It will have taken 93 years but a Southland family will finally be reunited with a fragile bible which went to war with a young soldier who now lies buried in a military cemetery in France.
Richard Cook took his bible with him when he left to fight in World War 1. He died near Passchendaele on October 10, 1917, aged 26 and never returned to his home in Colac Bay, west of Invercargill.
Before he died he had lost his bible in a trench near Messines, in Belgium, in June 1917 and it probably lay there until it was found the next year. In April, 1918, it was covered in mud when it was found by British soldier, Herbert Hodgson, 25, who fell into the trench.
Hodgson asked an officer what to do with it and was told it would be too much to track down the owner and he should keep it.
He did, for 56 years until he died in 1974 when it was passed onto his son Herbert.
The Hodgson family tried without success to find Richard Cook's family, but shortly before Herbert Hodgson's memoirs, Impressions of War, were published, Richard Cook's family was tracked through his service number which the young kiwi soldier had written on the bible.
The Hodgson family will now hold a short service at his grave in the Etaples Military Cemetery next Friday (October 8) before the bible is brought back to New Zealand next year to be presented to the Army Museum at Waiouru.
Two descendents of Cook would be at the service with 15 members of the Hodgson family, said Geoffrey Hodgson, who was publishing Herbert Hodgson's memoirs.
Geoffrey Hodgson, who is no relation to the family, said today the family was very excited at the thought of the bible being reunited with the family before it was presented to the Army Museum in Waiouru.
"It adds flesh and blood to the story. It is great," said Mr Hodgson from the small county of Rutland in central England.
In his memoirs Hodgson said he "went over the top" but fell after a few yards and stumbled into a shell hole. When he spread his arms his hand grasped something in the mud. "It was a book. I shoved it in my pocket..."
