 Mobilisation for the NZEF had already begun, with preparations discreetly beginning a few days prior to the declaration of war.Mobilisation quickly followed and by late September, the NZEF consisted of two brigades – the New Zealand Infantry Brigade and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade.The day after the declaration of war, the British Government requested New Zealand seize the wireless station on the island of Upolu, part of Imperial Germany's protectorate of German Samoa, deeming it an "a great and urgent Imperial service."