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William Henry Kerr was the son of David and Elizabeth Kerr (nee Hawkins) from Wellington, New Zealand. He was born in Thames, in New Zealand's Waikato Region in 1877.

He migrated across the ditch to work in the Colony of Victoria, at some point in the 1890's. 

Then while working as a Butcher in Melbourne, Bill as he would have been known, answered the call to arms. It was late in the year 1900 by then.

He may have been motivated by a sense of adventure or perhaps to escape his mundane workplace. For newspapers were publishing riveting accounts from the front, in almost real time via undersea telegraph.

This had the desired effect.

There was stong public support for the Transvaal War, as this conflict in Southern Africa was initially called.   

The Fifth and final contiginent of the Victorian Mounted Rifles was well and trully oversubscribed. Volunteers were turned away and told to re-apply for enrolment in Australia's, soon to be raised, Commonwealth Horse Battalians.  

Bill was successful. For he was a good horseman and passed the strict 5VMR riding and shooting tests. He was enlisted during what was the final days of the reign of Queen Victoria. He took the Oath on 14 Jan 1901. Bill was a Soldier of the Queen for only a week.

King Edward VII had ascended the throne before Bill embarked from Melbourne for active service in what is now South Africa. Bill was then a soldier of the King.

Historians would later call this costly colonial conflict, which began in 1899, the "2nd Anglo-Boer War".

Churchill thought that it was very sporting of the Boers to invade the British colonies. For the Soldiers of the Queen, once mobilized could repell them. However, Churchill quickly became a POW, long before Bill had even enlisted.

Mineral resources and outlander voting rights in Boer controlled areas is what was in dispute. The glittering prize was to control the enormous wealth of the Witwatersrand Goldfields. Paradoxically, first registered as a mining claim by an Australian prospector who had stumbled across it in 1886.

The war had been raging for fifteen months prior to Bill's successful selection and enlistment into the fifth colonial contingent to be raised in Victoria. 

His unit, 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles, suffered the heaviest casualties of all the Australian Boer War Contingents. For Boer Commandos had launched suprise a night attack on the 5VMR bivouac on Wilmansrust Farm. It was 12 June 1901. Nineteen 5VMR soldiers including one Officer were KIA.   

The fallen Officer was their 5VMR Regimental Surgeon. This may have contributed to the large number of wounded who died without immediate medical care.

However, five Officers and 36 men WIA did survive that suprise Boer night attack on the 5VMR bivouac.

Bill survived what became known as the "Wilmansrust Incident". This was later subject to a British Court of Inquiry aimed to direct blame at 5VMR Officers and picquets. However 5VMR Officers had followed Kings Regulations in stacking their arms and positioning their picquets.

Hence, it was superior Boer Tactics and their use of stealth that enabled that devastating surprise attack.

Bill was lucky not to fall victim to Enteric Fever which claimed about one half of all the Boer War casualties.

He was repatriated with his unit, arriving back in Melbourne on 26 April 1902. Bill was awarded the Queen's South Africa Medal at a discharge parade. 

Following that ordeal, he found it difficult to settle down to his pre war working routine in Melbourne. 

Bill eventually returned to New Zealand where he married Alice Mort in 1904. They raised a family in Christchurch. Their marriage came to an end with Alice's death in 1952. 

In 1953, when Bill was widower, he wrote a letter addressed to the OIC Australian Boer War Records.  

The Melbourne Sun Newspaper had published a photo of one of his former 5VMR comrades on 25 May 1953. Bill noticed that his former comrade had extra clasps on his Boer War QSA in that 1953 Empire Day photo. Whereas Bill had only had three clasps - Cape Colony, Orange Free State and Transvaal.    

Unkown to Bill when he received his QSA in Melbourne at his 1902 discharge parade, King Edward VII had later approved two extra clasps for QSA recipients. Bill was eligible for the 1901 QSA clasp and 1902 QSA clasp because he was serving in South Africa during the first two years of the reign of King Edward VII.

It is not known if Bill followed this up with the British War Office because all unissued 5VMR QSA clasps were returned to the War Office some fifty years earlier.  

PTE William Henry Kerr [810] D Coy 5VMR passed away in New Zealand in 1968. It was the eve of the 69th Anniversary of the 1899 Boer Invasion of the British South African Colonies when this old soldier finally died. Lest We Forget.

References cited:

Melbourne Leader Newspaper's 15 Feb 1901 page six supplement. Newspaper 5VMR photo I.D. 131 is subtitled Kerr [810].

"A Matter of Honour" 2017 Ed. 5VMR Book page 388.

NAA Boer War Dossier: William Henry Kerr [810]

1904 NZ Marriage Record 217.

1968 NZ Death Record 38299.

Find a 1968 NZ Grave Record.