Mayor Grant Smith, Palmerston North RSA vice-president Joe Hollander, president Peter Hurly, headstone instigator Ian Bailey and army chaplain Elijah Peters. Photo / Judith Lacy
Mayor Grant Smith, Palmerston North RSA vice-president Joe Hollander, president Peter Hurly, headstone instigator Ian Bailey and army chaplain Elijah Peters. Photo / Judith Lacy
World War I artillery man William Alexander Roberts recorded his landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula in his diary.
Until Saturday, there was no visible record of his burial at Terrace End Cemetery in Palmerston North. Yet, he nearly died on Turkish soil.
In his April 26, 1915, diary entryRoberts wrote he was up at 12.30am ready for the shore. Immediately on landing one of the chaps got a bullet through his cap.
"Four of us, sitting as we thought in a fairly safe spot, were advised to shift and we had just done so when a shell dropped on the spot and buried itself in the ground."
Heavy firing from both sides continued throughout the day.
More than a century later Palmerston North's Ian Bailey was researching one Alexander Robert but he put Alexander Roberts into his search engine by mistake. Up came a photo of an unmarked grave full of weeds and dirt. The information said Roberts had been a solider and this triggered Bailey, a past president of the Palmerston North RSA, to find out more.
Brother and sister Peter Miller and Carole Bolton travelled from New Plymouth to attend the unveiling of their great-uncle's headstone. Photo / Judith Lacy
Some of Roberts' relatives got in touch after seeing a 2018 Manawatū Guardian article about Bailey's hunt. Bailey, a member of the NZ Remembrance Army, was determined to get a headstone erected for Roberts and his father, John, who is buried with him at Terrace End. John, a Palmerston North publican, died in 1902.
The headstone for World War I veteran William Alexander Roberts was unveiled on Saturday. Photo / Judith Lacy
Veterans' Affairs provided the headstone for the plot in block 16 at the rear of the cemetery. Padre Elijah Peters dedicated the headstone at a ceremony on Saturday, attended by Roberts' great-nephew Peter Miller and his great-niece Carole Bolton. Their grandmother was Roberts' sister.
Known to the family as Bill, Roberts had a sardonic sense of humour, Miller said. He wore his great-uncle's medals to the ceremony.
In a letter he wrote from a hospital in Malta, dated September 19, 1915, Roberts said he was at Gallipoli "from the start until about 10 days ago and it got me down in the end".
There was always plenty of food but water was scarce at times.
"Dysentery and diarrhoea were the worst things we had to contend with and they fixed me. Got a smack through the fleshy part of left hand on 27th August and had to go on light duties till it healed."
That smack is thought to be a piece of shrapnel or a bullet. He was discharged from the army in 1916 and was seconded to the Military Police in Whanganui where he served as a jail warden.
On August 22, 1917, he fell under the Auckland Express at Marton Junction and was taken to Whanganui Hospital where he later died from his injuries. Miller said it is thought Roberts, 44, reached out for a rail with his bad hand, lost his grip and fell.
Bill Roberts during World War I.
Roberts had also worked as a seaman and served in the South African War.
Miller paid tribute to the work Bailey had done over the past three years in getting a headstone erected for Roberts.
