55101 Rifleman Victor Hannah Colin McDonald Thurston, 2/5/1897-5/2/1918.

Victor Thurston grew up on Lees Street in Oamaru as a foster child, the youngest child of eight from Gore and became an ironmoulder, working for the company of J G Finch in Oamaru.  He was called up for the army in February of 1917 and reached Britain, joining the New Zealand Rifle Brigade.

This is all that the Official History of the NZ Rifle Brigade has to say about the day that Victor died:  "On February 4th, in retaliation for the enemy's bombardment on the 2nd, our artillery carried out a heavy and prolonged shelling of the enemy's sector on our front. The Germans responded with a steady bombardment of our lines with "sneezing-gas" throughout the 5th, and supplemented this with a series of "shell-storms" on the 7th."

"Sneezing gas" seems to be a compound called diphenylchloroarsine, known to the Germans as "mask breaker" in the belief that it could penetrate most gas masks and force their removal.  This would make the wearer vulnerable to whatever other gas was being sent over to them or other gasses in a mix with the "sneezing gas."  As a morbid aside, it was regarded as more useful to injure than to kill a soldier in this way - a dead soldier was buried.  A wounded soldier had to be carried behind the lines with a useful effect on manpower and morale.

So there he is, Victor Thurston.  At twenty years old, another "killed in action," in an action which was not worth the reporting.  As dead as any hero or coward.  Another waste of a young life who should have survived to work, play, love and live.

Instead he lies in the Polygon Wood Cemetery at Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium.

The Calderwood family grave, Oamaru Old Cemetery