Bert Gill was living and working as a carpenter in Hamilton at the time of his call-up. He did not volunteer for military service but was conscripted by ballot in 1917, leaving New Zealand on 13 October 1917. Seriously wounded on the Somme, France, in August 1918, he was admitted to a military hospital in Rouen. Bert Gill died of wounds in France on 2nd October 1918, one month before the armistice ended the war. In his final letter home, dated 30 September 1918, he was still optimistic about returning to his family, including the daughter who was just 6 months old when he left New Zealand in October 1917. Bert Gill was buried at the Bois-Guillaume Communal Cemetery Extension, Seine-Maritime, France.