Nevile Lodge was born in Timaru, South Canterbury, New Zealand on 19 May 1918. He was educated at Rongotai College and Wellington College of Technical Art, working as an assistant window-dresser before the Second World War. During the war he served with the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force and was captured by the Italians at El Alamein in July 1942 and interned in a POW camp in Italy. In 1943 he escaped at the Italian Armistice but was captured by a German patrol and taken to a German prison camp, where he remained a prisoner until the end of the war.