WW1 - Celebrating the Anzac troops in Le Quesnoy, France with a whole lot of Averills

Capture of the walls of Le Quesnoy, 1920 by George Edmund Butler

It’s funny, i’ve always been rather fond of my surname. I remember feelings of equal joy and dread being at the top of the alphabet when it came to school. But I knew, almost for certain, that in daily life i’d never come across another Averill - it just never happened. And I didn’t until I was at university in Edinburgh and a collective desire for a late night Sunday movie had me scuttling over the road to rent a video. Typically I’d forgotten my membership card and as I told the shop owner my surname - and as a matter of habit spelt it out - a girl next door to me gave me a strange look.

“I’m an Averill too”, she said.

We looked at each other and tried to make some kind of connection and reference to how we could be related. But the shop was closing and we were ushered out promising to meet each other for tea. But without mobile phones, email accounts or any of the other tools which make connecting so easy today - we just never met up.

So it was a pretty special and amazing feeling to be surrounded by 70 Averills at a gathering in the northern French town of Le Quesnoy on the 2nd of November 2018.. Most of the Averills present had travelled from the other side of the world, New Zealand, to honour and celebrate the Anzac troops who had played such an important part in WW1.

And it was one Averill in particular we were all there to pay our respects to: Leslie Averill, a young officer in the 4th Battalion New Zealand Rife Brigade who, one week before the Armistice was signed, approached the fortified town of Le Quesnoy with his division to try to free the town from German occupation. The town had been surrounded by the Anzac troops and the Germans forced inside the fortifications, unwilling to surrender. The only way to get in to liberate the town was to scale the wall. So Leslie Averill climbed up a ladder (see the above painting) and went over the wall, down into Le Quesnoy. His batallion followed behind him. For this incredible act of bravery, Leslie Averill received a legion d’honneur - the highest possible tribute for an act of bravery during armed combat.

To commemorate 100 years since the liberation of Le Quesnoy, Leslie’s son, Colin has written a book (The Life of Leslie Averill - Battles, Babies and Boardrooms) about his father’s wartime and post war endeavours which highlights how extraordinarily courageous these young men were who crossed the world to fight in a war that essentially, had nothing to do with them. The men who left New Zealand to take up arms in Europe represented 10% of the country’s population and 40% of New Zealand’s eligible young males. Many did not make it home - 18,000 were killed - and Leslie Averill wouldn’t return home for 7 years deciding to continue his medical studies in Edinburgh, Scotland after the war finished.

It’s a formidable story that gives me goosebumps to write about. To be included as an Averill in this family gathering in France to commemorate 100 years since the end of WW1 was an both an honour and a slice of life I won’t forget in a hurry.

With my 3 young sons in tow for the celebrations, I saw how important it is that their generation grows up knowing the sacrifices, the hardships and the horror that these men witnessed and experienced during active combat in WW1. And how they must be honoured and remembered. I hope that my sons developed a keener sense of extended family and saw history brought to life in such a glorious, respectful way.