He served in Greece, Egypt before being promoted to lieutenant first class in February 1942 then seeing action in the Second Battle of El Alamein.

[1] Boord stood for election to the New Zealand House of Representatives for the Labour Party in Bay of Plenty in 1946, but was unsuccessful.

In February 1959 the first experimental television transmissions were initiated, but Boord ended them after just two weeks over concerns that they were generating too much interest form the public.

"[9] Boord later believed that Nash knew that he would have to reintroduce import licensing and wanted a minister who would not bend the rules.

[10] As a remedy for the balance of payments crisis the Labour government inherited, Boord introduced comprehensive import controls in 1958.

[11] The idea was conceived at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Policy on 20 December 1957, chaired by Arnold Nordmeyer, (also attended by Jerry Skinner, Phil Holloway, Henry Lang and Bill Sutch - but not Nash) that the import controls would be the most effective way of dealing with the problem.

Boord was also one of the first people to identify Norman Kirk (then only a first-term backbencher) as a potential future leader.

[15] Boord was elected as a member of both the Bay of Plenty Harbour Board and Rotorua Borough Council.