Edward (Ted) Montgomery ¹

  General Notes:

Henry, born 1890, and brother Edward (Ted) born 1892, both became storekeepers, but left to go to the First World War, and never came back.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Military, 1917, Passchendaele, , West-Vlaanderen, BEL. The following was written by their great nephew, Grant Montgomery, who visited their last resting places:
rdrtrdrsrdrw20rsp200 rdrbrdrsrdrw60rsp300 THE LAST RESTING PLACES OF HENRY AND EDWARD MONTGOMERY:
A PERSONAL IMPRESSION
Henry and Edward Montgomery died during the First World War in Belgium. Henry Montgomery is buried in a small cemetery called Mud Corner in the valley below the Messines Ridge, between the towns of Messines and Warneton. The ridge dominates the land around, but would not rate a mention as a hill in Dargaville. Edward Montgomery has no marked grave as he died in the mud of Passendale. His name is recorded in a memorial to the missing New Zealanders in Polygone Wood, near Zonnebeke, between Ypres and Passendale.
The wish to visit the graves of Henry and Edward grew while I was living in France during 1983. Who were these men, names from the past, names given to my father? Why did they travel so far to endure such suffering? Has their death spared us or are we preparing a destruction far more terrible? If it makes any more sense to me afterward, it will have been more than worth my journey.
The field of maize stands up in straight rows and sparkles in the sun. Next to it is a green sign MUD CORNER. The sign is identical to thousands of others up and down every side road, the length of that green countryside that belies misery. The sign stands at the start of a farm track into the small valley, not unlike the track into the old farm as I remember it, grass strip down the middle. The hills about are smaller, but tranquil in the late morning. Pause at the sign. The land gives no indication of its past. A small wood down in the valley and across the road from the field of maize is a paddock of cows. Not much feed for the cows.
The cows take little notice of the cemetery in the corner of their paddock. It is surrounded by a neat brick wall with the headstones in neat rows remembered from photographs of war cemeteries. The reality of the name carved in stone is a shock and the grief real. The rural countryside gives a feeling of common ground while the brick walls enclosing the cemetery give a feeling of isolation and emphasise the distance from family in both time and place.
Half an hour's drive from Mud Corner is Polygone Wood, the cemetery with the memorial to the missing New Zealanders. It is set in the middle of a beech wood. Edward's name is carved on the wall with the other New Zealanders whose last resting place is unknown. The grief is less personal, but embraces the thousands of others, known and unknown who now lie buried all around. The waste appals me. I remember reading of a British Staff Officer who drove to the front lines after the battle of Passendale and saw for the first time the conditions under which the men were expected to 'achieve their objectives'. I wonder if his orders were responsible for Edward's death. I experience anger and frustration.
Polygone Wood though has a different feeling. It is by now early afternoon and the slight haze in the sky gives the light that golden quality seldom seen and often remem-bered. The beech wood seems to trap the sunshine in the cemetery. The headstones are set in their neat rows amid freshly mown grass. It is lunch time and the gardeners who carefully tend the graves have gone home to lunch. The pattern of white head-stones and green grass leads one out of the wood. The birds are singing and there is a sense of peace and light that I have experienced pre-viously in only a few cherished places in the mountains of New Zealand. I can't make any sense out of the pattern of so many cemeteries or why Allied cemeteries are marked by green signs and German cemeteries by black ones. In the end we simply sit on the grass for an hour in quiet contemplation and know that the journey was well worthwhile.
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