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WORDS: KAY BLUNDELL • IMAGERY: ROGER DANSEY FAMILY COLLECTION

Giving voice

A new book tells previously untold stories of Māori in World War I

In hunting down precious

photographs and diaries of Māori soldiers who fought and died for their country in World War I, historian Monty Soutar in his latest book gives voice to many soldiers’ untold stories.

Whitiki! Whiti! Whiti! E!: Māori in the First World War, to be released before Anzac 2019, is being published as part of the First World War Centenary History Programme. Monty, who is Senior Historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, says the book will feature more than 1000 portraits of soldiers, many of which have never been published before.

“Many are from private collections handed down through the generations, often treated as jealously guarded heirlooms by soldiers’ descendants.”

Both Monty’s grandfather and his wife’s grandfather served in World War I. “My grandfather was awarded a Military Medal, and until I started this research I had no idea what he went through.”

Sir Peter Jackson, whose grandfather served with the British at Gallipoli, had the cover image colourised and offered a number of other colourised images of Māori soldiers for the book.

Monty’s acclaimed previous book, Ngā Tama Toa: The Price of Citizenship, features the 28th Māori Battalion, which had a reputation as a fine fighting force during World War II.

His latest book is aimed at telling people the Māori story of World War I, he says. “Many of those stories have not had a lot of coverage. I thought personal accounts should be included in as much detail as possible.”

His research was made easier by Archives New Zealand digitising its World War I personnel files and making them available through the internet. The Papers Past website allowed him to search quickly through thousands of 1914-18 newspapers. Extensive advertising helped him track down hundreds of soldiers’ photographs.

Around 2200 Māori and over 200 Pacific Islanders served in the Māori Contingent and Pioneer Battalion. When contacting more than 100 families, Monty was amazed that some still had diaries after 100 years.

On a visit to a Bay of Plenty home, he says, the grandson of a soldier pulled out from under a bed an old suitcase that contained bundles of letters sent by his grandfather to his fiancée – his grandmother – during World War I.

“All the bundles were tied with ribbon and string. He had written a letter almost every second week for the duration of the war and placed a leaf in each envelope from Belgium and France. They were shrivelled but still there.

“Reading all the letters gave me a real appreciation of what the war looked like through a soldier’s eyes. When the book comes out, people will realise the trauma these men went through and what they must have brought back in their minds.”

While in the Somme region, the New Zealand Division moved forward and took German trenches.

“The whole area had been shelled many times and corpses blown apart. Digging trenches, they came across body parts. They’d be digging away and a skull would be unearthed or bones would be seen in the wall.

“Soldiers wrote home saying they were so used to death that they just shrugged their shoulders and carried on.

“But the majority of men didn’t explain the horrors they were going through to their families. Some told fiancées, but they wanted their families, especially their mothers and fathers, to think they were fine. “I hope this book gives a voice to soldiers in photographs just sitting on a wall,” he says.

1 Sir Joseph Ward (opposition leader of the Liberal Party) speaks to B Company of the Māori

Contingent on the occasion of his and Sir James Carroll’s visit to

Avondale camp on 11 January 1915.

In August 1915 Ward accepted a proposal by Massey and the governing Reform Party to form a

National Ministry for the duration of the war. Ward became Deputy

Prime Minister and also held the

Finance portfolio. Left to right: Sir

Joseph Ward; Capt Pitt; Capt Ennis; possibly Tuahae Carroll, who enlisted in the contingent on 29 January; Sir

James Carroll; obscured; Chap-Capt

Wainohu; Col Arthur Myers MP, exmayor of Auckland; obscured; Capt

Arthur Cleave, Motor Reserve.

2 The company’s haka party responds.