WELL TENDED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26540, 15 August 1947, Page 4

WELL TENDED

V.C. WINNER'S GRAVE REPORT FROM FRANCE CAREER OF DICK TRAVIS RECALLED. A report received in Dunedin from Mr Gerald S. Keed, formerly'a staffsergeant with the 16th Waikato Company, Ist N.Z.E.F.; and now of the Imperial War Graves Commission, on the condition of a grave at Couin, France, -recalls the career of one of New Zealand’s best-known figures in the First World War. The report states that the grave of 9/523, Sergeant R. C. Travis, V.C., D.C.M., M.M., Otago Regiment, who died on August 25, 1918, aged 34, is clean and tidy and planted with violas and nepeta, with the headstone in good condition. Mr Keed visited the cemetery on May 27 of this year. “Also on the stone is the name of Dickson C. Savage,” he added. To the army in the Great War, Richard Cornelius Savage was plain Dick Travis. He belonged to Opotiki, but was rabbiting in Southland when the war broke out, and enlisted under his assumed name to conceal his enlistment from an anxious mother. It was said that Travis gained notoriety early in the war by stowing away on a transport from Egypt bound for Gallipoli. In those days he was in the A.S.C., and rumour had it that he had once been fcourt martialled for using firearms against the enemy without-, permission. Unique Position He was later posted to the 2nd Otago Regiment, and according to his stripes was a sergeant in the Bth Company by the time of Passchendaele. Travis had a unique position in the battalion. He was not always to be found with the Bth Company, but had a kind of roving commission. His own particular group—the snipers whom the battalion affectionately called “Dick Travis's cut-throats "—almost worshipped him. When Travis decided that a balaclava was less likely to attract attention than a tin hat/ they all wore balaclavas. If he went equipped with two German revolvers strapped in front, there was a sense of incompleteness in the minds of other snipers until they had secured similar weapons. Travis missed Passchendaele. He was sent on a “ tour of duty ” to Sling Camp under a custom by which some of the men who had seen much continuous service at the front were* sent over to England for a change. Travis, who did not know fear, was given leave from Sling Camp to visit Scotland. He purposely took three more days, and, to his delight, was sent back to France. . . _ '. , The morale of the New Zealand Division was- probably never lower during the war than at that stage,, as it was the first “stunt” in which the New Zealanders had failed to gain their objective; The effect of the return of Travis to his company was to lift the spirits of his colleagues; immeasurably. His nightly tours into “ no-man's-land ” down to a derelict tank on the edge of the enemy trench thoroughly awakened hostilities. It was pure joy to him to lob a hand grenade into the enemy trench while they- ran in all directions expecting a raid. Daylight Raiding The name of Dick Travis was always associated with daylight raiding, . but he was not foolishly rash; The night before a raid he would crawl all over the intervening ground and familiarise himself with every possible detail. After receiving almost every possible decoration except the Victoria Cross, Dick Travis was killed at Rossignal Wood. During that engagement he cut short the fuses of,-.trench mortar shells, and threw- them by hand; into the wire blocking the approach' to the German line'. Travis came through that exciting advance, but was killed the next morning by a shell when standing in the new front line. His battalion was relieved that night, and although the men 'were absolutely exhausted they carried his body beyond the shell fire area to the French village of Couin. The next evening he was awarded the honour—rare in those days —of a full military funeral. He was laid to rest with his friend Lieutenant Charles Kerse, who was killed by the same shell. The Union Jack which covered their bodies is now in the possession of the Pukerau School. The final badge of courage, the Victoria Cross, which his companions felt he had earned more than once, was conferred posthumously on Travis.