Weymouth: ANZAC memorial

Today is Anzac Day in New Zealand, the day New Zealanders and Australians remember, acknowledge and honour all those who have served and died in wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations around the world, the Antipodean equivalent of Britain's Remembrance Sunday and the USA's Veterans Day.

I was a little surprised when I noticed this memorial to the ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) forces on the front in Weymouth but I should have realised that troops from all participating nations would have passed through many of the seaside towns and ports along the south coast of England, and so it was in Weymouth. As the inscriptions on the pillar explain:

'A. I. F. [Australian Imperial Force]
In memory of the ANZAC volunteer troops who after action at Gallipoli in 1915 passed through hospitals and training camps in Dorset'

And

'N. Z. E. F. [New Zealand Expeditionary Force]
These ANZAC troops later moved from Dorset to action in Palestine and the Western Front'

And, not shown here, the road side of the pillar reads:

'ANZAC memorial
We will remember them'

Plus, on a lower step of the platform

'They came from afar
in the cause of freedom'

Sponsored by members of the Weymouth and Portland Residents' Association, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, individuals and local businesses, the memorial was dedicated on 1 June 2005 and commemorates the involvement of ANZAC soldiers in World War One and the presence of those troops in camps in the local area during that time. 

The Virtual War Memorial Australia website provides additional information:

Weymouth was the depot for the Anzacs Gallipoli casualties sent to UK hospitals for
treatment and then discharged as convalescent. The depot opened in May 1915 and was the joint Australian and New Zealand depot until the NZ depot opened at Hornchurch in Essex in April 1916. Weymouth then became AIF Command Depot No.2 which accommodated those men not expected to be fit for duty within six months, therefore, most of the Diggers repatriated as a result of wounds or sickness passed through Weymouth. During the years 1915-1919 over 120,000 Australian and New Zealand troops passed through Weymouth.
The Hotel Prince Regent opposite the ANZAC Memorial was previously known as Hotel Burdon and was one of nine military hospitals in Weymouth during World war One.

 

Anzac Day 2014

For those who live outside New Zealand and Australia, 25 April is Anzac Day, the day we remember and honour all those who have served in our armed forces, in particular those brave men and women who lost their lives in the service of their country. 

I have memories of cold, often rainy days from my childhood and teenage years, when I joined my parents to watch the Dawn Service, and, when I was a Girl Guide, we joined the march with soldiers, old and young, to the local cenotaph to join in the commemorations. At both primary and high schools, we always had a memorial service and I remember, as head prefect, having to recite to a full assembly those poignant words from the Ode of Remembrance:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

In 2008, I was privileged to attend the Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli, in Turkey – you can read more about that in an earlier blog. 

This year, for the first time, I attended the Anzac Day service at Auckland War Memorial Museum in Auckland Domain. As expected, it was a very moving event but what struck me in particular was the setting, in front of what must surely be New Zealand's biggest war memorial.

This War Memorial Museum, opened in November 1929, is a living, functioning memorial to all the men and women from the greater Auckland region who have lost their lives in a military conflict. According to an article in the New Zealand Herald of 11 October 1920, the building’s purpose was to ‘preserve relics of the conflict … establish a permanent record of effort and achievement by the Dominion’s youth … treasure the memories of fallen soldiers, and … preserve for future generations the inspiration of the war’s heroism and self-sacrifice.’

The design of the Museum Cenotaph is a direct replica of the Cenotaph in Whitehall, in London.

A local firm of architects, Grierson, Aimer and Draffin, designed the Museum with a façade of Doric columns that resemble the Parthenon in Athens, and a small hillock was removed from in front of the building, so the Museum could be seen from the sea, just like the temples the returning servicemen had seen on the shores of the Mediterranean countries where they had been fighting.

Stained glass ceiling above main foyer, depicting the Coat of Arms of all British Dominions & Colonies during the First World War (Gibraltar, Kenya, South Africa, New Foundland, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, India, Ceylon, Malaya and the Straits Settlements, the Channel Islands, Fiji, Jamaica and Malta).

The First World War Sanctuary

The First World War Sanctuary and the Roll of Honour which lists the full name and service details of each serviceperson from the Auckland province who died as a result of that war. The pages are still turned daily.

In the early 1960s, the Museum was expanded, both to increase the Museum’s display, storage and work space and also to expand the war memorial to include those killed in the Second World War. In 1991, the Second World War Hall of memory was expanded once more, this time to include the Roll of Honour for servicemen and women killed in the Korea, Malaya-Borneo and Vietnam conflicts.

Stained glass windows at either end of the World War Two Hall of Memory commemorating the Battles of Britain and the River Plate, and honouring the airforce and navy respectively.

World War Two Hall of Memory

Second World War shrine in the Hall of Memory. The globe represents the worldwide theatre of the war. The  stained glass windows depict the insignia of various units, including the WAAFs, WAACs, and WRNZNs.

The second floor of the Museum is devoted to memorials of war. The Rolls of Honour for the First and Second World Wars are engraved in white Sicilian marble set into the walls, as well as being contained in handwritten leather-bound volumes. 

The ‘Scars on the Heart’ exhibition covers the New Zealand civil wars and the 19th-century Anglo-Boer War, as well as the First and Second World Wars, the conflicts in Asia and the New Zealand military’s involvement in more recent United Nations peacekeeping missions. There is also a military information centre, The Armoury, with copious resources for researchers of military history and for families wanting to trace their own ancestors’ military service.

One of the displays

The exterior of the building is also an integral part of the war memorial, conveying information about the battles in which New Zealanders fought and honouring those brave men and women who served their country in those bloody and difficult times.

Around the exterior of the building is a frieze. The First World War frieze depicts 44 battle scenes; the Second World War frieze depicts members of the armed services, including nurses.

Engraved above each window is the name of a battle or campaign in which New Zealanders fought.

Unlike modern wars, one third of the 18,166 New Zealanders who died in World War One have no known grave. The Auckland War Memorial Museum serves as a place where a grateful society can honour their sacrifice, and their friends and family can remember them. Lest we forget.

The water feature in front of the Cenotaph is engraved with the Ode of Remembrance.

My Anzac Day at Gallipoli

Sitting on the damp grass above the sands of the beach at Suvla Bay, I experienced the coldest night of my life! But that discomfort was nothing compared to the suffering of the Kiwi and Australian soldiers who stormed that beach on 25 April 1915.

Anzac Cove, in 1915 and in 2008



Ataturk's famous words on a memorial at Gallipoli and the beautifully maintained graves of the fallen soldiers

My journey to Gallipoli had begun two days earlier, on 23 April 2008, sitting on a bus full of Kiwis and Australians en route from Istanbul to Çanakkale, the main town across the Dardanelles from the Gallipoli peninsula. We reached the entrance to the Gallipoli Peninsula Historical National Park around 2pm and began our five-hour tour of the battlefields. It was both humbling and enlightening, thanks in large part to our tour guide, Murat. We started at Kabatepe, where we ate a packed lunch while listening to his introductory talk, then we moved round the various sites: Kemalyeri Memorial, Chunuk Bair (the New Zealand memorial), The Nek, Quinn’s Post, Johnston’s Jolly, Lone Pine, Shrapnel Valley, Anzac Cove, Ari Burnu.



Lone Pine Memorial

My travelling companion Geoff and I both had great-granduncles who died at Gallipoli and both are commemorated on the memorial at Lone Pine. Geoff’s relation Horace Polglase died on 25 April 1915, while mine, Trooper D.A. Rae of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles, died in August 1915. I was surprised at how emotional I became when I read the inscription and as I walked round the graves at that and the other cemeteries. So many young lives wasted!

As we strolled along the sea shore at Anzac Cove, Geoff started talking to a television crew from the TVNZ Breakfast programme and within minutes their reporter, Mark Crysell, had invited us to participate in a live interview for their Anzac morning show. He wanted to involve those who had personal family connections with fallen Anzac soldiers. We arranged to meet the next evening, then our tour group reassembled and drove on to Eceabat, where we caught the ferry across to our hotels in Çanakkale.

Next day, after donning our thermals and layers of warm clothing, Geoff and I caught the 6 o’clock ferry across to Eceabat, enjoyed a delicious dinner at a local restaurant, then travelled up to Chunuk Bair in the TVNZ van. We sat chatting to TV presenter Judy Bailey, the Maori television reporter and the TVNZ crew while we waited for a group of five young Kiwis to arrive; they were also to be interviewed about their reasons for being at Gallipoli.

We had to wait until 10pm to go live to New Zealand and, by then, it was freezing on the ridge beneath the Chunuk Bair Memorial. I wore my beanie and scarf, and had the collar of my jacket turned up against the wind, so was barely recognisable to family and friends watching back in New Zealand. It was certainly a novel experience and an entirely unexpected one!

The TVNZ crew dropped us back down the hill at Anzac Cove, where we waited an hour for the rest of our tour group to join us. Once they arrived, we walked along to the commemorative site, to join the 9,500 other people who would overnight there. Most were better prepared than us, with thick sleeping bags and ski jackets, and slept through the night. I found it too cold to sleep, so watched the various films and documentaries on the big screen and waited for the dawn.

As the first blush of light coloured the waters of the bay at around 4.30am, the official commemoration began: prayers and hymns, addresses by various foreign and Turkish dignitaries, and military ceremonies. It was a sobering and moving experience, and I wasn’t the only person to shed a few tears when the bugler played the Last Post.

The dawn service and, later that day, me with two fellow Kiwis

Geoff and I and a couple of other Kiwis in our party decided we would also attend the New Zealand memorial service later that morning, so we trudged wearily up the steep hill track to Chunuk Bair. A chill wind still blew through the pine trees surrounding the memorial, adding to the bleak atmosphere. I found the New Zealand service even more emotional than the dawn service, not so much because I was thinking of the unfortunate soldiers and their hardships in 1915, but more from thoughts of my mother, who had passed away just nineteen days earlier.

Anzac Day 2008 was a sombre, physically and emotionally exhausting experience, a day that I will never forget.

Lest we forget

Today is Anzac Day in New Zealand and Australia, the day we remember all those who have fallen in times of war. Over the years, many men in my family have served in the armed forces, including my dad – though, luckily, he didn’t actually fight any enemies: he was on final leave, due to go to the Middle East, when the Second World War ended.

Others were not so fortunate. Some of my ancestors served in the First and Second World Wars and, sadly, several lost their lives. Here, I’d like to pay tribute to their courage and their bravery.

Christmas 1942. From left, back row: John,
Bob and Bill. Front: Ted and Doug.

My great-granduncle Thomas Rae and his wife, Ellen Jane Gray, had nine sons. Their older boys were all called up for the army at the beginning of World War Two and, at the time, the family created a record in the province of Canterbury by having seven Rae Brothers in uniform.

Five of the boys served overseas. Bill, Bob and Ted served in the Pacific Islands. Another brother, Doug, was stationed in Italy and later served with the occupation force in Japan. John served in the army in Egypt and, later, in Italy, where an accident while he was driving an army vehicle caused the fingers of his left hand to be severed. Apart from that injury, the Rae brothers came home from the war physically unscathed.

William John Rae

Thomas Rae’s brother, William John Rae (known as John) was working as a shepherd when he joined the army during World War One. John served in Europe with the 1st Battalion, Canterbury Regiment, of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. In the first few months of 1917 he was with the allied forces in Belgium, battling to hold the front line against the Germans in the Douve Sector near the remnants of the village of Messines. The Allies planned an offensive against the enemy troops that held Messines and the New Zealand Division's task was to capture the village. A great deal of preparatory work was required prior to any offensive; communication and assembly trenches were needed to protect the troops in the hours leading up to the assault, and underground rooms were constructed to serve as brigade and battalion headquarters. During March and April 1917 John and his fellow Anzacs spent their days and nights on these earthworks, as well as digging the new trench in No Man's Land that would provide the jumping-off point for their attack.

Unfortunately, John did not survive to celebrate the Allied victory in the Battle of Messines on 7 June 1917. He was killed a month earlier, on 7 May 1917, and is buried in the St Quentin Cabaret Military Cemetery at Heuvelland, West Vlaanderen, Belgium, one of the 460 Commonwealth soldiers buried in that particular war cemetery.

.

Donald Alfred Rae

John and Tom’s brother, Donald Alfred (Don) Rae, was also working as a shepherd on Mesopotamia Station, in South Canterbury, when he and his brother John joined up. Don was a trooper in the 3rd Regiment of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles and was one of the New Zealand contingent who fought in the Gallipoli campaign. 

Don was one of the 285 soldiers who died during the Hill 60 Campaign which lasted from 21 to 29 August 1915. These details of that campaign are from the Stuff news website:

On August 21, men from the Otago and Canterbury Mounted Rifles joined an allied attack at Hill 60. Hill 60 was not a major landmark but it had two important wells near its base. The attack was supposed to support an assault by the British at Suvla Bay.

The attack was not well-supported by artillery and was largely driven back by the Ottomans. The New Zealanders managed to capture a small section of the Ottoman trenches, however. There were 55 New Zealand lives lost on the first day of the campaign, August 21.

A renewed attempt at taking Hill 60 was planned for August 25 but delayed until the 27th. In two days of intense fighting, a further 167 New Zealand lives were lost for no gain. Across the 27th and 28th, the Wellington Mounted Rifles lost 59 men, Canterbury Mounted Rifles 48 and the Auckland Mounted Rifles 29.

According to the Auckland Weekly News, Don Rae was wounded in the shoulder and lung. He died of his wounds on 28 August 1915 on board the hospital ship HMS Maheno, then anchored off Gallipoli. In her book While You‘re Away, author Anna Rogers quotes from the diary of nurse Lottie le Gallais, whose words provide a graphic picture of the horrific scene aboard the Maheno on the very day Don died.

On the 28th, with 445 patients on board, and the staff working non-stop in hot, cramped conditions, 'applying pressure dressings to bleeding wounds, changing the dressings of infected wounds and washing men with the limited amounts of sea water available', the Maheno left soon after noon for Mudros Harbour on the island of Lemnos, where the wounded were loaded onto a captured German transport to be taken to Alexandria. There had already been deaths on the Maheno and more died during the short voyage, as Lottie le Gallais recorded: 'Terrible, terrible wounds. The bullets aren't so bad but the shrapnel from exploding shells is ghastly. It cuts great gashes, ripping muscles and bones to shreds. Thirty-nine men have died on board so far and every one suffered great pain and discomfort.’

Donald Alfred Rae was buried at sea and his death is commemorated on panel 72 of the Lone Pine Memorial at Gallipoli.

Leonard Rae Johnstone, with his
father Phil

My granduncle, Leonard Rae Johnstone, was a nephew of Tom, John and Don Rae. After working as a shepherd on both the Ben McLeod and Rata Peaks Stations, Len served with the New Zealand Army in Egypt during World War Two. At the battle of El Alamein he suffered severe injuries and returned home completely disabled. In September 1942, while recuperating at home at Peel Forest, Len met Betty Blogg and they were married in February 1945. Len recovered sufficiently to become manager at Rata Peaks and later worked at Mesopotamia and on a property near Cave. Eventually the strenuous hill-mustering threatened Len's fragile health so he and Betty moved to Geraldine, where Len drove a truck for Geraldine County Council, then spent thirteen years as a driver with the St John Ambulance service. Len and Betty had celebrated over 50 years of married life when Len died on 1 June 1996, at the age of 81, at Geraldine.

John Henry James Rae (known as Jack) was another nephew of Tom, John and Don Rae. He also joined the army in World War Two, serving his tour of duty with 37 Battalion in the Pacific Islands. His battalion formed part of 3 Division, which sailed to New Caledonia in late 1942. There, during nine months of garrison duty, 3 Division established a base and fitted itself out for its forthcoming campaign to assist the United States in driving the Japanese out of the Solomon Islands. Fourteenth Brigade (which included Jack and his 37 Battalion comrades) departed New Caledonia on 17 August 1943, arriving on Guadalcanal ten days later. Over the coming months, they took part in three landing operations, working in the arduous conditions of dense jungle, mangrove swamps and tropical downpours, and under the constant threat of enemy contact. By late 1944 the troops had successfully completed their mission, Japanese resistance was considered at an end, and Jack and those of his comrades who had survived were withdrawn.

All these men fought to protect their countries and loved ones from the threat of war and invasion. Regardless of whether or not we agree with the fighting itself, we can still admire and honour their reasons for fighting.