Kiwi couple honoured to join Somme ceremonies
Dennis and Margaret Dawson need only think of their two twenty-something sons to gain some perspective on how the Battle of the Somme affected this country.
‘‘If this was one hundred years ago my boys would be over there fighting now – in this day and age we just cannot understand industrial killing,’’ says Dennis.
The Wellington couple were among 40 Kiwis who won places in a ballot to take part in commemorations in France to mark the start of the Great War battle 100 years ago on July 1.
Another ceremony, on September 15, will mark the centenary of New Zealand’s involvement.
For more than 2000 Kiwis, it was a death sentence.
Dennis Dawson’s great-uncles, Thomas and Dick Hodgkinson, survived the bloody battle. Thomas lived into his 80s but Dick died aged 39 of tuberculosis. Many in the family blame his exposure to mustard gas.
Dennis, a military history buff, said he wanted to visit the scene of the battle to ‘‘stand in the spot and get the lay of the land and see what they walked into’’.
Margaret Dawson’s grandfather, Alfred Conway, fought at the Somme and was later awarded the Military Medal for devotion to duty at the Battle of Passchendaele.
Although he survived, he was gassed and returned home ‘‘clearly very traumatised’’.
To visit the sites where her grandfather fought so bravely was a ‘‘wonderful thing,’’ Margaret said.
‘‘To actually go somewhere where your own blood has fought and served so meritoriously is quite special. I feel moved.’’
More and more Kiwis are feeling a connection with the country’s military past following last year’s Gallipoli centenary, she said.
It’s a feeling keenly shared by Social Development Minister Anne Tolley, whose grandfathers both survived the Somme.
Her paternal grandfather ,Charles Hick, served in the British Army’s Middlesex Regiment, and she recalls her grandmother quipping that ‘‘he went away for a Territorial weekend and didn’t come back for five years’’.
Herbert Norris, her maternal grandfather, was wounded on Gallipoli.
They ‘‘patched him up and sent him back to the Somme as a cook,’’ Tolley said.
Hick died in 1972 and Norris in 1956. Neither man liked to talk about the war.
‘‘The Somme is a battle where so many lives were lost – people talk about it with the awe of the carnage and loss of life,’’ Tolley said.
‘‘I expect the commemorations will be extremely moving.’’
Tolley flew out on Friday as part of the New Zealand delegation attending the commemorations.