Jean Sandel was born towards the end of 1916, her parents' only child, in the small community of Taumarunui, twenty-five miles west of Lake Taupo in the centre of the North Island of New Zealand. She was educated at the Girls' High School, New Plymouth (on the coast, sixty miles west of her home), b

Thomas Miller (Tom) was born in Fielding, New Zealand, on 24 September 1917, the third son of Thomas Miller, a Presbyterian minister and Marion Meiklem née Strang, the daughter of a sea captain who became marine superintendent of the Union Castle Line. He was educated at the Otago Boys High School a

Alan Lionel Lomas graduated from the medical school in the University of Otago in 1938 at the age of 21 and for part of 1939 was house surgeon at New Plymouth General Hospital before joining the New Zealand Expeditionary Force at the beginning of the war. He served in the Western Desert and was awar