His end goal was apparent last week when the retired nurse hammered a cross into the unmarked grave of a Gallipoli veteran who was affected by killing long before World War 1.
McLaughlin recently completed researching 16,000 plots on the Christchurch City Council database to find fallen soldiers like Private Patrick Fahey 6/894 1st Battalion Canterbury Infantry Regiment.
McLaughlin traced Fahey, who was wounded in Turkey and then again on the Western Front, to Block B Section 11 Plot 28 – and then gradually pieced together the 41-year-old’s grim life story.
Fahey’s war service was typical of young New Zealanders who enlisted after war broke out in 1914 – after basic training he was shipped to the Middle East before landing at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915.
He was shot in the hand 13 days later during the second Battle of Krithia and after convalescing in Malta and England, Fahey rejoined his unit in July, 1916 to hold a “quiet” sector of the frontline at Armentieres.
Two months later the Canterbury regiment was redeployed to the Somme, where a shrapnel wound to Fahey’s right forearm resulted in a return to England and medical discharge in January, 1917.
He died in Christchurch Hospital on October 28, 1926, three days after he was found in a Kilmore St boarding house intoxicated and unconscious with a fractured skull. The coroner returned an open verdict.
“Mary Fahey had hidden at a neighbour’s house but she was found by Francis, who dragged her outside,” McLaughlin said.
“A constable ordered Fahey to release his wife but he shot her twice in the head, and again in the abdomen as she fell to the ground. He immediately put the gun to his own head and fired but the round only grazed his scalp. He fired again, this time successfully.”
McLaughlin found no record of William John Fahey after he was enrolled; Francis Jnr never married and died in Awapuni Hospital, near Palmerston North, in 1953, aged 74.
Intrigued by the story, McLaughlin felt there would only be a satisfactory ending “once he (Patrick Fahey) has got a headstone”.
Fittingly, this memorial is scheduled to be unveiled on Remembrance Day, November 11, due to the New Zealand Remembrance Army, a charity dedicated to restoring war graves.
McLaughlin joined as a volunteer and has identified the resting places of 436 veterans in the Sydenham Cemetery.
From that number, 43 are unmarked, including four other Great War survivors, whose service will also be recognised by granite headstones with a ceramic poppy attached.
Sergeant Alan Grimshaw, a member of Jayforce who also served in the Royal New Zealand Army Medical Corps during the Malayan Emergency, belatedly benefits from McLaughlin’s tireless fact-finding as well. He died, aged 80, in 1999.
Eventually, the Remembrance Army wants to restore up to 15,000 service graves in Christchurch and Canterbury so the dead are appreciated for generations to come.
A dozen more headstones have already been earmarked for Sydenham, while 200 poppies are destined for Linwood Cemetery.
Remembrance Army chief executive Simon Strombom said while all service graves in Wellington and Taranaki had been restored, there was still work to do in Canterbury.
“It’s going to take three or four years, we’re going to make a substantial investment in Canterbury,” he said,
McLaughlin’s connection to the Remembrance Army stemmed from growing up near the Avro Woodford factory – home of the RAF’s famed WW2 vintage Lancaster bomber.
“I’ve always had an interest in military history. I grew up with it (in Cheshire) with it all around,” the 69-year-old said.
“I was brought up about half a mile from the Avro factory. I reckon I’ve seen every Avro Vulcan ever made fly over my house at 150 feet, coming into land.”
“I thought; ‘That’s alright then, I’ve always liked cemeteries’. Then I went to the city council website and found there’s nearly 16,000 burials there. I thought: ‘I’m retired and have plenty of spare time’.
“I did one pass through the cemetery, it took a few days obviously, and then I took a photo of every headstone that could have possibly belonged to a service veteran,” he said, explaining he excluded people born before 1860 or after the 1930s.
“Once I’d eliminated the photos of headstones of people who didn’t have a service history I started going through the cemetery ledgers. I’ve audited every burial there.
“There’s some amazing stories and the fact the Remembrance Army is uncovering and recording them for posterity is what matters.”
