Cantabrian lost in battle of the Somme remembered
As Anzac Day approaches it is timely to remember the men and women who served in the First World War, especially those who died overseas or soon after as the result of their injuries.
Gilbert McHaffie was one of the tens of thousands who died in the war. He was the oldest son of Edith and Gilbert Hamilton McHaffie. Gilbert was raised in Christchurch and attended Christchurch Boys’ High. Gilbert senior was a merchant and hobby horse breeder, and on several local bodies. The family lived at Overton at New Brighton in Christchurch; the Overton house site is now a little park. After the death of Gilbert senior in 1905 the family moved to Timaru, then to Hamilton.
In 1914 Gilbert (junior) worked as a drover or farmer employed in Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay. He had been in the Waikato only a few weeks before enlisting; he gave his mother as his next-of-kin, her address Grey St, Claudelands.
McHaffie served with the Auckland Infantry Regiment, 1st Battalion. He embarked on 13 November 1915 and served for a while in Egypt before going to the front in France. He was killed in action on 25 September 1916 in the Battle of the Somme. McHaffie was among the 3796 unidentified burials in the Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, the great majority of whom died in the autumn of 1916, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. His name is listed at Caterpillar Valley (New Zealand) Memorial, France, and on the memorial wall in Memorial Park, Hamilton.
Of special significance to grieving families at home was the development of Soldiers’ Memorial Park in Hamilton. In 1919 Kōwhai Bank, an area on the east side of the Waikato River just downstream from the Traffic Bridge, was being referred to as Soldiers’ Memorial Park, but it was another couple of years before a plan was underway to plant a tree in honour of each soldier killed. Early in 1920 the Hamilton Beautifying Society started a fundraising campaign but adequate funds were not forthcoming.
McHaffie had a tree planted in his name, one of the 200 or so planted as living memorials, and as the Waikato Times newspaper put it on April 9, 1921, as “a perpetual reminder to generations still unborn that during the great world-shaking events of 1914-18 the young manhood of this part of His Majesty’s realm acquitted itself worthily”.
The trees were planted by 1922, and each bore a plaque with the name of the soldier who was commemorated. Hamilton Libraries has the Beautifying Society archives in its collection; these include plans and lists of the trees and soldiers.
A silver birch (Betula alba) was planted in McHaffie’s name, but unfortunately this species is not long-lived − his tree is no longer there, and may have succumbed to old age or been removed by gardens staff if there was a potential danger of it falling. Some trees were removed as they cast too much shade for picnicking, and unfortunately most of the memorial trees have now gone, as have the plaques. Members of the McHaffie family were greatly disappointed to find Gilbert’s plaque had disappeared, and had not been returned to the family. Families paid a portion of the cost for the plaques.
The name Hamilton occurs in several of the family’s names − this does not refer to Hamilton, Waikato, but is a longstanding tradition in the McHaffie family; they originated from Scotland so it may be a reference to the large town of Hamilton in South Lanarkshire.
Two of Gilbert’s sisters, Edith and Barbara, donated to the Hamilton District Patriotic Committee for soldiers’ Christmas gifts the year following his death, no doubt very conscious of the conditions that soldiers were enduring. They and their mother Edith are buried in Hamilton East Cemetery.