The material in this article was published in the "The NEW ZEALAND GENEALOGIST" Vol 32 No 272, Nov/Dec 2001. It was also on my paradise.net homepages for many years, but those are no longer online. This blog post replaces those homepages.
Paying my last respects
The
journey to family War Graves in Northern France
I grew up in Waitara, in a house
that backed onto the War Memorial Hall with its adjoining cenotaph. As each
Anzac Day neared, white crosses and poppies would appear around the small
cenotaph. I grew familiar with the way the old soldiers marched wearing their
medals, and mesmerised, I watched the younger soldiers who stood in uniform at
each corner of the monument, immobile, their guns held firmly in front of them.
I grew up, watching these Anzac Day
commemorations, not knowing that on each side of my family, a young man had
gone to war in northern France and had not returned.
It was when I began to explore my
family history as an adult that I learned about my two great-uncles who had
died in World War 1. James RIORDAN, born in Charing Cross, the fourth son of
Patrick Riordan and Mary BURKE, lies buried near the town of Etaples on the
French coast. John Francis PAYN, born in Kumara, son of Francis Davis Payn and
Johanna SCETTRINI, rests now in a peaceful inland part of rural France near the
city of Cambrai.
Finding out about what had happened
to James Riordan posed an early puzzle for me in my genealogical research. I
found the will for Patrick Riordan, his father, quite quickly, and from that I
learned that there was a son called James who had inherited the family farm
near Charing Cross in 1911. However, further references to this James seemed
elusive.
It was a visit to National Archives
in Wellington that first gave me evidence that the James Riordan I sought may
have died in World War 1. On a list of World War 1 soldiers, I found James
Riordan, farmer, whose next of kin was described as “PJ Riordan (brother),
Springdon, Southland.” I knew that I had a great-uncle named Patrick Joseph
Riordan who farmed at Springston in Canterbury. Further research was clearly
warranted.
I also viewed the casualty form for
James Riordan while at National Archives. Private Riordan 23436, was part of E
Coy, the 13th reinforcement and he had embarked in Wellington on May
29 1916. He arrived in France in August and marched out to division on
September 8th. He was wounded in action two weeks later on 22
September 1916 and died of his wounds at 11am, 11 October 1916. The casualty
form gave a detailed listing of the position of his grave in the Etaples
Military Cemetery. I wrote down all the details, not thinking that one day I
would visit this grave.
I decided it was time to send to
the Registrar General’s Office for James’ death entry. Unfortunately, the
register entry did not name his parents, but it did list his place of birth as
Charing Cross, and this increased the likelihood that he was the James I was
seeking.
When I began researching my
mother’s side of the family, I was put in touch with Maurice Payn in Nelson,
who knew much of the oral family history. I quickly learned from him about John
Payn who had died in World War 1. Maurice sent me a copy of a card that the
family had received that carried a photograph of the grave. He also had a coloured
certificate that had been sent to the family to recognise the services of John
Payn, “Who gave his Life for his Country”.
A search at National Archives for a
casualty form for John Payn proved fruitless though, as his form was missing
when I looked, so I had no details about his place of burial. The death registration entry from the RGO
clearly listed his parent’s names, but listed his place of burial only as
“France.”
On a visit to the Alexander
Turnbull library newspaper section, I was able to find both men listed on the
rolls of honour in newspaper lists of the time. While on a South Island trip, I
visited Darfield, and saw the memorial that listed Riordan, J; in Kumara, I saw
the greenstone tablets that listed the name Payn J.
On a visit passing through Waiouru,
I called into the Army Museum to see the greenstone memorial wall. While there,
I began talking to one of the soldiers present. I was planning a trip to Europe
at that stage and I wanted to know more about the locations of the cemeteries
these two men were buried in. Although I knew which cemetery James Riordan was
buried in from his casualty form, John Payn’s exact burial place still eluded
me. The soldier told me that details about the graves could be found through
the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. (This conversation was prior to the
days of the website that now exists.) The soldier was kind enough to go in
search of the address for me, and on my return home, I wrote away to the
Commission.
Very quickly I received a most
helpful reply. I was sent information from the register for each cemetery, that
described its whereabouts, and also a brief outline of the history of the
nearby battles that had led to its creation. There was also specific
information for each named soldier that usually included the names of their
parents and their home addresses. Finally I had a written piece of information
that named the parents of James Riordan and left no doubt that he was my great
uncle. I also now had exact details about the burial place of John Payn.
Importantly, as I was later to discover, there were also two maps. One was the
map of the immediate locality of the cemetery that gave me clues as to the
nearest town. The other was a map of each cemetery, with the sections and plots
numbered clearly. This map was to prove vital when I reached the Etaples
cemetery where James Riordan was buried. The cemetery held more than 11000
graves, and finding a specific grave without such a map would have been an
impossible task.
In 1998 I set off on my long trip
overseas, and one of my goals while in Europe was to visit the graves of both
James Riordan and John Payn.
On
13 May 1998, some eighty years after his death, I was able to visit the grave
of John Payn.
From the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, I
had obtained information that John was buried in Flesquières Hill British
Cemetery, and that this was near the town of Cambrai in northern France. As I headed towards Cambrai, through
beautiful rural countryside dotted with small villages, it was hard to
comprehend that this peaceful looking area had once been the scene of such
wartime devastation.
In Cambrai, I sought information at the Tourist
Office about public transport to the village of Flesquières. After several
phone calls they identified what seemed to be a suitable bus route for me, but
I was later to discover that the closest this bus would take me to Flesquières
was a bus-stop some distance away. Once at this bus-stop, I sought directions
at a village café opposite and began walking. I hadn't walked far, however,
when a man I'd seen in the café pulled over in his car to offer me a lift. It
turned out that this man had been born in the village of Flesquières. I suspect
that he had no need to travel to the village himself, and that he drove me
there purely as an act of kindness, and perhaps also as an act of French
gratitude for the foreigners who had died there.
I was dropped off right in front of the cemetery
itself. A wall rose up from the roadside with a tall cross above it. A large
plaque announced, in English and in French: "The land on which this
cemetery stands is the free gift of the French people for the perpetual resting
place of those of the Allied armies who fell in the War of 1914-1918 and are
honoured here."
I climbed the steps to find the grave of John
Payn. It was easy to find with the information I had been given by the War
Graves Commission. It lay near the tall cross, and a miniature rose grew in the
carefully tended garden in front of his headstone. The headstone read simply:
“52645 Private J.F. Payn, NZ Wellington Regt, 3rd October 1918 age
23. I stood quietly in front of his grave for some time, bringing a farewell
from New Zealand to his resting place on French soil. Whatever horrors he faced
in his last days, he rests now in the peace and beauty of the French
countryside.
There was a shelter holding the register of names
of those buried there, and it included a book for recording visits where I
recorded that I had visited the grave of John Payn.
Near John’s grave lay those of many other New
Zealand soldiers killed around the same time, near the end of the War, when
their mothers must have begun to expect that they would be returning home. From
this cemetery, another war cemetery is visible, just a few kilometres away.
Two days later, on 15 May 1998, I visited the
grave of James Riordan.
Transport to the cemetery at Etaples proved to be
more straightforward, as train connections took me to the town of Etaples, and
I just needed to walk a few kilometres north to the cemetery itself, which lay
on a main road.
From the roadside, a short path led to a large
cross. I found I was not at all prepared for the sheer size of the cemetery
that soon lay spread out below me. The huge Etaples cemetery is impressively
landscaped, and was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens: all the graves spread out
below three terraces with a huge cross standing above them.
I used my cemetery map to find the area in which
the grave of James Riordan lay. James’ headstone had the simple inscription:
“23436 Rifleman J Riordan, NZ Rifle Brigade, 11th October 1916.”
Again, I was glad I had come to pay my respects at the grave of my great-uncle.
I stood at his graveside and reflected. James Riordan died in 1916, and in
1917, my father was born and was named James, surely in his memory.
I spoke with an Englishman there who was in
charge of maintenance of the lawns and gardens. He explained to me how there
had been huge field hospitals near this site, and that most soldiers buried in
it had "died of wounds”.
I returned to New Zealand, glad in the knowledge
that I had found the resting places of these two young men of my family. Each
Anzac Day since, as a primary teacher, I have told children of this generation
about the young men we remember who never came home.
Margaret Riordan
aka KiwiNomad06
(I have other photos of both cemeteries that I will try and scan to post here before too long.)
