Edmund Arthur Laurie Wickes - my maternal grandfather
I only knew one of my grandfathers, my maternal grandfather,
Edmund Arthur Laurie Wickes. My paternal grandfather, James
Alexander Hemera has been my brick wall for over 30 years and the source of my DNA dilemma. He’s another story.
Edmund Arthur Laurie
Wickes or Grandad
Grandad was the first dead person I ever saw. I remember his
death on 23 September 1970 well. He had suffered for many years with breathing difficulties as a result of being gassed in the First World War. In later years he hardly
ever left the house as he was almost permanently attached to an oxygen bottle
beside his bed. I never heard him complain even though he often gasped for
breath. He was set up in his bedroom with a large radio, or wireless as it was
called then, that he could twiddle the dials to hear, even if through crackle,
every radio station in New Zealand. His passion was horse racing. He had a
regular flutter, with my mother the go between him and the TAB. As children we
all had to be quiet if Grandad was listening to the scratchings or the races. I
only found out recently that he had been arrested in Christchurch in 1927 for
betting with a bookmaker and fined five pounds. Playing cards – crib and euchre
– was his other pastime. As young children we were taught both.
I was at school – in Mr Voisey’s history class – when I was
summoned to the headmaster’s office only to be told that I was to go home, my
grandfather had died. I’m not sure why that happened. My Australian husband
thinks it must have been ‘a Kiwi thing,’ or it could have been the Irish
Catholic influence. I think my mother, who was very close to her father, just
wanted her children at home around her as she was very upset. His death was not
unexpected as he had been deteriorating and to give my grandmother a rest he
was moved to hospital for respite. He had gone reluctantly and had begged my
father to put him on the back of his truck and take him home. But that was not
to be.
With some trepidation as a teenager, I went to see him in the funeral home all laid
out in his coffin. It was a good thing I did, as I remember thinking that he was
at peace now, not struggling to breathe.
Edmund Arthur Laurie Wickes, or Arthur as he was known, was
born on 29 August 1897 at Greymouth on the Westcoast of the South Island of New
Zealand. His grandfather, Edmund Wickes, was the first Wickes to arrive in New Zealand
in 1865 from England via the Australian goldfields. He had been the Mayor of
Greymouth and the family was well-known in the area. Arthur carried the Edmund
name down the line being the eldest male born in the family, thought to have come from
the Church of St Edmund the King and Martyr, London where three generations of
the family had filled the office of Parish Clerk and Registrar of Births and
Deaths.
Arthur was a boarding pupil at Waitaki Boys’ High School in
Oamaru and while not a great scholar he excelled in sport. He enlisted for
World War One in 1916, putting his age up by a year. He was five foot ten and a half inches, blue-eyed with a fair complexion and fair hair. He served as a
Private in the New Zealand Machine Gun Corps until 1919. He had a relatively uneventful war in that he
was not injured. He got sick on a number of occasions being hospitalised with scabies,
impetigo, and influenza and presumably gassing though there is no record of
this.
He returned home in 1919 on the Ruapehu along with his English bride, Florence Dorothy Mills (Dolly)
who he had met in Nottingham. He never mentioned the war apart from the mud,
saying the new blokes wouldn’t put their faces in it which was their undoing and
that he spent his 21st birthday in the trenches. It is my one regret that I didn’t ask him
about the war, but in those days children were ‘seen and not heard.’
Like many returned servicemen, Grandad never settled to a
permanent job after the war. He had a small farm for some time at Cameron’s on
the West Coast which failed and ended with him in the bankruptcy court. He lived for many years at Kumara Junction and worked in sawmilling, did contracting work and seasonal white baiting and
birching. He also worked for a short time in the coal mines to save up enough money
for Dolly to have a return trip to England in 1948/49.
He tried to enlist in the Second World War and treated it as
a bit of a lark with three weeks paid holiday. He was balloted and turned up, but knew as soon as they put
him in the 'bull ring' they would not take him as he had a limp from a broken leg
some years earlier. He always said the limp was from a bullet wound in his heel from
the war, but his service record does not confirm this. He didn’t have much time
for ANZAC Day or remembrance of the war as he always thought the returned men
were not treated well. There is no sign of the medals he received and my mother
believes he probably threw them away or sold them during the depression. They would
have meant nothing to him.
His three sons, Edmund, Alex and Laurie all enlisted in the
Second World War. I believe this was against his wishes as all of them gave
their mother as next of kin, not their father. He had two daughters, my mother
Joy and Elizabeth who died when she was only a few months old. He was greatly affected by
her death to the extent that no one was ever to mention her name as it would
upset him too much and bring him to tears.
Grandad inherited from his mother a lease on the historic ‘Deanery’,
17 St Stephens Avenue, Auckland in 1952. Unfortunately, when the lease expired
he was not able to renew it and moved to Birkenhead on Auckland’s North Shore, and
finally to Manurewa, South Auckland, not far from where we lived.
I’ll always remember him as being a bit gruff, but kind. He was a tall thin man, always clean shaven, hair neatly done and well-dressed, but in later years had a slight stoop and needed a walking stick. He is
buried in the Mangere Lawn Cemetery, Auckland along with his wife Dolly who
died on 12 May 1979. His was a young life interrupted by war. Vale Grandad.
