Armistice centenary events
One young man found Armistice Verdun too much to bear, shortening it to ‘‘Verdy’’, while Peace Towne recalled in 2008 how she was shy and embarrassed by the comments her name generated each year on her birthday.
‘‘It was something they didn’t necessarily want to draw attention to about themselves or cause a conversation that they weren’t comfortable with,’’ Bargas said.
‘‘A lot of children of this age would have gone through World War II, so it’s hard to say what exactly would have made them drop it. It may have been the attention, or they didn’t feel like using it after World War II.’’
But at least one wore her name with pride. Sylvia Peace Gilmour was born in New Plymouth on November 12, 1918, daughter of real estate agent and later city mayor Everard Gilmour.
Peace was adamant about being called by her Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy will lead the nation in remembrance from Wellington today as New Zealanders commemorate the end of World War I. Services in the capital started at 5.45am when the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was due to be dressed with his medals and the Remembrance Wreath, the only official wreath being laid during commemorations in the capital.
A 100-Gun Salute is to be fired at 10.50am by 16 Field Regiment, Royal Regiment of the New Zealand Artillery on the waterfront in front of Te Papa, before falling silent at 11am, as they did 100 years ago. Following two minutes’ silence there will be a 20-minute "roaring chorus’’ performance, He Wawa¯ Waraki, incorporating dance, poetry, waiata and music to evoke the emotion of the moment war gave way to peace. Performances will take place throughout the day and at 7.30pm members of the New Zealand Defence Force are to lead a sunset ceremony.
Other national events include services in Auckland from 10.40am, culminating in the sounding of The Last Post on the steps of the Auckland War Memorial Museum at 8.25pm, and a service at 11am in Christchurch.
middle name, enduring a longstanding frustration of having post addressed to ‘‘Sylvia’’.
Forced to occasionally adopt the role of mayoress alongside her father, after her own mother’s death when she was nine, Peace went on to have a fascinating life, representing Wellington at cricket and climbing Mt Taranaki nine times before moving to Waiheke Island, eventually dying in April this year, aged 99.
She even had a road named after her, Peace Avenue, in New Plymouth. ‘‘She was certainly proud of her name,’’ her son, Rob McCarthy, said.
‘‘She introduced herself as that name to people, always as Peace McCarthy [her married name]. Everyone knew her by that, it was just what she called herself. It was never a topic that was discussed at length, other than that her dad wanted her name to be a symbol of ongoing peace, and that didn’t happen.’’
While the idea of peace was starting to sink in at home, around 58,000 Kiwis were still serving overseas at the time of the Armistice. Among them was Captain Harry Dansey, an engineer in charge of bridge construction for the Army Corps in northern France.
A widower of almost 40 when war broke out, he already had a distinguished career in the railway industry behind him.
Believed to be New Zealand’s first qualified Maori engineer, he was running an Auckland consultancy firm and engaged to Winifred Barter when he signed up, as did his two brothers.
Sent to Egypt for officer training, he later joined the newly-formed Ma¯ ori Pioneer Battalion, supervising trench digging during the Battle of the Somme and repeatedly escaping death as shells fell around him.
‘‘During the Somme he wrote about the strain, particularly with junior subordinates dying,’’ explained his grandson Mark Dansey, who transcribed all of his 20 or so letters, now held at Auckland War Memorial Museum.
‘‘There was one letter to his father – he grew grey hairs and felt like he wanted to shout as loud as possible to relieve the tension.’’
In 1917 his engineering expertise was recognised and he was pressed into supervising railway and bridge construction, a role he held until the end of the war, earning a mention in despatches and being awarded the Military Cross.
When the Armistice came – four days after he turned 44 – he was still running bridging operations at Sebourg on the Belgian border, barely finding time for sleep.
He finally wrote to Winifred on November 15:
The end of the war has at last arrived my dearest heart and my thoughts are ever with you and our next meeting never to part again. I dare not tell you indeed it would be quite beyond my power to express the awful trial I have passed through the last few weeks.
If the war had lasted another week I would have been a physical and a mental wreck. The strain on my power of endurance was too great for me to escape the consequences that were perfectly plain to me & yet I was powerless to avert them … I feel as if I could sleep for a month without stirring. The end of the war was accepted on the battlefield like anything else and the only outward sign of the time was just an expression of satisfaction on the faces of the soldiers.
Dansey eventually returned home in 1919, marrying his sweetheart that October. They had three sons and a daughter, and when he died in 1942 at 67 he was mayor of Rotorua. Like so many other New Zealanders, Dansey’s Armistice Day was spent in the mud and blood-spattered fields of the Western Front. But, like Lowndes, his heart lay at home. He wrote to Winifred:
Oh my darling I wonder if you really know how much of the heaven I dream of is enveloped in you. I wonder if you know that in the midst of feelings of despair and disheartening, the girl I truly love dearer than life always stood out as a beacon light in my loneliness.