The 1918 Influenza Pandemic affected thousands of New Zealand families, including many connected to the military community who had only recently returned from World War I. Between 2022 and 2024, Marion Dickinson, one of our volunteers at Online Cenotaph, worked on transcribing and researching these casualties in New Zealand. Her research drew on a 2018 project between Ancestry and local researcher Geoffrey Rice which aimed to compile the ‘first comprehensive list’ of New Zealanders who died during the pandemic.¹

Marion focused on influenza deaths within the military community.. Out of around 5,000 identified casualties, she was able to confirm 580 who were either serving or had previously served in the armed forces.

You can view the Influenza list on Online Cenotaph here. This list will likely increase as we identify more personnel impacted by this global pandemic.

During the process of identifying these servicepeople, Marion read many personnel files and newspaper clippings, uncovering information about others who had served in World War I (WWI). While these individuals were not casualties of the pandemic themselves, details within their records prompted further research.

One such entry in Marion’s transcription files was John Henry Bennett. His record contains little more than an ordinary name, and a service number, but the note Marion left beside it in her notes draws the eye: ‘Man of Mystery’. Bennett was a conscientious objector during WWI, and very little is known about him. In 1917 he received a summons for service and arrived at camp, but that marked the extent of his willingness to co-operate with the military authorities.

On the front page of his military personnel file, where the key details of a serviceman would normally appear, there is almost nothing recorded.² Bennett’s file has no date of birth or address, no religious affiliation, and no record of service. There is simply his name, the number assigned to him by the army, and the first letters of a title for his next of kin, later erased with two Xs, beneath which a neatly cursive hand records: ‘Refuses to give any particulars.’

Another page reveals that he was a farm labourer from Green Bay in Avondale, Auckland, but this is the most that Bennett would disclose. Despite a series of escalating punishments handed down to him at Trentham Military Camp, beginning with 28 days' detention and eventually extending to two years’ hard labour, no further information was forthcoming.

The final punishment listed, in what feels like a cruel twist of military humour, reads: ‘Forf[eits] 745 days pay’. Other pages in the file carry similar notes regarding his refusal to co-operate. One records, with an almost palpable sense of frustration from the interviewing officers, that Bennett still ‘refused to give any particulars or answer any questions whatever concerning these papers.’

Later research on conscientious objectors revealed that Bennett’s objection was religious in nature, and that he was 36 at the time of his call-up.³ In 1919, the Religious Advisory Board, established to assess whether objectors held ‘bona fide religious objections to Military Service’ under the law, published its findings. The Board noted that John Henry Bennett (mistakenly recorded as John A. Bennett) had not appeared before them, but had instead been ‘certified to by Mr. Goldsbury Head of Society of Friends at Wanganui[sic] as being a member of that Society.’ The Society of Friends, or Quakers, were well known for their pacifist beliefs.

In 1965, a man by the name of John Henry Bennett passed away. Born in 1880, he was around the right age to have been the same man who refused military service in WWI. He was buried in Feilding Cemetery alongside his wife, Florence.⁴

His grave bears no indication of military service, but beneath their names a verse from Matthew 28, ‘Lo, I am with you always.’. Feilding is a long way from Green Bay, where Bennett had been employed at the time of his call up, though many New Zealanders moved frequently around the country in the interwar years. Feilding also lies close enough to Whanganui that he could plausibly have been a member of the Society of Friends mentioned in the Religious Advisory Board report.

Just over a decade earlier, in 1953, another man named John Henry Bennett, born in the same year was buried in the Hillsborough Cemetery in Auckland.⁵ He was buried alongside Emily Mary Axford, an early convert to and prominent member of the Baha’i faith in New Zealand.

His gravestone features the nine-pointed star associated with the Baha’i faith, alongside a quotation attributed to its founder, Baháʼu'lláh (1817–1892): ‘Death conferreth the gift of Everlasting Life.’ Hillsborough lies only a short distance from Green Bay, where John Bennett had been employed when he was summoned for military service several decades earlier.

John Henry Bennett’s life remains largely unknown due to the scant detail preserved in public records. It cannot be proven whether he was the man buried in Feilding alongside his wife, their faith marked by a simple biblical verse, or the man buried in Hillsborough alongside a prominent Baha’i and a quotation from its founder. Unlike many other servicepeople, the section of Bennett’s military file that might ordinarily provide clues such as next-of-kin details, dependents, or a notification of death, are absent.

These fragments seem to raise more questions than they answer, and John Henry Bennett remains deserving of Marion’s note in the margin: ‘Man of Mystery.’

The research undertaken into casualties of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic revealed how many wartime stories survive only in fragments across military files, cemetery records, archival collections, and family memory. John Bennett’s refusal to engage with the machinery of conscription left remarkably little trace behind, yet that absence has become part of the story itself.

Research projects like Marion Dickinson’s help bring these fragmented histories back into view, even when some questions can never be fully answered.

References

¹ "Jason Reeve: compiling the first list of NZ's Spanish flu pandemic victims." Radio New Zealand, 23 September 2018. 

² "BENNETT, John Henry - WW1 62822 - Army." Archives New Zealand, 26 May 2026.

³ "Imprisoned conscientious objectors, 1916-1920." Manatū Taonga — Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 26 May 2026.

⁴ "Cemetery Record Details." Manawatū District Council, 26 May 2026.

⁵ "Record for John Henry Bennett." Auckland Council, 26 May 2026.