​Frank Hughes faced his firing squad with his eyes open and without a blindfold.
In the end he met his death bravely, even if his actions during his stint in France during the First World War led to a charge of desertion.
The men from our troops who were shot were often deeply troubled, terrified, out of their minds with shock, ill, or unable to cope with the horrific surroundings they found themselves in.
A good part of Frank’s problem was drink.
Frank was born in Gore on June 11, 1888, and worked in Wellington as a builder’s labourer.
But with the outbreak of World War I he joined up, enlisting in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, leaving with the 10th Reinforcement and arriving in France in April 1916. He then joined the 12th (Nelson) company, 2nd battalion, Canterbury Regiment.
Frank liked to drink and it quickly got him into trouble. By July he had already been brought before his commanding officer three times for ill-discipline.
Less than a month later he was found guilty by a Field General Court Martial for absenting himself without leave. He earned a one years’ imprisonment, but this was suspended on review and he got a warning.
He rejoined his unit in the horror of the trenches only to promptly disappear again.
This time it took 11 days for military police to catch up with him, sleeping in an abandoned house.
Frank thought he had been away for six days and had gone into the house for a sleep.
He went before another Field General Court Martial for desertion on August 12. He blamed it all on alcohol. He said he got light-headed and wandered off, wandering around town. He had continued drinking throughout his absence.
Frank was found guilty and sentenced to be shot.
The day of his execution he was taken from his cell to an orchard and put against a tree. He declined a blindfold and at 5.30am the men from the New Zealand Pioneer Battalion fired.
Frank Hughes was the first New Zealand man executed in the First World War but not the last, 27 others were also executed during the conflict.
He was buried in the Hallencourt Communal Cemetery.
In 2000 the New Zealand government gave Frank - and others - posthumous pardons although it was not without controversy.
Picture by Rob Pumphrey.

​In Ernest Burr’s workshop were a series of wooden toys that he was making for his children.
But there was no sign of Ernest himself at his West Coast home.
Despite investigations and any number of theories, nothing has ever been found of him.
He had separated from his wife Teresa in August 1930 after an argument and she had taken their three children to go and live with her brother.
Then on November 7, Ernest was found to be missing from his home on the West Coast with no real sign of what might have happened.
Police had to be brought from Christchurch to investigate and search parties scoured the area.
No sign of him has ever been found.
Ernest Mansfield Burr was born in 1901 at Kumara, on the West Coast.
He married Teresa Hynes in 1923. Ernest worked as a locomotive trolleyman at the Ogilvies mill in Marsden.
Ernest’s home was tidy, with food in the pantry and one suit missing. In the bedroom above the headboard were little flecks of blood. The bed had been stripped of its bedclothes. It was enough for the police to consider foul play.
However there was not enough to mean much and police could not even tell if it was human blood. A second bed in the house looked like it might have been slept in.
Despite the investigation, police could not say with any certainty if Ernest had been murdered.
There had been odd signs at the house when police arrived, the doors were tightly locked and the windows had been nailed shut which was considered unusual.
He had spent the day in Greymouth with a friend and returned home around midnight telling his friend he was going away the next day.
A neighbour reported hearing odd noises at dawn of the next day. It was four days later that one of the neighbours rang Ernest’s one of brothers (he had eight) to report him missing.
He was an ordinary hard working man with no known enemies.
Ernest was also an experienced bushman - and the area around where he lived was wild and also filled with abandoned mines.
One of the theories was he just up and left after his wife left him and yet another was that he had harmed himself.
But months on - and then years on - nothing more was ever found and if it was murder, no one was taken to account.
He likely died on November 4 or 5, 1930 - and the whereabouts of his grave is unknown.

​Harry Atkinson had a wild idea. He thought, when people got to a certain age, at the end of their working life, they should get money.
That’s right. A pension.
And when Harry was considering it, it was new and innovative.
New Zealand was not the first country to come up with it - Germany had already introduced a pension scheme that was much like today’s Kiwisaver.
In the early 1880s, Colonial Treasurer Harry Atkinson proposed a needs-based insurance scheme paid fro by levies on workers which would allow a modest orphans, widows, sickness and old age benefit.
It was radical and got a very cool reception from his Parliamentary colleagues.
Harry Ablert Atkinson had been born on November 1, 1831 in Broxton in Cheshire in England to John and Elizabeth Atkinson.
John was an architect and stonemason with very progressive ideas. He raised all his children to be self-reliant and independent even to the point of choosing their own religion.
Harry became interested in New Zealand by knowing others planning to immigrate and in 1849 he and his brother Arthur set out aboard the Sir Edward Paget.
Harry had plenty of skills, he could cobble and worked in a sawpit. He married Ameila Jane Skinner in 1856 and set up as a pioneer farmer.
He was a hard worker, setting up a dairy, supplied firewood and contracted to deliver mail.
He joined the local provincial council and served for many years. He fought as a captain of the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers.
In 1861 he was elected to the House of Representatives then left briefly when his wife died in 1866 but was back in 1867 after marrying Annie Smith.
He was Colonial Treasurer from 1875 to 1891. In July 1882 he asked Parliament to consider a national insurance scheme - the forerunner to pensions.
But he had trouble getting anyone interested.
Harry was premier three times and in 1888 he was awarded a knighthood.
He worked to the end - in June, 1892 he presided over the first council session then returned to the Speakers Room, where he died.
On November 1, 1898, the Old Age Pensions Act Harry had championed, came into law. It was both ground breaking and very limited. There was a strict criteria for who could have it, including that men and women had to be of good moral character and had been leading a sober and reputable life for at least five years.
Harry is buried at Karori Cemetery.

Arthur Winton Brown had served two terms as Wellington’s mayor. His second had ended in 1891.
A proud, self made man, he took his reputation seriously
But within weeks of his final act as mayor - laying the foundation stone of one of his pride and joy’s - the Wellington Free Public Library - Brown suddenly vanished from New Zealand, never to set foot here again.
Brown was born in Port Chalmers on December 27, 1856, to carpenter, cabinet maker and shipwright Arthur Brown and his wife Jane and within a few years they had moved to Wellington.
HIs first job was stacking shelves at a grocer’s and he could see how well the business could do.
By the age of 20 he bought his first store in Tory Street, quickly earning success and opening another on Lambton Quay.
But he wanted more than just business success. So he ran for various public offices, first the Mount Cook school committee, then the Wellington City Council, sitting as a councillor from 1881 to 1885.
In 1886 he won the mayoralty and served his first term. He went back to being a councillor for a few years but stood as mayor again in 1891.
His term finished in December that year.
A few weeks later he told friends he was going to Mokau in Taranaki to visit a coal mine he was director of. He never showed up and shortly after his friends, and his wife Mary Eliza Linnell began to worry about him.
In fact, Brown sailed to Auckland and then to Sydney and there he wrote letters to some friends explaining he had left because of debts.
"It may be cowardly, but after having occupied the positions in which I have been placed by the people of Wellington, I have not the moral courage to face the inevitable crash," he wrote.
Initially that made no sense, he was considered well off. But with the collapse of the Mokau Coal Company only a few months after his departure, it became clear. As director he would be liable for the debt.
A warrant was issued for his arrest in New Zealand and he was listed as an absconding debtor in Australia but by then he had already moved on - with people claiming he was in Japan, then London.
Then in 1894 he was in New Orleans, apparently doing well for himself, where he worked as a journalist. He went on to be part owner of a newspaper.
Brown died on July 27, 1916, at his home. He had been sick for some time and suffered a stroke.
Brown is buried at the Masonic Cemetery No 1, New Orleans.​

​Flour and cocoa miller John Griffin had a vision. He wanted more than the daily grind.
So he struck out for New Zealand - and created a legacy that we all still see every day.
Because who among us hasn’t had a Griffin's biscuit? Toffee Pops, Shrewsbury, Squiggles or that coffee dunking favourite - gingernuts?
He was born on November 20, 1812, to John Griffin and Hannah Hollis in the village of God’s Hill on the Isle of Wight.
He married Charlotte Reynolds in 1840 and they went on to have seven children.
John ran his own flour mill - using a windmill - before deciding he wanted more opportunity.
He packed them up on to the barque Ashmore and they sailed for New Zealand in 1854 arriving in Nelson.
He immediately set up a bakery in Trafalgar S,t but almost as quickly lost it in an earthquake. Despite learning and rebuilding in wood, business was slow and he relocated his family to Christchurch a few years later.
John worked as a grocer and a draper before the whole family returned to Nelson where he bought land and sold fuel, flour and biscuits, including candied peel and drinking cocoa.
It was here he died in 1893.
It was two of his sons who decided to expand the business but it wasn’t easy. Twice their factory burned to the ground. The second time, in 1903, a new modern factory was built.
In 1938, the whole biscuit making side of the business was moved to Lower Hutt - at the bottom of the hill to Wainuiomata. The factory in Nelson was turned over to confectionery.
During World War Two the factory began making huge quantities of army biscuits to be shipped to the Middle East.
It was considered a cutting edge production facility - including the first full automated wrapping machine.
The factory closed in Lower Hutt in 2009 putting 228 people out of work while the Auckland factory took over production.
John is buried in Fairfield Cemetery.

​At the top of the beautiful Good Samaritan window in Old St Paul’s Cathedral in Wellington is a little mystery.
Carved into wood high up is a face, it is hardly visible from the ground and no one knows exactly who it is. It is only one of the odd mysteries of the lovely old church.
There are a number of possibilities, including William Levin (yes the town of Levin is named for him) for whom the window was made, it might also reflect one of the faces from the window or just be a cheeky member of the building crew.
But there is another person whose name is prominently connected with the church, builder John McLaggan who with his team of carpenters, are responsible for building it.
John was born in Scotland in about 1803. It’s unclear when he came to New Zealand but about the 1840s with his wife Margaret.
Along with being a carpenter, John had political ambitions - he stood along with Edward Jerningham Wakefield for the Wellington provincial council which he won but fortunately it was the only time he dabbled in politics, at least for the church.
The land for Old St Paul’s was bought in 1845 and by 1865 the foundation stone was laid and John and his team of eight carpenters got to work.
Built in the gothic revival style and of New Zealand timbers it also includes a piece of wood - hidden in a pillar and inscribed with McLaggan’s name and those of his whole team.
The church was consecrated in 1866 and opened for worship.
McLaggan then won the contract to construct a deep water wharf - Queen’s wharf. It was a huge complex task especially competing with the ocean - and that ships were coming into it before it was even finished.
Meanwhile McLaggan was also the city’s undertaker (perhaps on the basis he could build coffins) and owned a saw mill in the Wairarapa - probably a necessity with how much wood he was using.
He won a contract to make the wooden seats, pulpits and reader’s desk for Presbyterian St Andrew on Lambton Quay (the building was later shifted to Tinakori Road)
McLaggan died in 1886 and he and his wife are buried in the Bolton Street cemetery.

​Whether you believe in the strangeness of the Bermuda Triangle or not, there have been disappearances there that are unexplained to this day.
And one is the flight captained by New Zealander and war veteran John McPhee.
John Clutha McPhee was born on June 21, 1918, to Gilbert James McPhee and his wife Elizabeth Charlotte McPhee.
He went to school in Dunedin before going to Victoria University.
Athletically inclined, he decided to enlist in the RNZAF in 1942 and showed an aptitude for flying.
He was one of many sent to Canada for training before going on to England as pilot of a Liberator bomber.
John flew many missions until the war's end and after a desk job did not appeal he was put in touch with airlines, getting a civil flying licence.
In 1947, he began flying for the British South American Airlines Corp where he made headlines for having been the co-pilot on a world record setting flight from London to New Zealand.
John often flew the route between Bermuda and Kingston, often stopping over in Bermuda where he would play golf and gather with other pilots at the White Horse Tavern.
He was back in the newspapers in 1949 when the Star Ariel plane he was pilot of vanished without trace on a flight that left Kindley Field in Bermuda at 8.41am to Kingston on January 17.
There were 19 people on board.
A massive search was commenced, with two US fleet carriers, five other naval vessels and 63 aircraft.
There had been no SOS and the last radio report was a standard position relay.
Nothing was ever found and over time it was relegated to yet another mystery of a missing plane in the notorious Bermuda Triangle.
There were odd theories, including the manufacturer of the plane claiming sabotage.
It was much much later that the plane became known for the possibility of explosive decompression due to metal fatigue.
The Star Ariel however was a Tudor IV, a relatively new airliner and there was never any debris found.
To make it weirder, the Star Ariel’s sister airliner, the Star Tiger had also vanished, the same way nearly a year before.
As of now, the plane and its crew and passengers are still missing. Among them, ironically, was the deputy director of accident prevention at the Air Ministry during the war.

The ostrich farmer
In the fields of Merivale in 1883 was a farm unlike other farms. Its fields were full of stock of a very different kind to other farms - ostriches.
A world wide fashion craze among society women was for feathers for their hats. It led to increasingly outrageous hats with feathers from the plumage of any bird deemed suitable, peacocks, pheasants and ostriches.
And it was unbelievably popular. In 1807 about 509 kilos of ostrich feathers were imported into France alone.
It was a cruel trade, with birds like ostriches being hunted to near extinction for a handful of feathers on a hat.
It only really slowed when the farming of birds took off.
And John Thomas Matson of New Zealand saw a chance.
In 1883, he imported four of the big birds into New Zealand - one died on the journey and another died of injuries on arrival. But he was left with a male and female.
And they bred and by 1887, Matson sent 2000 feathers to England with instructions from Matson for some to be made into fans to be given to Queen Victoria and the Princess of Wales.
His farm became something of a tourist attraction - it was near a tram line in Papanui Road and passengers would look out for the birds.
In 1891, John’s operation was bought by the New Zealand Ostrich Farming Company - the flock now stood at 49 birds.
But it wasn’t to last. The trend began to die and in 1916 - with the effects of austerity from World War One - ostrich feathers were removed from the list of New Zealand industries.
John however had not lived to see his wild idea die.
Matson was born to Henry and Alice Matson in Goulburn, Victoria, Australia on March 30, 1845.
He came to New Zealand with his father in 1862 and they settled Springfield farm. He married Marion Thomas.
It was not John’s only odd farm animal. He also farmed alpacas which had been given to him by Robert Heaton Rhodes, the local member of Parliament.
John also worked as an auctioneer - conducting the first ever wool sale in Canterbury.
A devoted parishioner of St Paul’s in Papanui, John paid for the church bells. When he died in April, 1895, the bells were rung - but muted - for his service.
John is buried at the St Paul’s Anglican Church Cemetery.
Picture by Saad Khan.​