page_title: Bernard Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Bernard Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Bernard Cyril Freyberg (later Sir Bernard) on a diving board over Te Aro Baths. what appears to be the sea. The steep hills in the background indicate that the location is Oriental Bay possibly Wellington. In the background a large crowd is watching the events taking place. (Bernard Freyberg was an assistant to Mr McKenzie (dentist) in Levin from 1913 to 1914) The Te Aro Baths were replaced by The Freyberg Pool opened in 1963.
context_page_description: Lieutenant General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg, VC, GCMG, KCB, KBE, DSO & Three Bars was a British-born New Zealand soldier and Victoria Cross recipient, who served as the 7th Governor-General of New Zealand from 1946 to 1952.
  Freyberg served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War. He took part in the beach landings during the Gallipoli Campaign and was the youngest general in the British Army during the First World War, later serving on the Western Front, where he was decorated with the Victoria Cross and three Distinguished Service Orders, making him one of the most highly decorated British Empire soldiers of the First World War. He liked to be in the thick of the action—Winston Churchill called him "the Salamander" due to his ability to pass through fire unharmed.
  During the Second World War, he commanded the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Battle of Crete, the North African Campaign and the Italian Campaign.
context_section_description: Freyberg, born in Richmond, Surrey to James Freyberg and his second wife, Julia (née Hamilton) was of partial Austrian-German descent. He moved to New Zealand with his parents at the age of two. He attended Wellington College from 1897 to 1904. A strong swimmer, he won the New Zealand 100-yards championship in 1906 and 1910.
  On 22 May 1911, Freyberg gained formal registration as a dentist. He worked as an assistant dentist in Morrinsville and later practised in Hamilton and in Levin. While in Morrinsville he was asked to take up a subalternship in the local Territorial Army unit, but he did not succeed in gaining the King's commission.
  Freyberg left New Zealand in March 1914. A 1942 Life magazine article claims that Freyberg went to San Francisco and Mexico around this time, and was a captain under Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution. Upon hearing of the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, he travelled to Britain via Los Angeles (where he won a swimming competition) and New York (where he won a prizefight), to earn money to cross the United States and the Atlantic.
caption: Bernard Freyberg c. 1904. at Te Aro Baths now the site of
   The Freyberg Pool
exif: {}