Walter Edward Bourke was born in Whangarei, New Zealand, on 6th May 1885. The fifth of six children, his parents were Patrick and Elizabeth Bourke, who had emigrated from Ireland in the 1870s.

Patrick died in 1911, at the age of 65. Walter, by this point, was working as a chamber hand in a freezing works. When war broke out, however, he was compelled to step up and serve his country. He enlisted on 22nd January 1917, and was assigned to the New Zealand Auckland Regiment.

Trained at Trentham, Private Bourke’s unit set sail for Europe on 12th June 1917. The voyage from Wellington to Devonport would take two months and, from there Walter was marched into a camp in Sling, near Bulford, Wiltshire.

Within a matter of weeks, Walter fell ill. He was sent to the No. 3 New Zealand Hospital near Codford, but his condition worsened significantly over the next month. His treatment would prove fruitless, and Private Bourke passed away on 25th October 1917: he was 32 years of age.

Thousands of miles from family, Walter Edward Bourke was laid to rest in the extension to St Mary’s Church graveyard, not far from the hospital in which he had passed.

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