Anzac day: Sacrifices are remembered

Hastings local history librarian Madelon van Zijll de Jong has spent 10 years researching the men named on the district's cenotaphs.

The names of 609 men are recorded on the Havelock North, Hastings, Clive and Maraekakaho World War 1 cenotaphs.

For the past 10 years, Hastings local history librarian Madelon van Zijll de Jong has been honouring their sacrifice.

Her mission has been to enter their full names and, where possible, a photo and a little bit of detail about each man on an online database - the Regional Roll of Remembrance.

This is hosted on the Hastings Remembers website hastingsremembers.nz which marks the 100th anniversary of the battle for Gallipoli.

"Only the initials and surnames were recorded on the cenotaphs so I started by finding their first names."

She used the Auckland Museum cenotaph database, old electoral rolls on Ancestry.com, the Archives New Zealand scans of army personnel records, cemetery databases, death notices, and jubilee records to find the full names of many of these fallen World War 1 combatants.

"I also visited some local cemeteries to photograph headstones to get information and, in some cases, have added those photos to the database."

Reading the army records of some of the men was very moving, she said.

"There was one local man who had signed up in 1914 as a medic. He served in Egypt and then France for over two years, much of that time around Rouen. He must have seen terrible things and endured the most awful conditions. He suffered psychological harm and was being cared for in a hospital in England in the middle of 1918, close to the end of the war, when he ended his own life. It was so sad to imagine what had happened to him."