Gassed in the trenchs in Pashenalle, Somme, France.

Henry Stanhope Bernard was born 11 November 1871, Cambridge, New Zealand. He started his early working life in Auckland as a clicker but for most of his life he worked as a plumber in Wellington. Just before the first war he became a machinist. He never married, had a dear sweetheart whom he left in New Zealand when he departed for Europe and the Great War. They were to be married on his return, but instead she suffered the rest of her life, single, with no war widow's pension. He was part of the worst tragedy to befall European Australasians when 18,166 New Zealanders were killed and a whole generation gave its most creative energy to senseless slaughter.

Harry as he was called, was killed in France. His name is inscribed high on the wall of remembrance in the Auckland War Memorial Museum. His youngest brother's name is very close. Harry's official army number was 8/3483. He was Private Henry Stanhope Bernard Ist Battalion, Otago Infantry Regiment.

The Otago Battalion had been at Gallipoli but some of its members did not have such a hard time of it as did members of the Wellington Battalion.

Members of the Otago Battalion who took a spell of rest at Lemnos for several weeks, in large tents, were surprised the unrested Wellington Battalion, rather than themselves, were asked to volunteer to take the great Sari Bahr ridge. While the Wellington Battalion took Chunuk Bair, and were annihilated, the Otago Battalion's losses had been heavy due to Turkish snipers, dysentery and enteric fever. The smell of their dead comrades was intolerable and the flies swarmed in their millions, dead and wounded were covered in them, and those dying of disease equalled the number killed by the enemy. At least Harry Bernard was not killed at Gallipoli. His turn was to be in France at the Somme.

The Somme has come to symbolise the mass slaughter and military incompetence so closely associated with the Great War. The Battle of Passchendaele was for New Zealand a greater tragedy than Gallipoli. The "Kiwis" had the misfortune to be caught up in the midst of this battle and in one two-hour period lost 640 men.

Sometimes wounded men were left for days, lying where they fell in the mud and rain, subsisting on the rations they carried and what could be taken from dead comrades. The country was often knee deep in mud, the so called British stubbornness was really just to become callous brutality, some of those who lived were to be in Mental Institutions for the rest of their lives. The First Battle of the Somme took place between 1 July 1916 and 13 November of the same year.

We do not know where Harry Bernard was at this time but are told that he was gassed in the trenches and died of wounds sustained in the Battle of the Somme. Chlorine Gas was used by the Germans for the first time on the Western Front at Ypres on 22 April 1915. However they did not have enough reserves of it and the allies were able to hold against it. The gas was discharged from cylinders and caused the agonised defenders to go into chaotic flight. The chlorine gas combined with body liquids to form hydrochloric acid which burned eyes and lungs.

Harry was to die in France on the 18th of September 1916 just 23 days before his 45th birthday. Two years later on what would have been his 47th birthday the Armistice document was signed at Rethondes 11 November 1918.

Harry was buried by comrades near where he died. Two years later, using a grid reference the Army were to lift his remains and inter them at the Warlencourt British Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France - plot IV, row L, Grave 5. The cemetery lies on the east side of the D929, to the south east of Warlencourt village and five kilometres south west of Bapaume.

In October 1916 torrential rains turned the battlefield into an impassable sea of mud, and by the middle of November the Allies had advanced only five miles at a cost of four hundred and fifty thousand German, two hundred French and four hundred and twenty thousand British lives. However, the Allies had kept the main body of enemy troops stationed on the Western Front. The Second Battle of the Somme, The Battle of Saint Quentin, was between 21 March 1918 and 5 April 1918, the British lines were gassed before a massive pre dawn attack in dense fog, which took the British by surprise. First and second lines fell but the third army held and reinforcements were quickly assembled and checked the advance of the Germans.

With continued allied pressure, by early September 1918, the Germans were forced back to where they had been before March the same year, behind the Hindenburg Line. The Germans were still using gas but it often ran out and when the wind changed the Germans were often, themselves, gassed.

Today 2001, the place where Harry is buried is a peaceful and pastural part of France. The cemeteries are being well looked after and large trees shadow the white gravestones protected by sturdily built stone fences.

The Bernard - Morey family who survived continued on with life forever feeling the wrench of loss for Harry. His next of kin was younger brother, Charles Edward Bernard, of Parore Street or Awakino Road, Dargaville.