Medal belonging to teacher who died at Gallipoli spotted at auction, gifted to school

A medal awarded to a teacher who died at Gallipoli is to be gifted to New Plymouth Boys' High School after being spotted up for auction.

Corporal Vincent Hall sailed to Europe with Colonel Malone's Wellington Infantry Regiment in October 1914.

A member of the 11th Taranaki Company he came ashore at Gallipoli in April 1915.

Hall survived the landing, but died the following month after being severely wounded in the thigh.

Simon Strombom of the NZ Remembrance Army - which secured the British War Medal 1914-1918 - said 30 old boys who died during World War I were commemorated on the school's Memorial Gates, but just one teacher - Hall.

"It's quite rare most of the schools tend to have old boys [commemorated], but they actually had a master who was teaching at the time who went off to war and has got killed and there's quite a bit about him in the Taranakian - the school magazine."

Originally from Auckland, Hall was Dux of Napier Boys' High School before getting his teaching qualification and a Masters degree at Victoria University of Wellington.

New Plymouth Boys' High School was his first teaching job.

Strombom, who was an old boy of the school himself, said he got a call out of the blue with the news that Hall's British War Medal had come up for sale.

"We only had about an hour before the auction closed, so I put quite a large bid, auto bid, on it to try and secure it for the school, because it's quite unique to have a former teacher killed in action and lo and behold we managed to get the medal."

Strombom said Hall would have got the Victory Medal and the British War Medal 1914-18 for serving overseas and would have also got a 1914-1915 Star, but they had become separated.

"At that's the problem at least they are named because World War II medals aren't and it's very hard to get the provenance of what they are. It's impressed, it's got his name and his regimental details on the rim."

Strombom said Hall was a Territorial before the war.

"He was young and was the captain of the shooting team at Boys' High. He was only about 22 or 23, so he wasn't too much older than some of the boys he was teaching. He was popular with the boys and obviously had a bit of a military bent."

Strombom said apparently Hall didn't have very good eyesight and it was hoped that would prevent him going to war.

"But once war was declared he would've signed up on that day and there's an interesting story that when he taught his last lesson before he jumped on the train to Trentham [for training] the boys all went down to the station and saw him off."

After being wounded Hall displayed the typical stoicism of the times.

"He was saying to everyone to look after everybody else, but he obviously succumbed to septicaemia or something from the wound and died later on."

Strombom said his British War Medal would be restored and mounted presented to the school later in the year.

One of Hall's brothers, Lionel, also died during World War I.

He served at Gallipoli, Egypt and in France before dying of wounds in Belgium during 1917.

His British War Medal 1914-1918 was gifted to Napier Boys' High School in 2015 after being bought at auction by former student Matthew Hawkins who had once been awarded the Lionel and Vincent Hall memorial prize for senior history.

The prize had been gifted to the school in 1969 by Mervyn Hall in honour of his brothers who had died in action, they were both 24 when they died.

Strombom, who said it had been personally gratifying experience putting together the story, wanted to create a prize commemorating both Lionel and Vincent Hall.

"We're thinking of getting a framed portrait of Colonel Malone and having it as sporting trophy between the two schools and calling it the Hall Memorial Trophy."

They were the oldest of seven brothers and had a younger sister Kathleen who worked as a missionary nurse after the war in China.

Vincent Hall is buried in the Military and War Memorial Cemetery in Alexandria, Egypt.