Barney' Wicksteed became RSA secretary in 1947, only a few months after the club took over its present premises in Egmont Street. Under his guidance the club became a centre for members' wives and increased activities by the RSA in rehabilitation, indoor sports, guest speaker nights, and social activities and with such bodies as Heritage, and the Patriotic Fund, which have continued over the years.
Hundreds of New Plymouth people have been involved in patriotic causes in the town during the past century. Two of the most prominent were Mrs A. M. Street and Mrs Ann Burgess. The latter made her home in Smart Road available for a variety offunctions for returned men of all three wars, and it was also used for fund-raising for food parcels. She also served on the executive of womeri's section on the RSA. She died in 1954. Both she and her husband, Charles Burgess mayor of the town between 1915 and 1919, were awarded the MBE for their leadership in patriotic work. During the First World War Mrs Burgess formed the New Plymouth Women's Patriotic Committee which presented parcels of 'home comforts' to recruits on their departure for camp, and which continued similar efforts throughout the two major wars. The Burgesses were very generous to New Plymouth. Their greatest gift was their home, 'Hapurunui' Burgess Park, near the Meeting of the Waters, which became the scene of annual gatherings of returned men. At first only a handful of men attended, but so popular did these gatherings become that soon the only place they could accommodate the thousand or so participants was the Drill Hall. Mrs Burgess was known affectionately as 'Mother' by the soldiers, and the RSA honoured her with life membership and the movement's highest award, the Gold Star. The Burgesses also gave the Borough the Tea House in Pukekura Park on their golden wedding anniversary; and were instrumental in estab- lishing the Soldiers' Plot in the Te Henui cemetery. Mrs Burgess was a founder member of the Victoria League, and she and her husband were responsible for organising the first Anzac Day reunion in 19l8. This was a continuing project and in 1937 it was taken over by the RSA. Memorials to New Plymouth's war dead are legion.
Let into the western wall of St Mary's Church is a plaque bearing the names of local settlers who died in the 1860-1863 wars. The church is the repository of 17 military colours and hatchments as memorials to infantry regiments, naval forces, Taranaki Militia and Maoris who fought in those wars. Hanging the hatchments began in 1878 with the emblem of the 43rd Monmouthshire Regiment. Over the years others were added until, by 1904, all who had fought on the side of the Crown had been commemor- ated. With the passing of time a new view had been taken of the wars of the 1860s, and in 1972 the inequality of St Mary's treasures was balanced by the addition of a memorial to commemorate the sacrifices of all Maoris during the wars, no matter which side their beliefs led them. In the garden of the nearby vicarage a simple stone erected by the Government in the 1920s, marks the grave of five Waikato chiefs whose conduct on the field of battle so impressed their enemies that they were accorded an honoured burial in this corner of church property. A carved marble statue of a man in the uniform of the Armed Constabulary surmounts a memorial erected on Marsland Hill in 1909 to 'officers and men of HM naval, military and Colonial forces and loyal Maoris who fell in action or died during the Maori wars, 1845-47, 1860-70. Erected by their comrades and fellow countrymen from all parts of the British Empire.' It was unveiled by the Governor, Lord Plunket, on May 7, 1909. The model for this statue was George Messenger, who died in New Plymouth on 24 November 1960. The choice was almost accidental, although George was a son of Colonel W. B. Messenger, a leader of New Zealand forces during the early wars. George was a surveyor, and one day, arriving at his father's home after a surveying trip in the King Country, he found his father and S. Percy Smith, the town's chief surveyor, and chairman of the committee raising funds for the monument, discussing plans. They wanted photographs of a suitable model.
Smith turned to young Messenger, who had seen service in the Boer War, and asked: 'What about you' As Smith was Messenger's employer, the answer was inevitably 'Yes.' A uniform Was obtained from the Taranaki Museum, and George Messenger donned it and photographs were taken. These were sent to the famous Carrara marble quarries in Italy and nearly a year later the completed statue was returned. The uniform was more or less correct and the soldier's full moustache was typical of the Armed Constabulary. There was one mistake-the statue showed the soldier in a most unmilitary posture with his hands clasped over the muzzle of his firearm. The error, as the photographs showed, was not George's. The monument was erected, as were so many others of that and later periods, by the well-known stonemasonry firm, Short Brothers, which for many years was established on the Powderham Street-Brougham Street corner. In 1911 another memorial was erected on Marsland Hill to the New Plymouth men who fell in the Boer War.
It was carved in Australian blue granite and took the form of a fountain, with plaques let into the base bearing the names of war victims, and was unveiled by Governor Lord Islington. In 1955 a move to transfer this memorial to the grass plot in Gill Street, opposite Richmond Cottage, was considered by the Borough Council. It was decided that such a move would be too expensive, and that the Transport Department considered it would be something of a traffic hazard. Following some controversy in the press, the matter was dropped. But in 1979 the memorial was removed from Marsland Hill to the Devon Street Mall, where its machinery was overhauled and renewed, and the fountain activated. Another Boer War memorial was erected in Pukekura Park in honour of Clement Edward Wiggins, who was killed at Germiston, South Africa, in 1900. He had been a member of the staff of the Bank of New South Wales in New Plymouth and Eltham, and fellow staff members contributed to its cost. It took the form of an obelisk, surrounded by iron railings. It became overgrown and in bad repair, and early in the 1920' sit was demolished. The Cenotaph in Queen Street was erected following almost six years of discussion in memory of New Plymouth soldiers who died in World War One. In September 1921 Mayor Frank Wilson called a well- attended public meeting at which suggestions for a suitable memorial were aired. These included a permanent home for the' Soldiers' Club', a maternity home, a municipal theatre, a town hall, a bridge of remem- brance, a street memorial and a park opposite the railway station. The latter was adopted and a committee appointed to raise $10,000 for the project. But there were legal difficulties in freeing the land for such a purpose and eventually the plan for a cenotaph was adopted. This was designed by a New Plymouth architect F. Messenger, built in grey stone cut from the Mangorei quarry, by J. G. M. Russell, J. McCracken and A. Handley, and the wreaths were sculptured by stonemason W. F. Short. The II-metre monument was unveiled on September 24, 1924 by the Governor-General Viscount Jellicoe. Following the Second World War the cenotaph was rededicated to the dead of that war. An even greater delay occurred in separate recognition of the sacrifices of those who died in the 1939-45 war, and it was not until 1960 that the present Library and Museum complex, which contains the War Memorial Hall, was opened. During the planning of this $140,000 building the Chairman of the War Memorial Committee, F. S. Grayling, came across an item in a Rotary magazine which concerned an ancient Greek custom, revived by a member of the British aristocracy at Fountain's Abbey, in England. This family had lost two of its sons during World War Two, and had erected a memorial in the hall of their house bearing a translation of the Greek legend: 'From this their home they went forth to war.' The committee decided that these words should be used in the glass wall of the Ariki Street entrance to the Hall. Other memorials to New Plymouth's war dead of both races over the years are in the form of headstones in most of the cemeteries. In Te Henui cemetery alone there are more than 1100 such graves. Most are unostentatious plaques and headstones, but there are several elabor- ately carved memories, some of which reveal the ravages of time. In most of the older-established firms and business houses there are plaques and photographs honouring members of their staffs who died on active service.
Weapons of various calibre also serve as war memorials. One of the most prominent and certainly the largest is the old seige howitzer which, since 1922 has stood in Kawaroa Park, a reminder to the people who remembered of its grim use in World War One and since used as a plaything for countless numbers of children. This gun was one of the hundreds of weapons seized from the Germans-which were allocated to various towns' as a small recognition of the services of the people in connection with the war.' Eleven similar howitzers were included, and the New Plymouth trophy has a significant link with at least one returned serviceman. He was Thomas Bates, a former member of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade, a member of D Company, 3rd Battalion, which captured it intact outside Bapaume in Belgium in August 1918. It was transported to New Plymouth where it was placed on its concrete base. The gun was capable of firing a 115 kg shell nearly 3000 metres and because its shells penetrated deep into the ground, sending up huge columns of black smoke, it was nicknamed 'Black Maria'. Three German machine guns came to New Plymouth, two of which were captured personally on July 17, 1917 by Corporal L. W. Andrew, of the Wellington West Coast Company of the Wellington Infantry Company, who was later awarded the Victoria Cross. One each went to the New Plymouth Boys' High School, the Technical College, and the Municipal Council, whose trophy is now housed at Wanganui.