Family :

Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

31 July - 10 November 1917. By the summer of 1917 the British Army was able for the first time to fight on its chosen ground on its terms. Having secured the southern ridges of Ypres at Messines in June, the main attack started on 31st July 1917 accompanied by what seemed like incessant heavy rain, which coupled with the artillery barrages conspired to turn much of the battlefield into a bog. Initial failure prompted changes in the high command and a strategy evolved to take the ring of ridges running across the Ypres salient in a series of 'bite and hold' operations, finally culminating in the capture of the most easterly ridge on which sat the infamous village of Passchendaele. The Official History carries the footnote ?The clerk power to investigate the exact losses was not available? but estimates of British casualties range from the official figure of 244,000 to almost 400,000. Within five months the Germans pushed the British back to the starting line, which was where they had been since May 1915.

Detail :

16/809 2nd Lieutenant Duncan Bannatyne McNicol, 28th Maori Battalion, 2nd Maori Contingent, New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

Tragedy on 3 August 1917: "After the Battle of Messines, the pioneers were assigned to assist the French artillery to build communications stations, bury cable, excavate ammunition dugouts, dig trenches and construct wire entanglements. On the evening of the 3rd of August 1917, the men were instructed to wire the posts in front of La Basse Ville, a small village near Messines. The night in question was miserable, with heavy shelling and rain pouring relentlessly all night – while most of the wire entanglements were constructed successfully, two gaps remained, and the Māoris in particular had suffered high casualty rates."

He recorded against the 28th Maori Battalion and alos commemorated for his service on the Auckland Musuem Online Cenotaph.

Masonic :

Listed as a 25 year old Stock Agent resident at Shacawai upon his initiation in 1912. The note in the contribution record shows that he "Died of Wounds in France 4/8/1917."

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley