Celebrating our fallen family
A history buff will follow the footsteps of his three great uncles to the Western Front, 100 years on from a fierce and bloody battle they fought in.
Manawatu’s Gavin Scott will lay poppies on the graves of two family soldiers who did not return from World War I, as well as a letter from a fellow soldier that recounts the moment one of his uncles was shot.
The letter describes the ‘‘ instantaneous’’ death, one of more than 500,000 in the Battle of Passchendaele, which raged between July and November 1917 in Belgium.
Soldiers were bogged down by thick mud as they battled uphill to take the Passchendaele ridge from the Germans.
By November 10, Commonwealth troops eventually claimed a victory, although Scott questioned whether the significant losses for only eight kilometres of land were justified.
At the forefront of the battlefield were three brothers – Charles Augustus Selwyn Scott, Victor Robert Stanley Scott and Robert Henry Victor Scott.
Although Charles survived the war, Victor and Robert never made it back.
A faded pocket watch and a letter written by hand in the muddy trenches of the Western Front are all that remain.
The cherished items mark two young lives cut short by World War 1.
Gavin Scott, a self proclaimed ‘‘history nutter’’ from Halcombe, discovered the photocopied letter from a British soldier among an old box of transcripts hidden in his ‘‘man cave’’.
It was penned by Private PJ Cameron, who mentioned he was in the same section as Robert Scott. The two became close friends.
The letter was dated March 22, 1917, and addressed to Robert’s partner, informing her of his death.
‘‘I was within two yards of him when he fell,’’ the letter reads. ‘‘Either a machine gun or a sniper’s bullet must have got him through the heart as death was absolutely instantaneous.
‘‘He just fell over on his face and never moved afterwards.’’
Cameron said 15 minutes later he too was wounded and crawled over to where his mate lay. He was lying just as he had fallen,