The War Memorial of Private Percival Septimus Brew, 2nd Battalion Wellington Regiment, N.Z.E.F., who died 2 October 1916, aged 24, is located on the Wellington Regiment Memorial, at the Caterpillar Valley (New Zealand) Memorial, in Longueval, on the Somme in France. He was the son of William and Elizabeth Brew of Orrysdale, Isle of Man.
Another memorial to Percival also appears in Kirk Michael Parish Church on
the Isle of Man. According to Frances
Coakley's Manx
Note Book, "The memorial takes the form of a marble tablet, placed
within the parish church, and has been designed by Mr Archibald Knox. The work
represents Mr Knox in his happiest vein, and is polygonal, almost circular in
shape, bordered all round by an interlaced Celtic pattern, inside which the
names of the fallen men have been inscribed. The sculptor was Mr T. H. Royston,
of
The names are as
follows:- Bertram R. Barron. Pte. Northumberland Fus.; Percival S. Brew, Pte.
New Zealand Forces; Herbert R. Cannell, Pte. 3rd Cheshires; Thomas A. Corlett,
Lance-Cpl. East
The Caterpillar Valley (New Zealand) Memorial in France is located on the western outskirts of Longueval, approximately 10km south south-west of Bapaume, and ca.6km east of Pozières.
Caterpillar Valley was the name given by the army to the long valley which rises eastwards, past "Caterpillar Wood", to the high ground at Guillemont. The ground was captured, after very fierce fighting, in the latter part of July 1916. It was lost in the German advance of March 1918 and recovered by the 38th Welsh Division in August 1918, when a small cemetery was made (now Plot 1 of the cemetery) containing 25 graves of the 38th Division and the 6th Dragoon Guards. After the Armistice, this cemetery was hugely increased when the graves of more than 5,500 officers and men were brought in from other small cemeteries, and the battlefields of the Somme. The great majority of soldiers died in the autumn of 1916 and almost all the rest in August/September 1918. Caterpillar Valley Cemetery now contains 5,569 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 3,796 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 32 casualties known or believed to be buried among them, and to three buried in McCormick's Post Cemetery whose graves were destroyed by shell fire. On the east side of the cemetery is the Caterpillar Valley (New Zealand) Memorial, commemorating more than 1,200 officers and men of the New Zealand Division who died in the Battles of the Somme in 1916, and whose graves are not known. This is one of seven memorials in France and Belgium to those New Zealand soldiers who died on the Western Front and whose graves are unknown.
The first of the following two images is of Percival's name on the Wellington Memorial and the second image is of a plaque honouring fallen New Zealand soldiers on the Somme at the Caterpillar Valley Memorial.
It was extremely difficult to obtain a good photograph of the Memorial as it has become somewhat eroded over the years. Percival Septimus Brew appears near the top of the right-hand column.
Click on an image to see an enlarged version.
© These photographs were taken by Steve Brew on 26 September 1998