‘I got chills’: Lieutenant discovers family links as she cleaned war graves
Megan Mashali thought she was the first in her family to have a military career. But she tells Caroline Williams that all changed after she helped clean the grave of three young men.
Navy lieutenant Megan Mashali thought she was the first of her family to have a military career. Only by accident did she discover she was wrong.
The 33-year-old, from Auckland’s Glenfield, joined the navy in 2009 as an able musician.
‘‘I didn’t really know anything much about the military,’’ she said.
But after helping clean the grave of three young men with the New Zealand Remembrance Army (NZRA), Mashali learnt that there was a family link.
‘‘I got chills,’’ said Mashali, who is now a supply officer in the navy’s logistics team, assisting with the Government’s response to Covid-19.
‘‘I didn’t think I had any military history.’’
The young men’s memorial at O’Neill’s Point Cemetery, in the Auckland suburb of Bayswater, was initially unreadable.
But after some cleaning and delicate re-painting, it was revealed the grave belonged to brothers James Derrick Reid, Sergeant Pilot Ian Laurie Reid, and Lieutenant Francis Graham Reid, who were aged 22, 23, and 24 respectively when they died between 1937 and 1944.
Mashali and NZRA Devonport co-ordinator Rebecca Nelson were inspired to do more research, during which Nelson found photos of Ian and Francis and information on how they died.
After sharing the information on Facebook, Mashali received a phone call from her 91-year-old grandfather, Ian McFarlane, who told her his grandmother’s sister was the Reid brothers’ mother.
‘‘He never met the boys, but he knew their mum and dad really well,’’ she said.
McFarlane recalled meeting Robert and Kathleen Reid following their sons’ deaths, however they never spoke of the boys, perhaps as they were too distraught.
‘‘It makes your heart break for them,’’ Mashali said.
James Derrick Reid was the oldest of the three brothers, but did not serve in the military. He was born in 1915 and died in 1937, two years before the outbreak of World War II. An obituary from the Waikato Times said he died of infantile paralysis (polio).
The newspaper also reported James was ‘‘one of Auckland’s best-known young rugby footballers as well as being a keen athlete and yachtsman’’.
He is the only one of the brothers buried in the grave at O’Neill’s Point Cemetery. The other two never came home from the war.
Ian Laurie Reid was born in 1917 and became a journalist at the Auckland Star in 1936, specialising in aviation and rugby news.
He enlisted with the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1939 and became a sergeant pilot in the No. 75 Bomber Squadron, clocking up around 434 flying hours and completing 27 sorties during World War II, according to wartime information website Aircrew Remembered.
At the time of his death in July 1941, Ian was captain of W5621, one of 90 aircraft sent to bomb the German city of Essen.
Ian’s aircraft was officially recorded as ‘‘missing without trace’’.
Francis Graham Reid, born 1920, enlisted with the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve. He served in the No. 887 Squadron Fleet Air Arm, which involved flying planes from ships, including HMS Landrail, now known as Royal Naval Air Station Machrihanish in Scotland.
He died aged 24 when the Seafire III plane he was in, LR846, crashed into the sea in Down, Northern Ireland, during a dogfighting exercise in March 1944.
While pleased to have discovered her connection with the Reid brothers, Mashali felt mixed emotions. ‘‘It’s nice to know you’re not the first one, or the only one [of the family to serve in the military], but it’s sad because you don’t get to meet them or learn about them.’’
Mashali also reflected on how serving in the military now had a very different meaning to what it meant to during the world wars. ‘‘We don’t have to go overseas to fight in a war, we actually get to fight for our own country.’’
This was especially true for the military’s Covid-19 response, Operation Protect, one of the Defence Force’s largest military operations since its deployment to Timor-Leste in 1999.
‘‘It’s a different battle.’’ Francis and Ian’s war hero status has now been recognised with hand-made ceramic poppies placed on their headstones.
Their grave is one of 35,000 that the Remembrance Army has tidied up, out of an estimated 350,000 in New Zealand.
Nelson has organised cleaning for about 114 graves at the O’Neill’s Point Cemetery so far, which involved spraying them and sometimes scrubbing them down with bleach.
A singer for the Royal New Zealand Navy Band, Nelson said she was inspired by how well the graves of New Zealand war personnel are maintained in Gallipoli, where she has performed three times. ‘‘They haven’t been forgotten.’’
‘‘It’s nice to know you’re not the first one, or the only one [of the family to serve in the military], but it’s sad because you don’t get to meet them or learn about them.’’ Megan Mashali