World War One commemorated.

On this day when we are commemorating the beginning of  the First World War, 100 hundred years ago, I would like to honour all those men and women who went to war and fought in such dreadful circumstances. So many never came back, so many young men lost and who never really had a chance to live.

My Grandfather did come home, he told Granma he would be back, before he left, and he kept his promise. He sailed on T.S.S. Aparima on Feb. 16th, 1917, with the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces. He was a volunteer, he could have stayed home and waited for his call up papers because he was a married man with a family - but he didn't. I admire him and others like him so much. He fought in the trenches of the Somme, at Passchendale. They suffered unimaginable hardship that we can't really comprehend in this day and age. 

This was supposedly the 'war to end all wars', little did they know that in just over 20 years the world would once again be plunged into another devastating conflict.

 I honour them. 

Corporal H.B. Gifkins
before embarkation