On a visit passing through Waiouru, I called into the Army Museum to see the greenstone memorial wall. While there, I began talking to one of the soldiers present. I was planning a trip to Europe at that stage and I wanted to know more about the locations of the cemeteries these two men were buried in. Although I knew which cemetery James Riordan was buried in from his casualty form, John Payn's exact burial place still eluded me. The soldier told me that details about the graves could be found through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. (This conversation was prior to the days of the website that now exists.) The soldier was kind enough to go in search of the address for me, and on my return home, I wrote away to the Commission.

Very quickly I received a most helpful reply. I was sent information from the register for each cemetery, that described its whereabouts, and also a brief outline of the history of the nearby battles that had led to its creation. There was also specific information for each named soldier that usually included the names of their parents and their home addresses. Finally I had a written piece of information that named the parents of James Riordan and left no doubt that he was my great uncle. I also now had exact details about the burial place of John Payn. Importantly, as I was later to discover, there were also two maps. One was the map of the immediate locality of the cemetery that gave me clues as to the nearest town. The other was a map of each cemetery, with the sections and plots numbered clearly. This map was to prove vital when I reached the Etaples cemetery where James Riordan was buried. The cemetery held more than 11000 graves, and finding a specific grave without such a map would have been an impossible task.

In 1998 I set off on my long trip overseas, and one of my goals while in Europe was to visit the graves of both James Riordan and John Payn.

On 13 May 1998, some eighty years after his death, I was able to visit the grave of John Payn.

From the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, I had obtained information that John was buried in Flesquières Hill British Cemetery, and that this was near the town of Cambrai in northern France. As I headed towards Cambrai, through beautiful rural countryside dotted with small villages, it was hard to comprehend that this peaceful looking area had once been the scene of such wartime devastation.

In Cambrai, I sought information at the Tourist Office about public transport to the village of Flesquières. After several phone calls they identified what seemed to be a suitable bus route for me, but I was later to discover that the closest this bus would take me to Flesquières was a bus-stop some distance away. Once at this bus-stop, I sought directions at a village café opposite and began walking. I hadn't walked far, however, when a man I'd seen in the café pulled over in his car to offer me a lift. It turned out that this man had been born in the village of Flesquières. I suspect that he had no need to travel to the village himself, and that he drove me there purely as an act of kindness, and perhaps also as an act of French gratitude for the foreigners who had died there.

I was dropped off right in front of the cemetery itself. A wall rose up from the roadside with a tall cross above it. A large plaque announced, in English and in French: "The land on which this cemetery stands is the free gift of the French people for the perpetual resting place of those of the Allied armies who fell in the War of 1914-1918 and are honoured here."

I climbed the steps to find the grave of John Payn. It was easy to find with the information I had been given by the War Graves Commission. It lay near the tall cross, and a miniature rose grew in the carefully tended garden in front of his headstone. The headstone read simply: "52645 Private J.F. Payn, NZ Wellington Regt, 3rd October 1918 age 23. I stood quietly in front of his grave for some time, bringing a farewell from New Zealand to his resting place on French soil. Whatever horrors he faced in his last days, he rests now in the peace and beauty of the French countryside.

There was a shelter holding the register of names of those buried there, and it included a book for recording visits where I recorded that I had visited the grave of John Payn.

Near John's grave lay those of many other New Zealand soldiers killed around the same time, near the end of the War, when their mothers must have begun to expect that they would be returning home. From this cemetery, another war cemetery is visible, just a few kilometres away.

Transport to the cemetery at Etaples proved to be more straightforward, as train connections took me to the town of Etaples, and I just needed to walk a few kilometres north to the cemetery itself, which lay on a main road.

From the roadside, a short path led to a large cross. I found I was not at all prepared for the sheer size of the cemetery that soon lay spread out below me. The huge Etaples cemetery is impressively landscaped, and was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens: all the graves spread out below three terraces with a huge cross standing above them.

I returned to New Zealand, glad in the knowledge that I had found the resting places of these two young men of my family. Each Anzac Day since, as a primary teacher, I have told children of this generation about the young men we remember who never came home.