222382 Cpl. Francis Joseph Nugent British Army 7th (City of London) Battalion London Regiment from:Aotearoa, New Zealand (d.2nd Dec 1917) Our great uncle Frank Nugent was the eldest of the six children of Francis Nugent and Mary Nugent (nee Herst) of Maraekakao, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. The couple were recent immigrants from County Tyrone and Clare respectively. The Nugent family were involved in a huge sheep station owned by Donald McLean. They ran a store with boarding and carting facilities, while also administering the post office.
Frank must have been a handy chap to have around - with lots of Kiwi number 8 wire ingenuity having grown up in colonial New Zealand, he was a trained carpenter/joiner.
Strangely Frank did not join a Kiwi unit but paid for his own passage and sailed from Wellington for England on the "Rotorua" when he was 27. He disembarked on the 20th of May 1915 and immediately enlisted at Aldgate with the Shiny Sevenths.
From his point we have know knowledge of his doings as my Nugent family have no letters, photographs, or even medals.
My grandmother and her sisters were so distressed with Frank's death - such loss and pain for the family. The family plot names Francis Joseph Nugent 'Killed in Action in France' and that is all of the information that they ever possessed.
I've scoured Planke's history of the Shiny Sevenths desperate for any scraps of information, as he's there with the Sevenths from the late May 1915 until the mess at Cambrai when he dies 2nd of December 1917.
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