Piha Soldiers Remembered

Piha soldiers remembered at Armistice For the second year, the Huia Settlers Museum organised an Armistice Day commemoration for the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11 month, at the Spragg Memorial at Kaitarakihi on the Manukau Coast near Huia. Keynote speaker was ARC Parks and Heritage Chair Sandra Coney who remembered Dan Mitchell and Jim Seal, two of the men from the Piha State Sawmill who had died at Passchendaele, the 90th anniversary of which was marked last month. continued..... “Dan Mitchell was one of them. Dan was part of a large group of bushmen who came down from Puhipuhi to Piha in 1911, sticking together with the bush contractor Bob Gibbons who had worked the PuhiPuhi forest near Hukerenui. Dan came with his brother Tom Mitchell and his family, and his uncle Peter Burns and his wife. Dan enlisted in December 1915 in the Auckland Regiment, and was in France by 1916. In June 1916 he was reported missing in the field in Belgium, but was found with a gunshot wound to his left thigh and admitted to the field ambulance. Within a month he was back in the battle lines and on the 4 October 1917, at the battle of Broodseinde, he was terribly shot up, with gunshot wounds to the chest, arm, and face. He died in the No 44 Casualty Clearing Station on 7 October and is buried in Nine Elms British Cemetery. His grave says he was 27, but he was actually only 23 years old. Interestingly, given the inscription on the Spragg Memorial, his sister Ann McQuorquindale used these words when she put a memorial notice in the newspaper. ‘Gone West, with the glory of the setting sun, to an endless day of well earned rest, For another hero’s part is done and another soul – gone West.’ The second Piha boy who died at Passchendaele was Jim Seal, the son of a boot finisher and his wife, who had a large family, mostly of girls, that lived at Commercial Rd, Arch Hill, Auckland. When he was 6, Jim’s mother Mary died the day before Christmas 1900 of puerperal sepsis a few days after giving birth to a daughter. The older girls of the family took over the upbringing of their younger brothers and sisters. Jim Seal enlisted in March 1916 aged 22 and was in the 3rd NZ Rifle Brigade. He saw action in France during 1916 and 1917, before taking leave in London for a week in late September 1917.He returned to the thick of the battle at Passchendaele and was killed in action in the horrendous battle of 12 October. He is buried in New Irish Farm Cemetery in Belgium. This graveyard started with only 73 graves but was enlarged by 4500 graves when dead soldiers were brought in from other burials on the battlefield. Jim was the 2nd Seal son to die, his brother Bob having been killed in action in France in September 1916.” The Rev Barry Neal led the service and boys from the Waitakere Boys’ Brigade lowered the flags and played the last post. Isabel Sutherland read out the names of all the men who went from the area to any of overseas wars. The Huia Museum has started a project gathering up information about these local men and a great collection is growing. People put flowers on the Spragg memorial, erected by Wesley Spragg to commemorate his son Wesley Neal Spragg who died in an aircraft crash while serving overseas in WW1. The view from the memorial out to the Manukau Heads is magnificent and provides a beautiful setting for the ceremony. The memorial sits in 761 acres of land donated by Wesley Spragg father to the people of Auckland and now part of the Waitakere Regional Park. Its soaring stone obelisk is clearly visible from many parts of the Manukau and the South Head. back to news