"You shall not win without remembering them
Without a dark remembrance of their loss
For they lost all, and none remembered them "

Today is Armistice Day: the 11th of the 11th of the 11th, (of the 11th.)   On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the guns of the Western Front fell silent. An eerie quiet settled over the moonscape of the Front. The Great War, the 'war to end all wars' was over and perhaps 11 million men lay dead. Today, 2011, is significant for those number lovers as the last two year digits will not reappear for another thousand years.

A few years ago, after an Anzac ceremony in the old Gym, on the spur of the moment I sat down and wrote a short piece about a visit I did to the great battlefields and war cemeteries of the Western Front. This is in the attachment.

Earlier this year David Macleod asked me to research the Mahurangi College Roll of Honour  (those who had been educated in the district,)  - what happened to them, what decorations might they have got, in short anything that could give more than just a name on a Roll.  18 Warkworth region educated men were killed in the Great War; all were either infantry or in the mounted rifles (which in effect meant they became infantrymen.) Most joined the Auckland Regiment, a few to the Otago and Canterbury Regiments (by the later stages of the war, reinforcements were placed wherever the greatest need was.)  Two were officers, the rest private soldiers. None received decorations for bravery.  Awards and citations: the fallen in the Great War would have been eligible for service medals (ie if they took part in the Gallipoli or western front campaigns) but only a very few received them. This is because the individual soldier in the First World War had to formally apply for them by writing to his Commanding Officer. Most did not bother (too modest?) If they were killed then the immediate family had to apply but there was a time limit to this and again most did not bother. Very few World War One soldiers received service medals unlike the military personnel of the Second World War.

The Warkworth casualties: two were killed at Gallipoli, the other 16 on the Western Front at the Somme, Messines Ridge and Ypres. Four were killed on the same day - 12 October 1917, in the third battle of Ypres or what we better know as Passchendaele. In some ways this should be our Remembrance Day rather than Anzac Day, 25 April.  2721 NZ soldiers were killed at Gallipoli in the eight month campaign: in just a few hours on 4 and 12 October assaulting the village of Passchendaele (which had disappeared in the artillery barrages), 1295 NZ soldiers were killed. Four were Warkworth boys. Another four were also to fall in this three month slaughter; half the Warkworth total. Two brothers - James and Thomas Llewell died on the Western Front, James at the Somme in  August 1916, and Thomas followed his brother a year later on 12 October. At the 1917 third battle of Ypres, the 'butcher's bill' totalled 310,000 British and Empire troops killed or wounded for an advance of just eight kilometres. 4000 NZ soldiers were casualties on these two days of 4 and 12 October, more were to become casualties until General Haig, the Supreme Commander, halted the senseless Ypres offensive on 10 November. One year later the war would be over.

As I mentioned in 'Flanders Fields' all these deaths were to no avail for a few months later, in the last gasp German offensive of 1918 before the Americans numbers were to be decisive, the British and Dominion advances were all pushed back to the outskirts of the town of Ypres. Unlike so many, all but one of the Warkworth fallen remains were able to be identified and so they lie in 12 Tree Copse, Hill 60, (Gallipoli); Caterpillar Valley, Messines Ridge, Bethleem Farm, Dochy Farm, Etaples, and the massive Tyne Cot cemetery.  12,000 Empire named soldiers and 8,400 unnamed soldiers lie at Tyne Cot. Another 35,000 names ("the missing") are commemorated on the vast memorial wall. Tyne Cot is the largest war cemetery outside of New Zealand. Here lie 520 NZ soldiers, 322 have Kipling's headstones "known unto God."  

On the base of the NZ Memorial just outside the town of Ypres is the fern leaf and "New Zealand" and the words 'from the uttermost ends of the earth.'

After the war, the British government commemorated the Fallen by two minutes silence throughout the Empire at the 11th hour of November. This custom faded in the 1940's but is making a comeback in recent times. 

Lest we forget