Gallipoli, Somme, Messines. These are the the place names which feature so prevalently on New Zealand gravestones where men who never came back from war are commemorated. Gallipoli needs no introduction to New Zealanders. The Somme - the "Big Push" - was ambitious in scale and disastrous to the families of soldier throughout the Empire. Messines was less ambitious in terms of territory but involved great force. Large mines would obliterate German defences on a strategic ridge and our forces would march through and occupy the debris. Simple and brutal - how could it fail?
The Otago Regiment's Official History describes the opening of the day on which Francis Davis died.
Zero hour, the opening moment of the attack, was fixed for 3.10 a.m. on June 7th. The few preceding hours remained comparatively quiet, the intervening time being devoted to rest and sleep or sober reflection and thought. Four minutes prior to zero a section of machine guns opened its barrage, and although this might have led to confusion and alarmed the enemy, it apparently passed unnoticed; and the morning being dark and misty, a premature forward move by some of the troops in the rear assembly trenches was not observed.
Punctually to time the great series of underground mines were fired, the effect instantly being a premonitory heaving and trembling of the earth, as if Nature, in some mad freak of hideous sympathy with the prevalent human wickedness, was preparing to launch an assortment of horrors on her own account. Simultaneously with the rending of the blood-soaked Ridge, again to be the scene of desperate conflict, the dark and sullen sky, as yet untouched by the sleeping dawn, was suffused with a red glow as the fire of the massed artillery broke out along the line, its thunderous reverberations rolling over the distant spaces of the battlefield. The infantry were at once in motion, and in splendid unison were now sweeping over the foremost German defences.
FOR KING AND COUNTRY.
DEATHS.
DAVIS. — On June 7th (killed while in action at Messines Ridge), Francis Edward Davis (17th Reinforcements), eldest son of Francis E. and Susan Mary Davis, 12 City road, Roslyn; aged 19 years.
He did his duty. -Evening Star, 28/6/1917.
Amongst those who were killed in action in the battle of Messines was Private Francis Edward Davis, eldest son of Mr F. E. Davis, of Roslyn. Private Davis was educated at the Kaikorai School and the Boys' High School, and he subsequently entered the service of the Railway Department, being employed in both the Port Chalmers and Dunedin railway stations. He was of a courteous and obliging disposition, and was very highly thought of by his senior officers and by all with whom he came in contact. He was only 18 years of at the time of his enlistment in the Seventeenth Reinforcements, and when death overtook him in the service of his country he was but a few months over 19. He went forward with the full sanction of his father, who was for many years a member of one of the local artillery units, and who also underwent a term of service last year with the forces stationed in Samoa. -Evening Star, 30/6/1917.
Francis Davis was buried in a shell hole near where he died and later in an official military cemetery.
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