N.Z.M.C.

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 141, 18 December 1928, Page 7

N.Z.M.C.

MEMORIAL AT AWAPUNI (By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") PALMERSTON N., This Day. "Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn; At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them." The spirit of those magnificent memorial lines has been caught by the Manawatu Racing Club in its design of a memorial for officers and men of the New Zealand Medical Corps, who were camped on Awapuni racecourse during the war and who made the supreme sacrifice. The memorial is now nearing completion, and yesterday the covering was removed for a short while, enabling many -visitors to the coiivso to see its design. It was only a glimpse, however, for the cov-f.i-ing was again replaced until the unvniling ceremony, which will take place on some Sunday iv February or Jlarch. His .Kscelleuny the Governor-General, Sir Charles Fergusson, will perform the ceremony. The monument, situated between the

totalisutor house and the niain stand, takes the form of a cairn built of marble blocks, down which clear artesian water is gently weeping. The cairn- is some 14 feet high,-and stands in the centre of a pond shaped like a Maltese cross.. The poud, in its turn, is built in a circular garden, which it divides into, quadrant plots, beautiful with all the flowers of' early summer. : - The -whole effect is of a most artistic conception, and set among tile delightful gardens and green lawns of A'wapuui forms a fitting memorial to men who saw these flowering gardens and verdant lawns thirteen years ago and who died iv carrying the message of mercy and succour into the torn battlefields of the war zone; The gentle laving of' the water over the marble blocks in itself expresses the whole purpose and spirit of the . memorial —the gentle weeping of Mother Earth who gave these men birth and to'whom'they: have returned. •••;,.■■■• '• The cairn lies adjacent to the main drive, which has been planted with' red, white, and blu§ sweet peas to form an-ap-proach. The flowers are in full bloom, and in their significant colours are peculiarly appropriate to the spirit in which the setting of the memorial has been conceived.