A wartime friendship

THE GREAT WAR of 1914-18 brought thousands of people together from many countries and all walks of life and as a result friendships were forged that survived for years afterwards.

Among those who found themselves comrades in arms during their military service were a law student from South Lincolnshire and a farmer from New Zealand, a loyal association that has never been forgotten.

Horace Stanton was the son of Dr William Stanton of Market Deeping but was training to be a solicitor with a law firm in Peterborough when his studies were interrupted by the war. He joined the Royal Field Artillery and after a spell of training in England he was commissioned a second lieutenant and served in India before being posted to Mesopotamia, that area of the Middle East now occupied by Iraq and Iran.

George Mitchell was a sheep farmer from New Zealand who had gone to Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago off the southernmost tip of South America, to work as a shepherd and to teach local farmers how to look after their flocks. When the war broke out, he could not get back home and so boarded a ship for England where he joined the Royal Field Artillery. He served as a sergeant in France in 1915 and the following year he was commissioned a second lieutenant and posted first to India and then Mesopotamia, arriving there in March 1917.

Both men therefore from entirely different backgrounds found themselves serving together as subalterns in the same unit, No 44 Battery, RFA, where they remained until being discharged in 1919.

They became firm friends, an association that continued even after leaving the army when both returned home to their respective occupations and although they never met again, they continued to correspond. One of the last letters between them was written by Horace Stanton in July 1962. By this time, he had qualified as a solicitor and had an established practice at 11 North Street, Bourne, also fulfilling many important public duties such as coroner, clerk to the magistrates, to Bourne United Charities and to the governors of Bourne Grammar School. He had married and had a son, a daughter and five grandchildren. He died in 1977 at the age of 79, and was cremated after a funeral service at the Abbey Church.

George Mitchell, meanwhile, had resumed his farming career with a 500-acre holding at Clydevale, Otaga, on the South Island of New Zealand, later becoming farm advisory officer for the Department of Agriculture, a post he held until retiring in 1956. He too had married and had two children and seven grandchildren. He died at Taumarunui in 1973, aged 82, and is buried at Palmerston North.

The lives of the two men also had other remarkable similarities, Horace becoming the officer in charge of the Home Guard in Bourne during the Second World War of 1939-45, attaining the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and joining the Hereward Lodge of Freemasons while George also commanded his local unit of the Home Guard and joined the masonic lodges at Rangitikei and Marton.

Memories of the bond between the two men have now surfaced through a bundle of papers and photographs that have been inherited by George's grandson, Paul Mitchell, through his Uncle John, who was George's eldest son. Among them was the letter from 1962 and two war diaries that George had written while serving with the RFA in Mesopotamia from 1917-1919, all of which revealed his strong friendship with Horace Stanton. Unfortunately, one of the diaries has suffered from water damage and several of the pages are unreadable but the others are largely intact.

“One of the interesting things I have discovered is that the officers had nicknames for each other”, said Paul. “George’s nickname was Hadolph and Horace was known as The Boy. There are others who were simply called Edith and Dad. These nicknames are used throughout the diaries instead of their real names indicating that they were most likely good friends.”

Paul, aged 60, works as a training manager in the electro-technology industries and lives at Rotorua, a city on the southern shores of Rotorua Lake in New Zealand’s North Island. He is busy compiling a family album although he has another reason to find out more about the close friendship between the two men. George’s youngest son, Donald, was his father who was given the middle name of Stanton in honour of his wartime friend. He passed it on to Paul as a middle name and in turn he has given it to his eldest son, John, and so after three generations, it has become a family tradition.

“I still have big gaps to fill in on the story of my grandfather’s early years and so I am now busy contacting Horace’s descendants in the hope that they can fill in some of the details about the life of this interesting man”, said Paul. “Unfortunately, like many others, I never thought to ask him about this part of his career when he was alive.”

The name Stanton is perpetuated in Bourne with Stanton Close which was named after him although his legacy is much more substantial because as clerk to the Bourne United Charities for 38 years, he was responsible for acquiring the Abbey Lawn for the benefit of the town as well as the establishment of the War Memorial and the Wellhead Gardens.

His work for the town was acknowledged during his funeral service at the Abbey Church in April 1977 when the vicar, the Rev Gordon Lanham, said in his address that Mr Stanton had learned the lesson of service. He had served his country, his profession, the church and the community for nearly 60 years and he recalled the epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren that is inscribed over the north door of St Paul's Cathedral in London which he designed: "If you would see his monument look around" and added: "How true that was of Horace Stanton. The provision of the Memorial Gardens on one side of the church and the Abbey Lawn on the other, with all of its facilities for recreation and pleasure, was due to his foresight so that we and all others who come after us can have the benefit of them. And so we remember him with respect."

For another reason, and one that reflects a personal loyalty that flourished during the comradeship of war, the Stanton name is now being remembered on the other side of the world by George Mitchell’s family in New Zealand which retains a very strong link with Bourne.