WW1 Cannon
Following World War One it was a common practice for the Army to bring home captured German equipment which was then offered to local bodies as trophies.
The Martinborough Council received a letter from the Commander of the First Wellington Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel C J D Cook, who wrote:
‘On behalf of this Battalion I wish to present to the citizens of the town of Martinborough a German machine gun (light) No 239 as a war trophy.
This gun was captured by the 17th Ruahine Company during the 3rd Battle of Ypres on 14th October 1917.
The gun is now in the hands of the Army Ordinance Service and an application has been made to despatch it to the Mayor of Masterton, whom we have asked to despatch it on to you one its arrival.
It is not expected that the trophy will be forwarded until the termination of the present war.’
However by 1921 the machine gun had still not turned up and the Council instructed the Town Clerk to make enquiries. A brief reply was received which while offering no explanation did get a result:
‘Dear Sir, when the War Trophies were being allotted to the towns some time ago provisional allotment of one field gun was made for the town of Martinborough .
I have written to the Defence Authorities as to the reason the same has not been despatched to you’.
So somehow, without explanation, the light machine gun originally offered had become a field gun. A gun which eventually arrived and was place in the Square.
For many years us kids played on that field gun, what fun we had.
Then in the 1950s the ‘Powers that Be’ decide that it was not appropriate to have a field gun in the Soldier’s Memorial Square and had it removed. It was taken to the Town Dump, then at Boundary Road, and buried.
Mate Higginson
