Greymouth teacher Second Lieutenant Arthur Talbot who died at the Battle of Passchendaele

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DescriptionNew Zealand Pilgrimage Trust
October 7, 2020 ·
Second Lieutenant Arthur Talbot was 41 when he died at the Battle of Passchendaele on 12 October 1917. A member of the Second Battalion, Canterbury Regiment, he left a wife in Timaru and a daughter he had never seen.
Born into a farming family near Temuka, South Canterbury, Arthur Talbot became a teacher in Greymouth, but it was climbing he was known for. He was a member of the W. G. Grave group which, among other achievements, identified a possible route to Milford by discovering what was later named the Grave Talbot Pass. The Grave expeditions also recorded a number of first ascents and are described in the book “Beyond the Southern Lakes”.
His service on the Western Front began at Messines where he was made Salvage Officer for the 2nd Brigade and he then went on to Passchendaele with the 2nd Battalion of the Canterbury Regiment. Following his death at Passchendaele, what is now a much photographed mountain at the head of the Hollyford Valley was named for him – Mt Talbot. Sir Thomas Hunter, another member of the Grave Group, described Arthur Talbot as a reserved man of courage and fidelity who would not let a companion down.
He is remembered on the New Zealand Memorial to The Missing at Tyne Cot and is the only teacher named on the WW1 School Memorial Gates in Greymouth. The successive schools on the original site closed and in 2008 developers removed the memorial pillars and gates in "controversial circumstances". After considerable fuss they were returned to Greymouth and were erected some 200 metres away at Dixon Park to be re-dedicated on Anzac Day 2009. The nurse remembered on the plaque is Helena Isdell, one of the 10 New Zealand nurses killed on 23 October 1915 when the British transport, Marquette, not carrying the markings of a hospital ship, was torpedoed and sunk in the Aegean Sea.
In the school photo with this post, Arthur Talbot is on the right and his youngest sister-in-law is one of the pupils in the photo. Her future husband was with the Rifle Brigade and was wounded twice at Passchendaele on the same day Arthur Talbot was killed. Her brother served with the Cyclists and died in the 1920s probably as a result of his service. Arthur Talbot's father-in-law was a Railways manager in Greymouth at the time and his step-mother-in-law was Dolce Cabot, New Zealand’s first professional woman journalist and one of the leading drivers of women’s suffrage and women in government in New Zealand.
Photos
1) Arthur Talbot (right) in a school photo in Greymouth 1912. (All Rights reserved - Family photo).
2) Arthur Talbot (Family photo).Map^[1]

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Location (city or town)GreymouthEventGreymouth teacher Second Lieutenant Arthur Talbot who died at the Battle of Passchendaele World War I

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Greymouth teacher Second Lieutenant Arthur Talbot who died at the Battle of Passchendaele

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