and each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds

The Auckland War Memorial Museum's Cenotaph Database contained a summary of his military record with plenty of useful leads to investigate, and details of the troopship that took him to war.

I was grateful at the time for being able to discover even that much, but in the time since I have been able to locate more details of Eric's life from his military records, some of which are now available online and free of charge. This sweeping crescent of stone in a Belgian field is marked with hundreds of names from the farthest corner of the world. I knew little of Eric Claude Tucker's life when I visited Tyne Cot - in fact, just enough to find his name engraved in Panel 7 of the New Zealand Apse. Both men, who are still kicking, are in some small way a living testament to the Tucker family's loss, over 90 years after the event. Eric Claude Tucker died on 12 October 1917 at the age of 27, and in his memory my great grandparents would later name both my grandfather Claude and his younger brother Eric.

The visit to Tyne Cot was particularly significant for me, as I was able to find the name of my grandfather's uncle, who was killed on the first day of the battle. We were also able to visit the farming country a short distance northeast of Ieper to see the massive war cemetery at Tyne Cot near Zonnebeke, where many of the remains from the vicious bloodletting at Passchendaele are buried. As most tourists do, we attended the solemn Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ieper (Ypres), and we enjoyed the hospitality at Le Quesnoy, where every Armistice Day the town celebrates its liberation by New Zealand forces in 1918. In November 2007 I visited the World War One Western Front with friends, to pay our respects at the sites that were so important to New Zealand's military history.

And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds