A MAN dedicated to ensuring Dargaville's returned service people have a well-tended final resting place has had one of his wishes come true.
Eighty-three-year old Canadian World War II veteran Harry Baycroft will oversee the construction of a memorial entranceway to the Mt Wesley Returned Services Association cemetery.
The new gate, similar
in design to that at the RSA cemetery at Arapohue, will be roofed with a galvanised steel front bearing the words "Lest We Forget".
For the past eight years Mr Baycroft has - with the help of community service workers who he refers to as "his boys" - voluntarily maintained RSA cemeteries in the area.
The former soldier, who spent fours years in and out of hospital after being wounded in Antwerp in 1945, said he was unable to pass by any RSA grave or cemetery that showed signs of disrepair.
"We were all comrades in arms and I believe they deserve respect," he said.
He had been trying to have a new gate built since 2000, to replace the chain across the entranceway, after he and his workers built a new picket fence along the Mt Wesley RSA boundary.
Every year since then he has supervised further maintenance work at Mt Wesley, such as widening and concreting the path around the cenotaph, creating extra space for burial plots, and drilling holes in the headstones for flowers.
At his own expense he placed artificial flowers on all graves immediately around the cenotaph and hopes to extend that to all graves.
The Mount Wesley RSA cemetery now has a reputation as being one of the best-maintained in the country.
Mr Baycroft and his late wife Alice moved to New Zealand in January 1990. Their daughter, Margaret Bishop, had emigrated 10 years earlier.
The former correctional officer and Canadian government contagious disease control officer said he joined the RSA as soon as he arrived in New Zealand.
He is currently the Welfare Pension Officer for the Northern Wairoa Branch.
He was delighted the association's application to the Veteran Affairs office in Wellington had secured the $21,000 needed for the gate.
The Kaipara District Council has approved construction and will be responsible for any future maintenance.
The project will be completed by the end of the month, followed by an official public opening.
