Augustus Bernard Paul Rosenfeldt was born in Sydney c. 1887 to Martha Dyke and Henry August Rosenfeldt. The family moved to New Zealand, where Augustus worked on his father’s farm in Dannevirke, Manawatu-Wanganui Region, north of Wellington. He was relatively tall (almost six feet) and served over two years as a Lieutenant in the volunteer 17th Regiment.

On 17 August 1914 – just 12 days after war was declared - he enlisted (stating b. 1888) at Masterton in the Wellington Infantry Regiment (aka 17th Battalion) of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, appointed No. 10/92 Corporal Augustus Rosenfeldt. They embarked Wellington aboard HMNZT Limerick or Awara on 16 October, joined the first convoy (1st Expeditionary Force) of 38 ships that left Albany on 1 November and arrived in Egypt on 3 December 1914. The battalion - part of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade of the New Zealand and Australian Division - trained at Heliopolis, near Cairo. The brigade left Alexandria in early April 1915 and gathered with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) at Mudros, on the island of Lemnos, where they practised landings.

The brigade sailed the 100km to Anzac Cove on the afternoon of 25 April 1915, after the three brigades of the 1st Australian Division had established the beachhead, and was tasked with consolidating positions in the northern part of the Anzac sector, where the Wellington Regiment fought outstandingly, advancing to Walker’s Ridge by 27 April. With casualties growing, Augustus was promoted to Lance Sergeant on 5 May.

In order to break the stalemate at Cape Helles and take part in an attack on Krithia, the brigade was ferried south with the 2nd Australian Infantry Brigade on 6 May. Two days later, Augustus was reported missing, then “missing believed dead”. His record gives no indication of the circumstances and his body was not identified. The attack was a complete disaster – by the end of the day, the New Zealanders suffered more than 800 casualties but achieved nothing. After the evacuation from Gallipoli, a Board of Enquiry (16/1/1916) adjudged that Augustus was “Now believed to be dead,” Killed in Action on 8 May 1915 - aged 27.

Lance Sergeant Augustus Rosenfeldt has no known grave and so his name is engraved on Panel 19 of the Twelve Tree Copse (New Zealand) Memorial, Gallipoli, Turkey (see attached).

Likely Augustus’ younger brother, Harry Ernest Rosenfeldt was a Sergeant in the Rifle Brigade of the 1st NZEF and returned to live in Te Aroha, Waikato, their parents’ new address from 1915.