Sapper Edgar Boucher - Remuera Memorial

 New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16848, 13 May 1918

Sapper Edgar Boucher born in Tauranga was the eldest son of Ernest and Anna Boucher and was educated at Kings College, he was also a member of the College Rifles.  At the outbreak of war in August 1914 he was employed as an assistant surveyor by Thomas McFarlane in Victoria Arcade, Auckland. He quickly volunteered his services leaving with the Samoan Advance Party on 15 August 1914 attached to the Signal Company.  Some months after arriving in Samoa he secured a position with the Goverment Survey Department as an assistant surveyor in January 1915.  Later when the call went up for volunteers for Gallipoli he returned to New Zealand and re-enlisted in October 1915 embarking with the 9th Reinforcements, New Zealand Engineers on 8 January 1916.

After Gallipoli in France, Edgar was wounded in the left leg on 25 July 1916 returning to his unit on 29 September 1916 once recovered.

On 12 October 1917 Edgar was laying cable under heavy shellfire at Passchendaele.  Like many other New Zealand men at the end of the battle he was missing.  A court of enquiry was held to determine his status in May 1918 which concluded he was killed in action.  One of the soldiers to give evidence at his enquiry was Sapper Norman H. McKenzie below is part of his statement taken from Boucher's military record:

"The last time I saw Sapper Boucher was when he was taking shelter from the shelling near Fleet cottage...I saw him crawl out of sight and if he remained he was certainly killed as the shelling was intense"

http://muse.aucklandmuseum.com/databases/Cenotaph/38834.detail?Ordinal=2&c_surname_search=boucher&c_warconflict_search=%22world+war+i,+1914-1918%22

Edgar was 24 years old and is remember on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium with the many other New Zealander's who went missing on that fateful day.  

Lieutenant William Archibald Buchanan - Remuera memorial, Auckland

 

http://muse.aucklandmuseum.com/databases/Cenotaph/33956.detail?Ordinal=2&c_surname_search=buchanan&c_firstname_search=w+a 

William Buchanan was the only son of Archibald and Edith Buchanan of 27 Victoria Avenue, Remuera.  He was educated briefly at Clifton College, Bristol and then at Kings College, Auckland.  After school he headed to Sandhurst intent on a career in the Indian Army.  While there war broke out and William enlisted with the Connaught Rangers keen to do his bit and embarked for the war in France where he was badly wounded on 25 April 1915. He was then declared medically unfit for service however after recovering he was accepted into the Royal Flying Corps and obtained his pilot's licence on a Maurice Farman Biplane on 14 April 1916 he was only 21 years old. 

A few weeks before his 22nd birthday he was killed on active service as a result of a flying accident,  He is buried in Tidworth Military Cemetery, Wiltshire. 

The Coates Brothers - Remuera, Auckland Memorial

Randolph E. O. C. Coates and Eric A. Coates were the only two sons of Oswald and Valerie Coates who also had three daughters.  Both brothers had been born in Australia and had come to New Zealand at an early age in 1896 both boys were educated at Wanganui College.  On the 16 October 1914 they simultaneously embarked from New Zealand with the Main Body, Eric from Wellington and Randolph from Auckland.   I imagine this would have been a proud yet sad day for their family.

Both served at Gallipoli where Randolph was sent back to Egypt when he contracted influenza whilst embarking for Egypt he was injured by shrapnel.  Later his name appeared in dispatches mentioning his 'devotion to duty'.  He was also offered a commission in an English Regiment but turned it down preferring to stay with his fellow New Zealanders and shortly after he was offered a commission with the NZ Infantry.  He also passed the examinations for the Royal Flying Corp but was refused the transfer.  He ended up on the Western Front where he died of wounds received on the first day of the Flanders Campaign at the Battle of Messines on the 7th June 1917.j

Eric never left the Middle East serving at Gallipoli, Sinai and then Palestine.  Despite surviving Eric died in New Zealand from Pneumonia on the 14 November 1918 only 3 days after the Armistice he was buried at Purewa Cemetery in Auckland and on his headstone his brother Randolph is remembered with him.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14639, 18 February 1918, Page 4 paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

For Oswald and Valerie Coates it would have been small comfort to visit Purewa Cemetery in Auckland a place they could visit and remember their sons.  So many New Zealand families were never able to visited their sons final resting place far away on the other side of the world.   Memorials erected after the war became surrogate graves taking the place of an individual headstone.  The memorial was a place for those left behind to remember a loved one lost.