Victoria Cross (VC) recipient Sergeant Dick Travis, who died 100 years ago today, was the Otago Regiment's ''greatest individual soldier'' of World War 1, and a man of paradoxes.
Toitu Otago Settlers Museum curator and historian Sean Brosnahan said Sgt Travis was a kind of ''special forces operative before his time'', who also became ''an unrivalled scout, sniper and trench raider''.
He earned the nicknames ''Prince of Scouts'' and ''King of No Man's Land'', and became famous in the New Zealand Division and elsewhere on the Western Front.
''With a band of like-minded specialists, known as Travis' Gang, he roamed No Man's Land at will, plotting German positions, seizing prisoners and taking out trouble spots,'' Mr Brosnahan said.
The greatest paradox was that 100 years ago yesterday, Sgt Travis, a Gallipoli war veteran, achieved ''his most acclaimed exploits'', in fierce fighting.
But merely a day later, on July 25, 1918, when back in the relative safety of the Otago positions, the man who had ''dodged so many bullets, bombs and bayonets for four years'' was killed by a random shell.
He was buried at Couin the next day.
The museum has paid tribute to him with a display, including the New Zealand and French flags that draped the coffin at his funeral service, taken by Otago chaplain the Rev David Herron.
The 2nd Otago Battalion was holding the line in northern France, near heavily defended German positions in Rossignol Wood.
On July 24, 1918, the battalion was tasked with clearing German trench systems near the wood.
Sgt Travis knocked out two enemy machineguns that were holding up part of the attack, killing their crews.
He later moved into the trench system, seizing a 250m stretch of it using grenades.
His actions assured the success of the overall attack and were a ''stunning piece of individual brilliance and bravado'', Mr Brosnahan said.
Another paradox was that the Opotiki-born hero, who achieved high military honours, was ''a short, slim man who maintained a low-key presence''.
He had been working as a stockman in Southland when war broke out and he enlisted with the Otago Mounted Rifles.
He also had a troubled past, having changed his name from Dickson Cornelius Savage when he fell out with his family and moved south from the North Island.
As well as the VC, he also won the Distinguished Conduct Medal, Military Medal and the Belgian Croix de Guerre.
