They are a friendly lot, the farming community of Te Aroha. When farmer Frank Flowerday did some work, including ploughing, for neighbours Ian Simson and his son Charles, he waited two years before sending them the bill.
But they didn't pay.
Flowerday told the Te Aroha court (where the claim for the seven pounds owed – $NZ700 in 2021 – ended up) that he was not in the habit of asking people to pay him money due; he relied on them to come to him and pay (the court decided his claim in his favour).
The farmers had been on good terms, the Te Aroha and Ohinemuri News reported, and witness and farmer neighbour William Andrews confirmed this.
Son Charles had to write to his father about the amounts he should pay, because he was away.
He had other things on his mind; this was 1917, war was engulfing the Western Front in Europe, and Charles was already in camp in Belgium. He had three months to live.
Photos of the good-looking bloke in his uniform showed the benefits of days out on the farm – his enlistment medical in 1916 recorded that the 1.75-metre tall, black-haired blue-eyed farmer had a “tanned dark” complexion.
Rifleman Private Charles Simson was declared fit for service.
He shipped to England in October, and embarked for France in May 1917. He was wounded in the Battle of Messines on 11 June, 1917.
He was transferred through the Australian dressing station in the village of Ploegsteert (soldiers called it Plug Street) and 3rd Canadian General Hospital in Boulogne to the 2nd New Zealand General Hospital in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, England, on 15 June.
The serious, penetrating wound to upper thigh had smashed the bone too, and during an operation the wound was found to be septic.
The medical officer in charge of the case advised that 33-year-old Private Simson would be unfit for at least a year and recommended his return to New Zealand by hospital ship.
But Charles Simson died of his wounds on 4 July, just over three weeks after the Battle of Messines, and is buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery, Woking, Surrey, England. He is commemorated on the First World War Memorial in Te Aroha. [Terry Snow - NZWGT]
“SERGEANT ARTHUR SIMSON. Word has been received by Mr. Ian S. Simson, of Corbett-Scott Avenue, Epsom, that his second son, Sergeant Arthur Simson, who left New Zealand with the Eleventh Reinforcements, has been wounded in France. Sergt. Simson has been with the New Zealand Division in all its fighting in France, where his eldest brother [Charles] was killed in action last year. Mr. Simson's only other son is now in camp in England.” [Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 216, 10 September 1918, Page 6]
Charles Thomson Macaffer (Simson) was the son of John Harkness and Margaret Macaffer (née Thomson) and was born on 22/02/1883. His father died on 26 October 1885 and his mother remarried (Ian Simson) in September 1886. [NZWGT]
