WAIRARAPA SOLDIER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 December 1940, Page 8

WAIRARAPA SOLDIER

AT REST IN ENGLAND. Cabled advice has been received by the parents of Private lan S. G. Holms, Mr and Mrs A. C. Holms, of Waipukurau, and formerly of the Wairarapa and Horowhenua districts, stating that full military honours were accorded at this impressive closing scene in the land he had so fittingly referred to in. correspondence, as “Journey’s End” (England). In the first week of September, this crusader, who was wellknown in Havelock North and Hastings and in Central Hawke’s Bay generally, as a Bible Class and Rugby enthusiast, as well as otherwise, had enjoyed seven days’ general leave, mostly in Scotland, visiting his mother’s Highland home town Brora, also relatives of his father in Sutherlandshire and Glasgow. A call was also made at Nottingham in England. His brother, also serving in England, had spent holiday leave in Sutnerlandshire in June. Private lan Holms had gove into the front line with the New Zealanders on September 8, when they commenced their two months’ duty as defenders of the coastal area in. the south-eastern region of England and his death on Sunday, October 27, from an aircraft bomb marked the first and fortunately only New Zealand loss on active service.

Private Holms was a member of the No. 2 anti-aircraft platoon of Headquarters Company, 22nd (Wellington) Rifle Battalion, Second Echelon. An elder brother, Lieut- A. G. M. Holms, is serving with the First Echelon in Egypt and a younger brother. Sergt. R. J. H. Holms, is in England with the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry Regiment. The late soldier, who was born in Featherston, was a great-grandson of pioneer Wairarapa settlers of 1852, Mr and Mrs Robert Grant, of “Bannockburn,” Gladstone, and a grandson of Mr and Mrs John Melville. "Caber Feidh,” Brora. Sutherlandshire. Scotland, Mr Melville having been widely known as convenor (chairman) of the Sutherlandshire County Council and as an industrial leader.