This Wills’s cigarette card from 1915 shows Corporal Cyril Bassett, Divisional Signals, New Zealand Engineers, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, laying his telephone lines on 7 August 1915, the action for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. It is interesting to compare this scene to the artist’s impression of Bassett’s work on this same page. The ground here seems a little flat but Bassett’s determination to do his job in the face of bullet and shell is certainly evident.
