Horace and Harry!

It is a well known story and often told… Of the young men, if not boys, that enlisted for service under age. Private Horace from Leeds was just 14 when the Great War commenced, he would be dead just two years later at the Somme. He had been mistaken for a man when walking home and had received a white feather, a symbol of cowardice, galvanized to action Horace enlisted successfully on first attempt, his parents begged him to report his age, he never did.

Closer to home Henry Athol Blair, known as Harry would also lie about his age, and in 1916 would fall with Horace and the forever remembered at the Somme. Harry declared his age as 40 at time of enlistment but had been born in 1869 in Stratford, Taranaki. Prior to enlistment Harry had previously been employed on Railway construction for the Public Works Department.

Of interest to the Franklin community is Harry Blair’s connection. Harry been born just four years after his parents William and Mary Agnes Blair with extended family had arrived on the ship Bombay to Auckland. Like many of the passengers they were given a parcel of land in the South Auckland area which they named after the ship. But the land uncleared and of dense bush proved one hardship to many. William Blair would instead attempt prospecting for gold in Thames, unsuccessful, but thankfully being a engineer by trade would then secure work constructing the Panmure Bridge in Auckland, before being appointed as foreman for the construction of bridges in Whanganui and Manawatu Gorge, finally settling in Stratford and doing works on the Taranaki Railway.

A picture tells a thousand words, and so with Harry and Horace. The eyes of youth, with hope for life, brave in the unknown, and that of age, wise in years, knowing what lies to come but still stepping forward. Duty and bravery has no restriction on age, sex or race but lies within us all, buried within waiting for the drums of fate to call, let us forever remember them.