Pt Chevalier Memorial RSA

🇳🇿 WHAT ARE WE DOING AT KELVIN GROVE THIS SATURDAY?

For the past two months, our New Zealand Remembrance Army research teams have been quietly working their way through the records of Kelvin Grove Cemetery.

There are close to 30,000 cemetery records — and our researchers have been going through them to identify servicemen and women buried throughout the cemetery, particularly those outside the designated service sections.

The results have been extraordinary.

Before we started, around 300 veterans were tagged with service details in the cemetery records.

That number is now approaching 1,200.

This weekend, the research turns into action.

Our teams will be at Kelvin Grove tidying and restoring more than 300 veterans’ graves, some of which are in very poor condition, and placing poppies to recognise their service.

We are providing around $1,500 worth of poppies at our own cost as part of the project.

Some of these families know us. Many won't.

But their relatives served New Zealand, and we believe that service deserves to be remembered.

🕛 Our team will be at Kelvin Grove from 11pm–2pm this Saturday.

If you're in Palmerston North, feel free to come down, find the team in their NZ Remembrance Army gear, have a yarn and see what we're doing.

And if you have a relative buried at Kelvin Grove who served, but isn't currently identified as a veteran in the cemetery records, drop us a line (please include their details).

We're happy to check their service and talk with you about placing a ceramic poppy on their grave as a permanent reminder of their service to New Zealand.

Some of the people working this weekend are returned servicemen themselves. Others are senior members of the Remembrance Army.

All are part of the wider service family.

We look after our own. And we look after their graves.

“Lest We Forget” isn't something we say on ANZAC Day and then repeat 365 days later.

Remembrance is something we do every day.

There is an old saying that we die twice: once when we physically die, and again when our name is spoken for the last time.

This weekend, the names, service and sacrifice of more than 300 New Zealand veterans will be remembered again.

And that is exactly why the Remembrance Army exists.

🇳🇿 LEST WE FORGET.

Our commitment to East Timor

🇳🇿 TODAY WE REMEMBER — THE 28th (MĀORI) BATTALION IN ENGLAND, 1940

What an extraordinary photograph.

It is indeed men of the 28th (Māori) Battalion marching past British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in England in 1940.

Standing alongside Churchill is the Battalion’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel George Dittmer. The men pictured are identified as D Company, with official records specifically identifying 16 Platoon in this scene.

They weren't originally supposed to be in Britain.

The Māori Battalion had sailed from New Zealand in May 1940 with the Second Echelon of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, bound for the Middle East.

But while they were at sea, France fell and Britain suddenly faced the very real possibility of German invasion.

Their convoy was diverted.
The Battalion arrived at Gourock, Scotland, on 16 June 1940, before moving south to help defend England during one of the most dangerous periods of the war.

And somewhere during those remarkable months, this photograph was taken.
Churchill stands quietly at the roadside as the Māori soldiers march past him — ri**es shouldered, bayonets fixed and D Company stretching back along the road.

Beside him stands Dittmer.

Even the dog wandering down the centre of the road somehow makes this remarkable photograph feel very human.

The Battalion would spend around six months in Britain before finally departing for the Middle East, reaching Egypt in March 1941. Ahead of them lay Greece, Crete, North Africa and Italy — and a fighting reputation that would become legendary.

For a few seconds in England in 1940, however, the Prime Minister who would become one of the defining figures of the Second World War watched as a column of young Māori soldiers from New Zealand marched past.

28th (Māori) Battalion.
A long way from home — standing ready to defend Britain.

🌿 We will remember them.
📷 Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, Ref: DA-13115-F.
National Library of New Zealand

Remembering Lance Corporal Leon Smith, New Zealand Special Air Service, who died of wounds received during an operation in Wardak Province, Afghanistan on 28 September 2011. He was later awarded the New Zealand Gallantry Decoration and the Charles Upham VC & Bar Bravery Award for his actions attempting to resuscitate the mortally wounded Dougie Grant under fire, during their unit's response to an insurgent attack on the British Council Offices in Kabul a month earlier. He had previously served as an Ensign in the Royal New Zealand Navy. Lest we forget.

He is buried at Whenua Tapu Porirua and commerated on the Porirua Peace Memorial.

Volunteers and veterans restoring 240 military graves in Ripon A group of veterans and community volunteers work to clean the memorials to the fallen.

🇳🇿 TODAY WE REMEMBER — 30782 PRIVATE SIDNEY WALTER FLAVELL

A First World War veteran whose life was tragically lost at Tangiwai on Christmas Eve 1953.
Sidney Walter Flavell was born on 22 September 1894 at Hokianga.

During the First World War, he served as 30782 Private Sidney Walter Flavell, New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

He embarkeded from New Zealand on 7 December 1916 aboard HMNZT 71 Port Lyttelton with A Company, 20th Reinforcements, Auckland Infantry Battalion, bound for Britain.

More than three decades after the war, Sidney was travelling aboard the Wellington–Auckland night express on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1953.

At 10.21pm, the train reached the bridge over the Whangaehu River at Tangiwai. A lahar from Mount Ruapehu had severely damaged the bridge only minutes earlier.

The locomotive and leading carriages plunged into the flooded river.

151 people lost their lives in what remains New Zealand's worst railway disaster.

Among them was 59-year-old Sidney Walter Flavell, a man who had already served his country during the First World War. Contemporary victim records list him as a labourer living at 14 Mudie Street, Lower Hutt.

Sidney's name is recorded among the 151 victims on the Tangiwai National Memorial.

This is another reminder that among those lost at Tangiwai were men who had already lived through the experience of war.

30782 Private Sidney Walter Flavell
New Zealand Expeditionary Force

22 September 1894 – 24 December 1953

🌹 We will remember him.
Lest We Forget.