In step to remember relatives' ordeal

REMEMBERING: Robert "Tweet" Bird (left), Jim Flack, whose grandfather marched over the hill, holding his photo and diary, Lt. Col. Benn Pitt and WO 1 Mario Ropitini, NZ Army representatives. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA

Jim Flack will be completing the Rimutaka Crossing re-enactment in honour of his relatives.

"Two generations of my family dropped what they were doing and answered the call ... I'm delighted to live in a world where we are not required to answer the same call."

Thanks to a diary kept by his grandfather, who trained at the Featherston Military Camp in 1915 before serving in Egypt and France, Mr Flack got a glimpse into what it was like to be a soldier in WWI.

He said reading the diary made him feel as if he got to know his grandfather, Vern Chapman, who died before he was born.

Mr Flack said Vern didn't sign up immediately as one of his brothers, Sid, went to Gallipoli and never made it back.

Vern, 26, first went to Cairo, training in the desert, going on to Marseilles and the Somme.

In his diary he describes how he had to "pig it".

Some of the entries talk about sleepless nights and starvation, walking "12 miles a day on half a pound of bread ... water is very scarce, this is a hell hole but I have quiet faith. all will go well with me."

Eight days later he was shot in the lung but survived and made it back home.

He died in 1940 aged 51.