Our family history is short at this stage but is a bit of a mystery. My great grandfather, Rasmus Andreasen Staehr set out from Denmark as a boy to "discover" the world and after some 15 or 16 years at sea, landed here in New Zealand and decided to stay. He met a beautiful young woman, Augusta Christina Eide, from Norway at a scandinavian club here in Auckland and in 1875 he married her. After starting married life in Thames, they eventually settled in the far north and raised 8 children. The youngest of these 8 was Oscar who answered the call for King and country and went off to fight the Hun in the first world war. I guess for Oscar and his friends it all must have been a bit of an adventure - "sign up here and you will see the world for free, chase away the enemy and you will all be back home again in a couple of months" - little did any of these poor souls have any idea of what they were letting themselves in for. Oscar was killed in action at the battle for Passchendaele, New Zealands worst military disaster with over 8000 young New Zealand, Australian and Canadian men loosing thier lives over a few days. Oscar is buried in the Tyne Cot Cemetary, outside of Ypers Belgium. I am told when when Augusta died in 1927, it was from a broken heart as she never got over the loss of Oscar. and so our storey begins ...........
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