John Moir was a shipwright with the Union Steam Ship Company when he joined the army in October, 1916. He died almost exactly one year later, in the impossible assault against Bellevue Spur in the Battle of Passchendaele. In that assault, men of the Otagos, and others, were ordered to cross, in knee-deep mud, over to German concrete fortifications and barbed wire which had not been touched by the artillery fire which was meant to "soften up" the enemy. It was a tragedy among the many of the "Great War."
He has no known grave. This would indicate that, as so often happened in failed assaults, his body was not recovered. It would have been buried by German soldiers to get it out of the way or possibly erased from existence by high explosive shellfire.
The number in an Army Battalion, at full strength, is usually one thousand soldiers. The 2nd Otago Battalion returned without 446 men, killed, wounded, gassed or missing.
For the Empire's Cause
MOIR. — On October 12, killed while in action, John Buchan Moir (18th Reinforcements), beloved youngest son of Margaret and the late John Moir, Port Chalmers; in his 22nd year.
He did his duty. -Otago Daily Times, 6/11/1917.
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