Westport Golf Club: my favourite of the wonderfully affordable links courses on the West Coast of New Zealand’s south island. It’s a club day. And a fine day. Cumulus clouds build over the Paparoa mountain range. The green fee is $NZ40 (about £17) that I leave in an ‘honesty box.’ On the first tee, I’m invited to join Graham and Frank. They’re locals. Farmers. We have a great round. They seem delighted to meet a golfer from Scotland and can’t believe what we pay to play in ‘the Old Country.’
As with most golf courses in this country, it was built in the first half of the twentieth century. New Zealand adopted the Scottish tradition of making sure that every small town has its golf club. And Westport is a small town: the current population is 4,600 whilst current membership is 200.
I meet a most welcoming club captain, Jim (of Scottish origin!) We chat. He is generous with his time. I tell him that I am always interested in what happened to such clubs during the two world wars. Helpfully, he informs me that a history of the club, founded in 1905, has been published recently. He gives me a copy. I take a seat in the club house and start to read about the early days of golf in Westport. It is an extraordinary story of how the then exclusive pastime of golf was eagerly promoted by the well-to-do section of this small mining community the population of which was about 3,800. The existing course, completed in 1927, is in fact the third; the first two being deemed unsuitable. The book is full of old illustrations of the first two courses and charming grainy photos of benefactors together with past Presidents, Captains, Green-keepers and club Champions.
Then I come to the section on ‘The War Years.’ I read that during the ‘Great’ War’ of 1914 – 1918 (that was started far away because England’s George V, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II and Germany’s Emperor Wilhelm II – all of whom were related by birth or marriage – neither liked nor trusted each other) the club was profoundly patriotic. Members believed every man’s duty was to go and fight. The President of the day went so far as to propose that ‘It is inadvisable during the continuance of the war to encourage men eligible for service to engage in the game of golf.’ In 1939, ‘The clouds of war loomed large over Westport Golf Club…. Many of the brightest and best left to serve King and Country in the fight against Naziism…’ I raise my eyes to a dark board above the front door. There it is: the Roll of Honour. This club lost 53 members in the two world wars, including five of its champions. The book does not give figures for membership before or between the two wars. What is known is that in 1948, there were 102 men and 68 women members. Do the sums!
I drive into town in a sober frame of mind. What I’m looking for is not difficult to find. As always, a memorial to the dead of two World Wars brings on a queeziness and disbelief still. It’s the numbers, you see. (And, by the way, multiply by two for an estimate of the number of wounded.) The Gates of Remembrance at the entry to the Memorial Park are as poignantly impressive as they are eye-wateringly sombre. Of course, there are columns of names of those young Westport men who didn’t come home from Gallipoli, Palestine, Somme, Messines, Passchendale and Le Quesnoy. I count. There are 298 names from World War I (about 7.5% of the population of the day) and 44 from World War II. This sort of calamity couldn’t happen again, could it? Nah!
