealanders formed part of an Australian and New Zealand Wireless Signal Squadron within an augmented British force that finally captured Baghdad in March 1917. Later 32 members of the Pack Wireless Troop served in ‘Dunsterforce’, which moved north through western Persia (Iran) in support of Armenians and Cossacks who were harrying the Ottomans on their eastern borders. Four New Zealanders died on this expedition, which saw some hard fighting.

In May 1918 the Pack Wireless Troop was withdrawn from the Middle East and sent to France, where it was merged with the New Zealand Divisional Signals Company just before the November armistice with Germany.