My new grandson's second name, Claude, connects with Callaghan family history. My uncle Claude was Dad's next older brother, in his family of 13 siblings. At the start of World War 1 my father was 14 years old, while Claude was 16.After Gallipoli, where New Zealand and Australian troops served together in a combined (ANZAC) Corps, a separate New Zealand Division was created and committed to the Western Front. Claude signed up in the Hawkes Bay company, 2nd Battalion, Wellington Regiment, as part of that New Zealand Division. The Division went into action in the Battle of the Somme on 15 September 1916. After an initial assault, starting near the village of Longueval, the New Zealanders seized the Switch Trench system near Flers. Claude's battalion commenced action on the 18th of September. He was killed on the 29th of September, at age 18, while his battalion occupied the captured Gird Trench system, north of Flers on a rise above a road junction known as Factory Corner.
The New Zealand Division was relieved by British troops on October 4 and they retired behind the lines before redeployment to the Flanders section of the front in 1917. Claude's body, though never ide
ntified, is probably buried in the Caterpillar Valley cemetery near Longueval, along with the nearly 3000 New Zealanders killed over that period from 15 September to 4 October 1916. More than half of those killed lie in unidentified graves, but these unknown fallen have their names commemorated on a wall within the cemetery.In October last year, Chris and Catherine and I visited the battlefields
near Longueval and Flers. We found the site of the Gird trench and stood on what is now farmland, close to the place (pictured) where Claude was killed.The next picture shows Catherine and Chris Callaghan standing by the wall on which Claude's name is inscribed.
It reads "Callaghan C.".
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