Battle scars brought home

By ROGER MORONEY

Bright Williams, one of the handful of First World War veterans left, had always carried a little piece of Passchendaele with him ... until last October.

That's when the last shard of metal was taken from his left thigh after spending nearly 83 years there - dangerously attached to an artery.

The other bits came out in piecemeal fashion over the years, since the cold October day in 1917 when a German machine-gun post cut him down in that bloodiest of battles in Belgium.

Three bullets ended the 20-year-old infantryman's war and caused him no end of grief when he resumed farming at his Hawkes Bay home in early 1918.

"It played up a bit," says Mr Williams, now a Havelock North rest-home resident.

But he harbours no regrets about joining the 3rd Battalion Rifle Bri-gade in early 1916 and going off to fight in a war on the other side of the world. Considering what he experienced would he do it all again?

"Oh, hell yes," is his quick reply.

His memories of the carnage, of his cobbers who "got it" and of his own wounding are still clear in his mind.

He remembers the names given to the German machine-gun posts that had their sights trained on him and his cobbers. "There was Wolf Farm, Waterloo, Peter Pan and Ogilvy ... It was either Wolf Farm or the Peter Pan lot that clobbered me."

As a battalion messenger, his job was fraught with danger on the shell-torn battlefields of the Western Front. He was cut down about 8.30 am on October 12, in the wake of fierce fighting for control of the small village of Passchendaele in the Ypres district.

"The colonel saw me go down and asked, 'Are you hit, runner?' I said that I was and he said, 'Take care of yourself and I'll see what I can do'."

Mr Williams endured 24 hours of pain in the mud and freezing rain - his only company in a ditch where he sought shelter being the decomposing remains of a couple of dead Germans. He crawled a short distance during the long day and came across a cobber who had also been hit.

"He wasn't good. He said he had got it in the guts."

At no stage did Mr Williams think he was going to die.

"Hell, no ... I didn't go there to die ... I never once thought about it."

One thing he did think about was having one of his old dog kennels from off the farm at Rissington with him - "to keep the rain off."

After being found, he was sent back through the lines for treatment and later returned to New Zealand carrying his "souvenirs" of shrapnel with him. He got home in the New Year of 1918 and returned to shepherding in Hawkes Bay.

"Both the dogs I had left behind were there to meet me," he remembers.

He spoke little then of his war experiences. But asked now about his feelings on coming home he says quietly: "I thought, 'This is something those mates of mine will never get'."

A regular at Anzac Day ceremonies, Mr Williams said he would again this year proudly wear his French Legion of Honour medal - presented to him by French Ambassador Jacques Le Blanc 18 months ago.

"I will wear it for them. I will wear it for all the men who stayed behind under the soil of France. They all have one - posthumously."