OUR UNHONOURED DEAD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3031, 30 October 1908, Page 4

OUR UNHONOURED DEAD.

Writing in the Auckland "Star," Mr C. A. Young calls attention to the neglected state of the graves of many of the Europeans who fell in the Maori wars, and laments the oblivion into which the memory of these brave men has been allowed to fall. Mr Young declares that "around the pas stormes by our troops during the war in the North; at Waitara, Ngatapu, and many other places from Waitotara to Whitecliffs in Taranaki; at Rangiriri, Orakau, and the numerous battlefields of vVaikato; at Pukehinahina (Gate) pa, Tauranga; and along the Napier-Taupo Road in the pursuit of Te Kooti, lie the unhonoured remains of many of troops, and of the organised bodies of the settlers who fought and fell—the one at the call of duty, the other in defence of the country of their adoption.'' When he visited Waitara the little cemetery near the school was in a disgraceful condition, and only two memorials to the forgotten dead remained. At Ohawe were buried twenty-six men of the 57th, 14th, and 40th Regiments, the Wanganui Yeomanry, and the Waikato Volunteers, who fell in the attack on Otapawa pa in 1866. When Mr Young visited the place two years ago the fences had been broken down, some of the headstones were gone, and many were indecipherable, and cattle were grazing among the graves. The Government sold the spot without any reservation, but, fortunately, t it passed into the hands of Mr James Livingstone. Mr Livingstone put the cemetery in a state of order, and erected an obelisk to the memory of the dead. "There is something very shocking in the idea of the Government selling land for settlement on which some such little cemetery lies," writes Mr Young, "and to find in some instances the settlers have ruthlessly ploughed over the graves, till no trace is left to mark the spot where unhonoured dead lie below."