Hank Maclean will stand tall at the no doubt chilly West Otago Showgrounds this morning, warm in the knowledge he is on a special mission.
For he knows something the remaining members of the Tapanui RSA are probably unaware of - that he has significant World War 1 relics to return to their home town.
The semiretired Dunedin furniture trader carries with him two precious little documents he acquired in Tapanui nearly 40 years ago.
He has been waiting for just the right time to return them to Tapanui, and the town's first dawn service and 100th anniversary of the battle of Gallipoli felt right, he said this week.
Mr Maclean has in his possession a telegram from ''Base Records'' addressed to a Ms E. Shepherd, at Tapanui, announcing a Rifleman E. Strong had ''arrived and should reach home Monday''.
''Imagine how glad Ms Shepherd's heart would have been on reading that, when most telegrams said your son or brother is dead.''
He also has a leave ration book that belonged to said E. Strong, stamped at the Otago Provincial Detachment's No2 Sling Camp (from where homeward-bound Otago soldiers were dispatched after the end of the war) for leave, dated March 21 to April 3, 1919.
Mr Maclean (69) acquired the items in 1977, though he was not aware he had them until 28 years later.
In 1977 he was called to see a 92-year-old woman, a Miss Shepherd, who was then living in the nursing home at Tapanui Hospital.
Miss Shepherd wanted to sell her household items to Mr Maclean, who cleared out the house and sold most of the woman's goods.
He kept one box of Irish linen although now says he was not sure why.
Some years after that, he left Dunedin, leaving the box forgotten in a garden shed at his mother's home in Musselburgh Rise.
About nine years ago, when his mother was herself moving in to a rest-home and clearing out her house, she reminded him of the box.
The linen had not fared well, and as he was pulling it out of the box the two items fell out.
He had no idea who the people named were or how they were related to Miss Shepherd, but as a former driver in the New Zealand army himself (he served for three years in the 1960s), he knew the documents would have meant a lot to someone.
''Over the years I've shown people who wanted to buy them, but it didn't feel right. I knew they should go back to Tapanui, that they belonged in the archives at the Tapanui RSA.''
After hearing Tapanui was having its first dawn service this year, he knew it was the right time to return the items.
He planned to hand them over to the local RSA president after the dawn service.
