NAMES OF NEW ZEALANDERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 November 1931, Page 7

NAMES OF NEW ZEALANDERS

MEMORIAL IN PALESTINE Advice of completion of the memorial to the New Zealand Mounted Regiments in Palestine has been received by Defence authorities. Names of New Zealanders who fought in conquest of the Holy Land now stand graven in solid rock beside the warriors of Alexander the Great, Rameses 11., Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar. The newest Dominion of the British Empire is linked with the great times of antiquity by the completion of the memorial in Palestine. The titles of the New Zealand corps which took part in General Allenby's conquest of Canaan are now immortalised at a spot where the road to Damascus branches from the coastal road to Egypt and Palestine at a spot near the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb River, and a few miles from Beirut. Here for uncounted years there has been the great statue of a dog, guarding both roads. Only the base of the statue now remains, and the rocks about it are covered with inscriptions by the troops of the other successful generals who have conquered the country. Thousands of years have failed to obliterate these accounts of the deers of the invading hosts. After the armistice with Turkey was signed an inscription relating the deeds of the British Army was engraven into the rock, immediately above the other inscriptions relating to Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar, but the tablet was found to be too small to include the names of all the troops which took part, notably the Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, and French cavalry. Some years later, when Lieut.-Colonel Hughes, the Australian representative on the Imperial War Graves Commission, had completed his work in Gallipoli, he was entrusted with the task of obtaining suitable engravings on the rocks relating to the performances of the Australian and New Zealand corps. This was undertaken with the consent of the French Government, and the task has now been completed.