Auckland school mourns WWI fallen
Fierce battle just a week out from war’s end claimed the lives of 142 New Zealanders
When my son started at Auckland Grammar in 2012, my father was pleased. Dad had first walked through the arches of Mountain Rd in 1937, and the 89-year-old now had a shared experience with the 13-year-old.
There were stories to share, old classrooms to visit. Having rekindled the memories of his old school, my father was the returned serviceman old-boy wreath-bearer at that year’s Anzac Day service.
Seeing that service, I realised this school took “Lest We Forget” seriously, never forgetting the 662 old boys and masters who didn’t return from two world wars.
The elegant 1922 Gummer and Ford-designed memorial on the front lawn holds all their names; World War I men around the base and the World War II fallen on the flanking walls. The figure at the top of the graceful obelisk with his arms outstretched to the sky is appropriately a symbol for “the souls of all men”.
This month, 100 years after the end of World War I, the school will publish a book with the family and military details of every World War I death. It’s been a massive undertaking by two men passionate to see these men’s lives remembered as more than just a name on a memorial.
Peter Stanes is a keen genealogist and the school archivist. He’s also an old boy, as are his sons. Andrew Connolly is not an old boy, but his son Fergus is. He’s a surgeon by day and also an ardent military historian. As such, on walking past the memorial on many occasions with his father-in-law, former headmaster Sir John Graham (1973-93), he knew there was a story to be told. A book was born.
Two of the men on the memorial (and now in the book) died as a result of the battle of Le Quesnoy on November 4, 1918.
This northern French town holds special significance in the hearts of
New Zealanders with its victorious outcome. It was liberated from
German occupation with no loss of life to the local population in an almost medieval manner, by climbing a ladder over the ramparts.
A solely New Zealand action one week before the war would end, this hard-fought battle would claim the lives of 118 men that day and another 24 over the coming month from their injuries. Devonport man Robert Kennedy was one of those who died on the day. I found his grave at Ruesnes Cemetery about 10 minutes out of town.
As I read at his graveside the poem his parents placed in the Auckland
Star on the first anniversary of his death, I couldn’t help but feel the tragic loss of such a young life.
He’d been at the front for less than a month and died aged 21. Just a year older than my son. Knowing where he was positioned that day, some distance away, he was very unlucky.
Meanwhile, Arthur Daw from Herne Bay was with the 4th Battalion at the sharp end, in front of the walls, battling to get through to the inner ramparts. Having survived two-and-ahalf years on the Western Front, he knew the war was in its death throes. Victory was around the corner.
The horrors of the Somme that he had written to his old headmaster about, in 1917, were in the past: “We’ve got our gear on and moved up to our front line to await the coming of the dawn — and I think to most, it was the longest wait of our lives — it was in mine, wondering what the morrow would bring.”
Daw was shot on November 4 outside Le Quesnoy’s walls. Evacuated to a casualty clearing station, he fought his own battle to survive. He lost it two days later, dying on November 6, 1918, a day after he turned 25.
As I laid a poppy on his grave at Caudry Cemetery and reflected on how these two men were no longer just names to me, I thought how unlucky he was, too. Lucky to have survived that long and unlucky to die five days before the end of the war. On reflection, however, luck probably had nothing to do with it.
War is planned. It is horrible. And death is part of the plan. In World War I, more than 16 million were part of that plan.
Lest We Forget.