Ryman Anzac Book 2019

Stories of valour Wartime memories of our residents

Thank you.

To commemorate Anzac Day we thought it was appropriate to share the amazing stories of some of our Ryman residents who have served their country.

We thank them for their wartime service, the contribution they made to the freedom we enjoy today and for sharing with us their personal experiences.

We hope you enjoy their stories.

This booklet is not intended as a historical document, but simply to share memories and experiences of some of our Ryman Village residents.

Photo courtesy of Noeline Ritson 2

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Roger Gargett, 92 Anthony Wilding Retirement Village

oger was born in Southbridge in Canterbury on 22nd February 1927 and attended nearby Lakeside School.

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He recalls that many of the Japanese did not want to surrender, and part of his job was keeping the peace and stopping them from re-arming.

At 18 he joined the army and trained at Trentham graduating as a sergeant infantry instructor, and served in the 2nd NZEF Infantry Division during the occupation of Japan. He arrived there on the troopship HMT Dunera.

“Nagasaki reminded me of Christchurch – it had a river like the Avon. It was hard to believe the devastation.”

In Japan he took part in patrols to locate Japanese prisoners and did guard duty at the war crimes court.

Roger returned to New Zealand in 1947 and joined the New Zealand Police Force where he served 37 years working in all branches including the Armed Offenders Squad (AOS), undercover work and search and rescue.

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He was twice decorated for bravery in the AOS and was commended for his work as the Christchurch search and rescue logistics officer in the aftermath of the Erebus air disaster in Antarctica.

In 1977 he was awarded the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Service Medal for Community Service.

From 1960 – 1985, Roger attended the dawn services on Anzac Day where he laid the wreath on behalf of the Christchurch Police.

This was also his final duty before he retired.

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Sam Pilbrow, 99 Anthony Wilding Retirement Village

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am was born in Ashburton but his family moved north, and he went to school in Rangiora.

He spent four years in service and was lucky to escape unscathed apart from a severe bout of jaundice.

He joined the army and trained as a gunner, heading to Egypt aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, in 1942.

His strongest memories are of the sea journey to war via the southern ocean where he saw icebergs. They travelled that way to avoid Japanese submarines.

He trained in Egypt, then fought in Italy, and was in action all the way through to victory in Treiste, which was then part of Yugoslavia.

He also recalls being “scared stiff ’’ crossing the famous River Po in Italy.

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After the war Sam farmed at Kaikoura, and was a friend of Charles Upham, who won the Victoria Cross twice and farmed up the road from him.

“Anzac Day is a day for all sorts of memories for me.

It is very special.’’

Allan Reynish, 94 Anthony Wilding Retirement Village

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llan was born in Akaroa and went to St Andrews College. His family farm at Pigeon Bay on Banks Peninsula.

He enlisted in 1944 and joined the 26th Battalion, and trained hard in the expectation of heading overseas. In 1945

Japan surrendered and he was discharged.

“We were disappointed because we’d worked so hard, but then I heard about J-Force and I re-enlisted to go to Japan.’’

He joined the 27th Machine Gun Battalion and he has vivid

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memories of the destruction of Japan in the aftermath of the bombing.

He lost a lot of mates from school in the war and looks forward to Anzac Day. “It’s all about the mateship – there’s not too many of us left now.’’

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Jack Marshall DFC, 98 Anthony Wilding Retirement Village

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ack Marshall was born in Balham, South London, but his family moved out to New Zealand in 1937 when he was in his late teens.

When war broke out he joined the RNZAF and headed back to Britain, and joined 115 Squadron flying Wellington bombers as a tail gunner.

He survived an early crash in his career when his bomber was forced to ditch in the North Sea, but he and the crew were rescued by a fishing trawler after 16 hours adrift.

Later on he switched to a pathfinder squadron, and flew Stirling bombers. He flew with

Fraser Barron, a New Zealand pilot who became a close friend.

Fraser Barron was one of the most highly decorated New Zealand pilots who flew during the war. He was killed when he was just 23 when he crashed over France.

Jack went on to complete 46 missions – two tours of operations – and could have ended his flying career after 45 flights but he volunteered to do one extra mission when another crew was short.

The odds of survival were one in three, and he counts himself lucky to have made it through.

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He married Molly in 1942, and by 1943 Jack’s war was over because he’d flown so many missions. He and Molly returned to New Zealand to start a family and had three children.

He says Anzac Day is significant, and not a day goes by when he doesn’t think about the mates like Fraser that were lost.

“When you fly in a bomber it is all about your crew. My crew is always at the back of my mind, every day.’’

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Shirley Bowker, 88 Bert Sutcliffe Retirement Village

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hirley was born in August 1930 and grew up in Greymouth on the West Coast.

She went to school at Greymouth Primary School and Greymouth Technical High School.

Her mother died of tuberculosis when Shirley was very young, and she remembers being at her grandmother’s house at the age of nine when she heard that war had been declared.

By the time she finished school, the war was over, and she moved to Wellington to complete a librarian course.

It was then, in 1948 at age 18, that she had the idea to join the military.

“I wanted a home away from home, so I joined the army and I ended up with a very good job,” says Shirley.

“I joined as a private and ended up as a staff sergeant.”

She was based at Fort Dorset in Seatoun before moving to the Central Military District (CMD) headquarters in Buckle Street.

“I was the librarian in charge of all the libraries in the army through the CMD, which were both fiction and non-fiction, and I set up the libraries in all the camps and bought books for them.

“I liked it in the army and I felt comfortable doing what I’d been trained to do. And I could buy all these books!”

While the war had been finished for a few years, its impact was still far-reaching.

“Even though the war was over it hadn’t been over for that long and I felt ready to be part of it if needed,” Shirley says.

Shirley also met her future husband Peter in the army and to this day gets a kick out of the trump card she held over

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him throughout their time in the forces.

“He wasn’t as high a rank as I was,” she laughs. “We couldn’t even eat together because he had to go to a different mess.”

To solve that problem the couple bought a house in Wellington and moved off the base.

Shirley’s army career ended when she became pregnant with the first of four children and the couple moved up to Auckland where Peter was originally from.

She went on to teach maths and science at the Diocesan School for Girls in Remuera.

“I loved the army and I loved the organisation of it, the regimented part. It set me up for the rest of my life and it helped me with my teaching career too.”

Charlie Douglas, 96 Bob Owens Retirement Village

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little mouse running up the side of a horse’s foot and promptly being stamped on, is Charlie Douglas’s first memory of the start of World War II. Born on 15 September 1922, in Thames, Charlie grew up on a farm in Kaiaua.

He was just a teenager, deer culling in the Haast, when he got the call from the army. He wasn’t keen to leave, but he finally went by pack horse to Cromwell and had a medical.

He was in the Wairau Valley when he got the order to go to camp in Nelson, then Blenhiem and Papakura for training.

Charlie was in the infantry and did an anti-tank course. After further training at Maadi Camp, Egypt, he headed to Italy, but they were held back as the Battle of Monte Cassino was on, and there were so many casualties. They caught up with the others in Cortino and gradually they headed north.

He recalls being with a mate in Italy, when they dug a shallow trench. The ground was hard so they didn’t dig deep. His cobber sat his small backpack between them. It was just big enough to hold his mess tins, socks and a small bit of soap.

A tank came up behind them through a patch of maize.

They heard the shot as it went between their heads and hit the small pack, wrecking the soldier’s tins and a paperback book. Charlie laughs as he remembers his mate cursing the shooters over the few ruined belongings.

Another close call was at night in Forli. Charlie was in a house sleeping at the top of the stairs.

About midnight there was gunfire, then one shell popped and came screaming through the roof, through the ceiling, through the wall and landed by his head. It didn’t go off !

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“You are trained for it,” says Charlie. “I used to get more nervous if there was nothing happening as I knew it would happen soon. It’s not like on television. You never see the enemy because if you do, they see you too. You keep your head down.”

Charlie has strong feelings about war. “Anzac Day is a memory of failures – I don’t need a special day to remember my mates, they’re always in my mind. There is no glory in it at all. I never wear my medals. I know they mean a lot to others, but not to me. It is part of the glorifying of war.”

Charlie made some good friends during that time. He is the only surviving member of their gang of four and has written many poems about his mates, their experiences and his feelings and opinions about wars.

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Jack Morgan, 95 Bob Owens Retirement Village

ack Morgan was born in Stratford on 2nd December 1923. He turned 18 in 1941.

Five days later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and the USA entered the war.

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mobilisation recommended he go overseas (as they were running low on men) but not in an infantry battalion. Jack was sent in the 9th Mechanical Transport for all purposes.

On March 1st, 1942 Jack was conscripted into the army in the Taranaki Regiment.

Jack headed away in the 13th Reinforcements in 1944 and sailed to Egypt. He disembarked at Port Tewfik then went to Maadi Base Camp, close to the pyramids where the NZ Divisions were based.

Jack worked hard and wanted to get to the top.

This was an ethos he had all his life. He was transferred to Palmerston North to the 1st Taranaki Battalion and sent to Trentham.

After two and a half years in the army, Jack was getting fed up as he wanted to go overseas. If that wasn’t going to happen, he decided he would go into farming as it was a reserved occupation.

He went straight to the top, to mobilisation and got a good dressing down, but afterwards the colonel warmed to him and said get your father’s written consent and come back and see me. He did.

Even though Jack had poor eyesight in one eye and was underage, the director of

Italy was next, and Jack sailed to Taranto. He travelled by truck to Bari and then by rail in cattle–trucks, to Florence.

There, Jack had a driver and they collected the Division's partly destroyed vehicles to repair or use for parts.

These were later handed over to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).

“Monte Cassino was a terrible spot. After the bombing and shelling the town was destroyed with buildings gutted.

The Railway Station where the Māori Battalion had fought and suffered 60% casualties, was more or less a shell.”

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Single men in the 13th, 14th and 15th reinforcements, plus volunteers were assembled in Florence to go to Japan as J-Force occupation troops.

Jack spent nine months in Japan. He landed in Kure on the inland sea at a large naval base where massive ship-building took place, including now destroyed submarines that had been planned for the Pacific.

After establishing and working in his own valuation firm in Palmerston North, Jack later moved to Bethlehem, Tauranga where he developed a kiwifruit orchard.

Thirty-eight veterans went back to Monte Cassino for the 70th anniversary commemorations and Jack was one of them.

And Anzac Day? “To me it means remembering the loss of chaps I knew and grew up with – a day of remembering friends and people who did not return.”

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John Bell, 96 Bob Owens Retirement Village

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ohn was born on the 22nd June 1922 in Wanganui, one of 11 children and grew up on the family farm at Bell’s Junction, near Waiouru.

At 18 years old, in August 1941 John was called up and did three months training at Waiouru. After the attack on Pearl Harbour in December of the same year, John was conscripted and went into the army in Palmerston North.

John was a machine gunner in the 27th Machine Gun Battalion and was posted overseas in 1943 with the 10th reinforcements. He left New Zealand as one of 7,000 men on the Nieuw Amsterdam heading to the Middle East.

After Egypt, he was sent to Italy as, although Italy had capitulated, there was still great danger. John (‘Ding’ to his friends) was considered lucky and had many a ‘close shave.’

Once near Sant’Angelo clambering up a hill being heavily mortared and carrying machine gun ammunition, “as though it was in slow motion I saw mortar hit just above me, ricochet off and go down the hill and explode.”

“That luck stayed with me all through,” said John, “at

Cassino three of us were standing talking, a shell landed, the other two men were killed and I got a clod of earth in my eye, a black eye and concussed.”

As head front-line medic and the aid to the major who asked him to find a place for wounded, John found a house on a stop-bank 8-10m from the Germans. He went upstairs to check there were no snipers inside and an Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE) intended for tanks flew into house and exploded.

John walked out unscathed!

His luck ran out the night he was captured by the Germans.

He escaped in the confusion when the train they were on was attacked by Allied planes.

John ran for eight to ten hours in the mountain ranges until exhausted and sick, he was discovered by some Italians who sheltered him. He was finally returned to his NZ division after ten days away. John still finds it difficult to talk about this time. “As a soldier fighting I had a job to do. I had a duty and somebody ordered me to do it but on this one I was alone.”

During one ferocious battle John was called upon to deliver

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a baby for a young Italian woman in labour. During the birth a mortar shell landed and the light extinguished.

John safely delivered the baby boy in candlelight, wrapped him in a big shell dressing and handed him back to his mother.

In a bizarre coincidence, 50 years later when John and his wife Noeline returned to Italy they met the bambino he delivered and was reintroduced to the boy's mama.

“It was a tough war. It was bloody and it rained a lot. We lost a lot of men and the fighting was some of the fiercest of the war. Especially at Monte Cassino. The Germans weren’t going to give up. Cassino was the worst battle area I’ve ever been in. The shelling, the mortar fire and sniper fire was unrelenting and constant.

It was pretty miserable.”

John attended the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Cassino. It was a moving time for him.

On Anzac Day when he was younger he always went to the dawn parade.

“When we came back, for 30 – 40 years nobody talked about the war. Once I wrote it down I could talk about it.”

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Innes McNeil, 94 Bob Scott Retirement Village

nnes was born in Auckland on 23rd January 1925.

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for about sixteen months, servicing and repairing aircraft.

He was educated at Auckland Grammar and belonged to the cadet unit at the school.

His first posting was Nasouri, Fiji working on PV1 Ventura bombers. Following that he served in Santos, Guadalcanal, and for a year he was in Bougainville at Piva North Strip.

On leaving school in 1940, Innes worked at the St Helier’s Post Office and in 1941 joined the St Helier’s Home Guard.

He applied to join the air force soon after turning 18 and started basic training at Linton Camp, near Palmerston North, where he was selected to take a flight rigger’s course at Nelson Air Base.

A flight rigger has the responsibility to check that the aeroplane is fit to fly in all respects except for the engine, which is certified by a flight mechanic.

In later years Innes has reflected on the immense responsibility of that job.

They were all highly trained and knew what was at stake – near enough was certainly not good enough!

After a posting to an operational training unit at Ardmore, and a six week commando course, Innes now 19, was given final leave before heading to the Pacific Theatre.

Innes served in the Pacific

He stayed on in the rear party at the end of the war, cleaning up and attending to visiting aircraft.

During this time Innes helped to crate up a Japanese Zeke (Zero) fighter that had been captured and was being prepared for shipping back to New Zealand.

He chuckles as he wonders if his initials are still engraved on that aircraft that is now on display at the Auckland War Memorial Museum!

Innes remembers the Americans being keen to buy mementos and easily tricked by his cobbers. Some ‘blacksmiths’ would make swords out of truck springs and punch a few Japanese ‘letters’ on the blades. “I suppose many of them are still above American mantel pieces as war trophies.”

The British Navy aircraft carrier HMS Venerable had come out to the Pacific, after

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the war in Europe was over.

Innes was among those who replaced several navy riggers and mechanics who came ashore, and he remembers it as a tremendous experience watching the planes take off and land on the deck.

Sometimes they would miss the hook wires and crash into the big wire barrier slung across the deck! Innes doesn’t recall being sea-sick and speculates it could have been due to the navy issue rum!

Innes came home from Bougainville, via Noumea on his last tour, on the TSS Wahine which had been converted to a troop ship.

It wasn’t a pleasant trip and he mostly slept on the deck because of sea-sickness.

After his discharge, Innes rejoined the Post Office, went to Morse school and was appointed to the Auckland Telegraph Office. In 1951 he joined the BNZ and retired from there in 1985 as Chief Manager Group Properties.

After a lifetime of involvement in various community and charitable organisations, Innes was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal in 2005.

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Maurice Mayston, 97 Bob Scott Retirement Village

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aurice Mayston was born on the 26th June 1921 in Calcutta, India and was schooled in Darjeeling.

His parents were from the United Kingdom and at age 10, Maurice, with his family, emigrated to New Zealand.

“We always flew in pairs and watched each other’s tail.

You had to be willing to put your life on the line to protect your partner.

He joined the air force and learnt to fly Tiger Moths in Blenheim.

“We had to be pugnacious.

They were our enemy and they were coming over to drop bombs on our home and our families, our villages and towns.”

Later, Maurice became a fighter pilot with 485 (NZ) Spitfire Squadron of the Royal Air Force.

“I loved the Spitfire it was a wonderful aircraft, ” he said.

“The Spitfire can carry three bombs, one in the middle, and one under each wing, but a fighter plane needs to be light and agile, to get out of the way and be able to catch and shoot down enemy aircraft.

“So, they had to be very fast.

You didn’t want it weighed down by bombs. It needed powerful guns set in the wings, to be able to fire from a reasonable distance.

Everything was sacrificed for speed and fire-power.

“When you flew over Germany, you did it expecting to be shot at from the air and the ground.

Maurice didn’t have any lucky charms when he was flying – “that would be more of a weakness than a strength. You were your own defender. You had to be aware and focused.

Constantly alert. We had to be faster and better than them.”

Maurice remembers flying on D-Day. “We took off at 5.45am and as we flew across we had an awesome view of the mighty armada of some 7000 ships in the dawn light moving like ghosts towards the beaches at Normandy.”

His squadron shot down the first German bomber over the

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Normandy battlefield, and quickly followed it with a second.

It wasn’t until after he returned to base that Maurice found that his plane had been hit several times including the ammo tank which had been hit but not punctured.

“Any of those shots could have brought us down.”

“We were just one of thousands of squadrons, but we were proud that we were Kiwis and that our squadron was cutting edge,” he said.

From then until August 1945 Maurice was on continuous active service and was based in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.

Maurice worked for the Bank of New Zealand, and in February 2005 he was awarded the Legion d’honneur, France’s highest military honour.

“When war ended you had to earn a living. It’s hard to do that after war.”

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John Fallow, 98 Bruce McLaren Retirement Village

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ohn was the youngest of six born to a farming family at Riverton in Southland, and was educated at Southland Boys’ High School.

Three weeks before he turned 19 he was at a barn dance and remembers hearing the announcement that Britain was at war with Germany.

At 19, he still needed parental permission to sign up, which his mother initially refused to give. Then John saw an ad saying volunteers were required for the navy.

“I nagged my mother and she finally relented. It was really all about going overseas for most of us.”

In May 1941 John went to Auckland then travelled to

HMS Tamaki on Motuihe Island for training.

“We were all very naïve, but we quickly learned that it wasn’t the individual that was important, it was the group.”

“We were mixed up with some of those scares when submarines were going through Cook Strait.

I remember a howling southerly between Wellington and Picton.”

John served on the HMNZS Achilles, then was posted to Australia for six months, just after the Pearl Harbour bombing, finally earning his status as a commissioned officer.

He was then appointed to HMNZS Tui, receiving notice that he was one of only three in the New Zealand Navy who had received accelerated promotion to sub-lieutenant.

He was appointed to HMNZS Monowai, an armed merchant cruiser, before switching to the HMNZS Humphrey, to trawl the harbours for mines.

Tui set sail for the Solomon Islands for a 12-month commission working under the direct control of the American forces.

Before long John was appointed to first lieutenant and was sent for antisubmarine training.

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»

“We were all very naïve, but we quickly learned that it wasn’t the individual that was important, it was the group.”

« They were sent on a long convoy escorting an ammunition barge and a floating dock that were required in the Ulithi Atoll, right in the middle of the war zone.

This 28-day trip proved to be a jittery time with periscopes forever being reported.

“We never fired one shot in anger,” says John. “There was never anything in my war service records of any glamour, just hard work.

“It could well be said, ‘They also serve, who only stand and wait.’

“The day after I arrived home, Japan surrendered, and the war was over.”

Many years later John received a copy of his War Service Record. He was extremely proud to read the following: “Sub-Lieutenant Fallow did outstanding work as first lieutenant of HMNZS Humphrey, while the manner in which he attended to the details of paying off that ship was most commendable. SubLieutenant Fallow is the best sub-lieutenant RNZNVR I have yet encountered in Wellington.”

John says it laid to rest the doubts he had harboured for many years and made him feel gratified that his hard

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work and efforts had been recognised. However, his views on war remain unchanged.

“War is a useless exercise.

At that time we thought we were doing something for democracy, it wasn’t rampant patriotism or anything like that.

“It did have its spin offs and we were taught a lot of things, of tolerance, discipline, and that came through into later life.

“But no, I don’t think the war moulded me or anything else. The basic conviction was still there.”

Photo courtesy of Donald Smith 27

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Melvin Norton, 88 Bruce McLaren Retirement Village

el was born in April 1931, and grew up in a small village in Hertfordshire, UK called London Colney.

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Mel began his basic training at Cardington in Bedfordshire before moving to Bridgnorth in Shropshire for military training.

Mel was in the RAF for three years and wanted to re-enlist but was unable to due to medical reasons.

He left school aged 14 in April 1945 and went to work at an engineering firm.

He was then posted to Weeton, near Blackpool to train as an engineer on jet engines before being sent to Jever in northern Germany.

“I was still kept on reserve for another seven years but was not called up again.

“I had a works badge that said I was on war work and that entitled me to go to the front of bus queues and also to get an extra loaf of bread a week,” says Mel.

“There were three squadrons of De Havilland Vampire aircraft there and I was posted to No 4 Squadron.

When he turned 18 he was exempted from doing the national service because he was working in a reserved industry, so he was able to finish his apprenticeship as a toolmaker.

“The job of the station was to keep a flight of three aircraft in the air all the hours of daylight, fully armed.

He registered for national service at 21 and decided to join the Royal Air Force as a regular serviceman.

“This was a defence against any interference from the Russians. They were made aware of these precautions and it was hoped that this would deter any action on their part.”

This was in 1952, during the time that Cold War tensions were building.

“Each plane had four 20mm cannons and they were ready to fire at any time.

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“I went to work at De Havillands making parts for Blue Streak guided missiles.”

In 1964 Mel moved with his wife Sheila and two boys to New Zealand, where he ran power stations first in Napier, then in Otara in Auckland.

He moved into Bruce McLaren Retirement Village when it opened in 2014.

Mel always attends the remembrance service held on Anzac Day and had a hat made to wear with his medals.

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Nancy Osborne, 91 Charles Fleming Retirement Village

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an was born in Taihape, where her father worked on the railway.

“When we got called up at 18, we had to go into either the armed forces, or essential work.

“I had been in St John’s Ambulance since I was nine, and I thought I would try to get into medical. I was accepted for the air force before the war finished, but they would not enlist any more women at that time.”

In 1947 they decided to keep the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) going. Nan got the ticket and away she went.

Her initial training was at Wigram. “I went to Hobsonville, which was the flying boat station, as a junior medical orderly. Then to the medical school at Ohakea.” After three years at the medical school Nan graduated and returned to Shelly Bay, Wellington.

Following this, she was selected to go on a special course at Wellington Hospital for another year, and on completion she received state registration.

During this year of study in 1951, there was a watersiders’ strike and the clinic at

Wellington wharf was run by the services. It was an intensive time for Nan. “They slotted us in to help at 5pm after our classes finished. We had to get on the tram and get to the wharf, and work until 10pm. After that came study.”

In 1953 she was sent to Fiji, the start of an exciting time working overseas. “It was the right time to be there during the royal visit. The air force had a lot to do with the organising of it.

“We formed the guard of honour on the jetty when Queen Elizabeth 11 left for Samoa, in a specially fitted out Sunderland aircraft. We then had to quickly get changed, jump into work-suits and get on the high-speed rescue launch in case an emergency rescue was needed.”

They also did a lot of work for the Fijian Government.

“We managed the arrival medical documents for Teal flying boats when they berthed at Laucala Bay. We had to spray the aircraft on arrival, and even provide blood at a moment’s notice!

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“We visited ‘Leper Island’ (the leper colony on Makogai Island) every few months to check on the people there and give inoculations. We used to take treats for them.

It was terrible.”

In 1954 Nan went to Changi, Singapore, where they did medical evacuations back to Australia.

“I went there twice. The patients had to be stabilised before going to Darwin.

“I visited nearly every Pacific island with medivacs. No day was the same. There was a lot of responsibility.”

On her 27th birthday she visited the Malcolm Club in Singapore and it was a thrill to hear Vera Lynn and Tony Bennett sing.

Nan recalls Anzac Day – everyone was involved, cleaning and polishing the night before, and up at 5am for the dawn service.

Of her time in the services she says, “After ten years of very satisfying service, I would definitely repeat my time again.”

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Alan Burgess, 98 Charles Upham Retirement Village

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orn on May 1st, 1920 Alan Burgess is a Sydenham boy and proud of it!

He went to Phillipstown School and lived in the street behind Lancaster Park. Growing up during the depression years, Alan remembers there were only two people employed in his street. He was lucky.

His father, a cabinetmaker, was one of them and he had an apprenticeship as an upholsterer.

Alan was “at the pictures” the day war was declared.

He wondered what all the noise was about when he stepped out. “I went and had a few beers.”

Alan joined the army but his mother did not want her only son going away to war and wrote a letter to inform them he was under age.

When he was 21 he got called up and trained at Waiouru. “I got fairly drunk on the train.”

When they arrived there was a foot of snow. They slept in Bell tents. “You had to go get

a palliasse, fill it up with straw and collect three blankets.

I thought my throat had been cut.”

He left for Egypt on the RMS Aquitania, one of the last of the four-funnelled ships. He remembers the stop over in Fremantle where they went into Perth. This was a last chance for some shenanigans.

“After a few beers we pinched (or borrowed) an Austin 7 and a few of us carried it up the steps of the Town Hall!”

Next came more training at Maadi Camp in Egypt, (“hot!”) getting used to driving the much larger American Sherman tanks.

Heading off to Italy their ship hit a mine and they rolled. “The mine tipped us over but the paravane saved us. We could see the shore so the captain ran it aground at Brindisi where divers patched it up. They continued on to Bari, where they experienced their first action. The Germans bombed

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them in the harbour, but luckily missed.

Alan fought in the Battle of Monte Cassino and watched the historic abbey being bombed by the Americans. “It was just flattened; it was all rubble.”

“I was a tank driver there.

You always think you are never going to get killed. It’s going to be someone else all the time. That’s how you survived. I lost quite a few mates. You were trained in it though, so you carry on.”

He finished up in Trieste, then headed to England to play cricket in the New Zealand services team in 1945.

Alan is a former New Zealand representative cricket player and first-class player for Canterbury. After the war, he ran his own upholstery business in Christchurch.

In 2004 Alan returned to Monte Cassino to commemorate the 70th reunion of the WWII campaign.

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Jack Brunton, 90 Diana Isaac Retirement Village

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ack Brunton has an affinity with military history and remembers in detail serving in a conflict zone that now marks the border between North and South Korea.

Born on the West Coast in 1928, Jack served in the New Zealand Army.

He started his military career aged 20 and over the next 27 years he attained every rank from private to major – a couple of them twice, he jokes.

That time started at Burnham, then Jack moved to Waiouru where he joined the armoured corps. In 1952 and 1953 he was in the Korean War front line.

He started his tour of duty in Pusan, a port on the south of the Korean peninsula. He remembers spending a few days in Seoul before moving to the front line just below the 38th parallel.

The ongoing conflict between North Korea (with the support of China and the Soviet Union) and South Korea (with the support of New Zealand, Australia and the United

States), took Kiwis including Jack up to the Battle of the Hook which took place in May 1953. He remembers firing north into a fixed position on the enemy hillside. They fired shells at 210 yards range into the Korean tunnelling system.

The Korean and Chinese troops were replying, mainly using rifles and other small arms.

He was attached to the British 1st Royal Tank Regiment and the regiment’s Centurion tanks, and counts himself lucky to have survived with only a ‘very, very hot’ shrapnel wound to his lower arm.

There were 19 tanks in each squadron.

“I was pretty lucky. About six months of it was fighting and six months was learning to operate the guns and machine guns. I could work the radios because they had the same radios in their tanks as we were taught back here.”

After about four months, he was promoted to sergeant and to be the commander of the

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four personnel that manned the Centurion, regarded as one of the most successful tanks in the world. The team usually comprises a driver, a radio operator, a gunner and commander.

He did a couple of R&R (rest and recreation) stints in Tokyo remembering it as a time to have drinks with mates.

As a commissioned officer in the mid-1970s he spent the last of his overseas army years based in Singapore, but also visiting Malaysia. He worked as a quartermaster for the New Zealand Infantry Battalion, in charge of the logistics around food, clothing, ammunition and weapons. His family travelled with him at the time with his children enjoying the experience of being at a multinational military school near Nee Soon, connected with one of the port areas of Singapore.

At the end of 1975 he became the civil defence officer for Canterbury lasting in the role for 10 years.

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Arthur Joplin, 95 Edmund Hillary Retirement Village

rthur Joplin was born in Auckland and went to Auckland Grammar before joining the RNZAF.

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his bomber to attack and sink the German battleship Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord using giant Tall Boy bombs.

His fondest memories are of training in the South Island, flying his trainer across the Canterbury Plains.

He trained as a bomber pilot at Ashburton and Wigram before heading to war in 1943.

On his 10th raid he was returning to Britain in bad weather and was forced to crash land. Two of his crew died and his legs were badly injured, and he still suffers from the effects of the crash today.

“I just loved flying, there’s nothing like it. I flew four operations before I was 21. It is hard to comprehend now, it is all such a long time ago.’’

He joined the most famous Royal Air Force bomber squadron of all – 617 – which flew the Dambuster raids in 1943.

He joined the squadron as a novice pilot in 1944. On November 12th 1944 he flew

His war was over and he returned to New Zealand to work in his family’s textiles business.

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In January 2016, Arthur was awarded France’s highest honour, the Medal of Knight of the French National Order of the Legion d'honneur.

Ron Mayhill DFC, 95 Edmund Hillary Retirement Village

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on Mayhill was born in Auckland and trained as a navigator/bomb aimer before heading to war.

He shipped out in 1943 aboard the Queen Mary, for training in Canada.

He then travelled to Britain, where he joined five New Zealand Squadron in Bomber Command, flying Lancaster bombers.

Ron flew 27 missions over Europe, including dangerous missions deep into the heart of Germany to bomb targets including Stuttgart, Danzig, Kiel and Russelsheim. Missions lasted for up to 10 hours, with the crews leaving at dusk and returning as the sun rose.

As a navigator he was

responsible for getting the bomber to the target and then releasing its bombs on target.

On his 27th mission he was badly injured when his Lancaster was hit by flak.

He managed to complete the mission and was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts – he was just 21 years old.

The casualty rate in Bomber Command was incredibly high, running at 55 per cent.

“I’d been in the air force for three and a half years and I was only 21 when I was awarded the DFC. It is hard to believe really.’’

He was temporarily blinded and spent a long time recuperating from his injuries,

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but his flying days were over.

He returned to New Zealand in 1945 and became a teacher.

His training as a navigator had kindled a strong interest in geography, and he became a geography teacher at Auckland Grammar.

Ron is President of the New Zealand Bomber Command Association, and has travelled back to Britain 18 times since the war to visit.

In 2015 Ron was awarded the Medal of Knight of the French National Order of the Legion d’honneur – France’s highest honour.

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Frank Baigent, 97 Ernest Rutherford Retirement Village

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rank was born on the 31st October 1921, an only child, and lived 93 years of his life in Takaka, Golden Bay. He was educated at Nelson College and wanted to join the air force but was turned down when tests showed he was partially colour blind.

In 1941 he was called up for the army and sent for training in Addington, Christchurch and Burnham Military Camp.

When Japan joined the war he was mobilised and sent to Blenheim for a year with the First Nelson Marlborough Battalion.

On turning 21 he was granted special leave and went home and celebrated by having a beer with his father at the local hotel.

Frank said he was disappointed to be placed in the 3rd Division 1 Scots

Battalion, as it was a North Island battalion. He was sent to Linton Military Camp and drove trucks to Trentham camp.

were no roads. He was looked after well by the locals but at times he was given some unusual meals – bats, turtles and even wine for lunch!

He embarked from Wellington on a liberty boat to New Caledonia. It was a calm trip to Noumea, where he saw dozens of damaged warships – remnants from the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Once at the camp he rowed out in a boat to catch a deer which was swimming in the sea! A Tahitian man caught it and towed it back to the beach where he killed it for food and drank its blood.

He recalls after six months, he was sent to drive a truck and transport goods further north. When he returned after a week, all the people had been transferred to other battalions. “I had lost most of my best friends. I ended up at base camp at central Bourail, driving trucks.”

Frank travelled back home from Noumea on the USS Rixey – a part hospital, part troop ship. New Zealand needed man-power for essential services such as agriculture, so Frank returned to the farm in Takaka.

At weekends he would take water down to a camp, travelling through rivers – there

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He was away about 16 months. Even his dog ‘Brown’ remembered him.

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Alice Arrowsmith, 94 Evelyn Page Retirement Village

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n 1924 Alice was born in Sukkur, British India, in what is now Pakistan.

Alice’s mother died when she was young and her father re-married. It was decided that Alice would be sent away to a private boarding school in Ghora Gali, Murree, in the foothills of the Himalayas.

This was about a 600 mile journey from her home.

Alice was at the school when the devastating Quetta earthquake struck, killing tens of thousands of people.

Her eye was injured when she ran from a building where the roof collapsed.

On completion of her school studies Alice decided to follow her two sisters into a nursing career and joined the India Military Nursing Service, training in Agra, the city famous for the Taj Mahal.

Once qualified Alice was sent to Egypt near the end of the war to replace the home-coming troops.

She nursed German prisoners of war in a very primitive military hospital in the desert on the outskirts of Cairo.

Alice, a lieutenant, was soon promoted to captain and one of the prisoners was assigned as a ‘batman’ or servant to assist her.

She lived in a tent. That tent caused her quite a few problems when she accidentally burnt it down! She was virtually court martialled and hauled up before a committe of big colonels.

Luckily they let her go with a warning. But not without making her pay for the tent!

The war ground to a halt and Alice was demobolised. She had the choice of either going

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to England or New Zealand.

She chose New Zealand and arrived there on the HT Samaria, a former liner of the Cunard line, taken over by the Royal Navy as a troopship.

In Auckland she nursed at Cornwall Hospital, and then Hanmer Springs in the South Island. In Hanmer she started pen-pal relationship with the man who became her future husband.

Don Arrowsmith and Alice married, and lived in Rotorua and Auckland. Alice now lives at Evelyn Page Retirement Village where her devoted husband Don resides in an apartment.

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John Wills, 101 Evelyn Page Retirement Village

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ohn Wills was born in September 1917, the oldest of six children raised on a Gisborne dairy farm.

He joined the army in 1940 as part of the Third Echelon and began training in Trentham.

His first assignment was 10 months in Fiji with the 29th Battalion escorted over by HMNZS Achilles. Because he had owned a motorbike he was put in the motorcycle platoon carrying a Lewis machine gun.

After that he was sent to the Middle East on board the RMS Aquitania.

Their base was Maadi Camp, and John changed to artillery, driving the anti-tank gun in the 7th New Zealand AntiTank Regiment.

In Libya during November of 1941 John was involved in a tank battle with the Germans “with Rommel himself,” John says.

“There was a dust storm and a few tanks on fire. We had a few jokers killed and it was all over, we had to surrender.”

That was when he became one of 1,100 soldiers taken prisoner.

“They gave us to the Italians and they marched us in to Bardia.”

“Breakfast was a few coffee beans broken up in a big drum of water, lunch was watery soup and dinner was biscuits as hard as bricks. It rained every night and nearly everyone got dysentery,” John recalls with a grimace.

“They didn’t treat us very well at all. Luckily I had a friend who had a great coat that could keep us both warm at night.”

After about 10 weeks, early in January 1942, they were freed by South African, Indian and Kiwi troops and travelled back to Cairo to recover.

John says he ‘did a few battles up and down’, working as a driver in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt.

He was involved in the Second Battle of El Alamein, in late 1942.

“There were 900 guns fired using every known gun for about two hours.”

John remembers digging trenches for the guns before spotting around 20 German planes flying south. He went off to get his own gun when he heard a bomb coming down.

“I was flat on my back when I came to. The first thing I did

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was feel my head to check for holes in it.

“Then I saw my boots sticking up, so I knew my feet were still attached!

I lost my truck though, it blew three wheels off it.”

He was very pleased later on in Tripoli, to get an improved model of anti-tank gun.

“We were the first four to get a 17-pounder. It could fire a shell through nine inches of steel at 3,000 yards.”

He says he took great pride in his role and was promoted to sergeant.

John was in Italy when his war came to an end.

It took a while to settle back to New Zealand life but using the government assistance to help ex-service personnel returning from the war, he returned to farming.

He never gave up his love of motorbikes, buying one aged 85.

In 2012 John was part of a group of veterans who returned to El Alamein for the 70th anniversary of the battle.

Ron Cackett, 93 Evelyn Page Retirement Village

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on claims he was known as the village idiot – why?

“I put my age up and ran away to join the navy.”

He was born in Puddle Dock, Kent, England in a two up/two down cottage with dirt floors downstairs and a well outside.

There were only about six cottages in the small village, so Ron who was born in January 1926 went to the closest school in Hextable.

He left school at twelve and with war looming, the local builder gave him a job building air raid shelters. He was a busy lad, doing evening firewatching, and because of his local knowledge of the district, was a messenger for the Air Raid Precautions (ARP).

“Our house was like a pepper pot with bombs. We had two air-raid shelters. One out the back and one inside.” One night the village got hit by a load of fire bombs. Clearing up, Ron’s younger brother collected a barrow load of unexploded fire bombs thinking they might be worth a bob or two! “My ol’ daddy went spare! Dad put them in a nearby pond.”

“I volunteered in 1942. I lied about my age and joined the Royal Navy.”

Ron did ten weeks training at the HMS Collingwood shore establishment at Fareham, England, then went straight overseas. He travelled on a troop train to Glasgow and was sent on the Aquitania with eight to ten thousand others to the United States of America.

From New Jersey he boarded a troop train to New York and a week later was sent to Vancouver. In Vancouver he joined the HMS Thane, an escort carrier. They took part in exercises with the US Air Force and visited San Francisco.

Ron travelled widely with the Royal Navy, protecting convoys and ferrying aircraft for use in the European Theatre. In Panama they picked up 200 US marines, took them to the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia where fully packed with aircraft, they headed to New York and back to England.

On arrival in England, after unloading they headed straight

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back to New York, then Capetown in South Africa.

These were dangerous times to be travelling.

Ron, a navy gunner, also served on HMS Ajax the sister ship of the HMS Achilles.

Ron hadn’t had leave for two years, when on the 15th January 1945, the HMS Thane was torpedoed close to home.

They had called into Belfast, picked up nurses and left without an escort. Ron was busy down below packing for his well-earned leave.

She was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Irish Sea, causing an enormous hole extending almost to the keel. The U-boat also hit and damaged a Norwegian tanker in the area. This happened just 10 days before Ron’s 19th birthday.

Ron also served on the RFA Cardigan Bay for a month, but when the war in Europe finished, Ron was on the HMS Ajax in Trieste.

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Rae Dempsey, 94 Grace Joel Retirement Village

ae was born in Lyttleton in September 1924 and went to West Lyttleton School and Christchurch High School.

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told this work was so secret they could not even tell their parents where they were and what they were doing.

She joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in 1942 and was posted to Wigram Electrical and Wireless School.

The next morning they were introduced to where they would spend the next two years – in an underground tunnel where they worked six hour days. Not quite the airport setting they had envisaged!

Rae was chosen as one of only two from this class to be posted to the Northern Group Headquarters in Auckland, in the cipher section. They were excited as they thought they would be going to an airport, but instead they were sent to the old Teachers’ Training College in Mt Eden where they looked down on the volcano’s crater!

They were called before the commanding officer, and were

However, Rae has fond memories of her work there – “That was the most interesting thing I have ever done in my life, career-wise.

We took the codes down and two commissioned officers deciphered them. But we ended up knowing what they were.”

They all had to be delivered to army, navy, air force and

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the American services. They knew when Pearl Harbour was bombed and when Sydney Harbour had submarines in it, but they could tell no one. “It was fascinating.”

“I always hoped I’d meet a famous American like Gregory Peck, said Rae, but I did meet an officer called Ray Bolger a shortish man. He was the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz!” Rae became an accountant and did the book-keeping for her husband, Rob’s building business.

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Rob Dempsey, 93 Grace Joel Retirement Village

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ob was born in Australia on 6th September 1925 and came to New Zealand at seven years of age. He lived in Christchurch, then moved to Lyttleton. At 18 he joined the navy, was sent to Auckland and trained on Motuihe Island for three months. He was sent overseas as there were no ships available in New Zealand.

His first stop was Guadalcanal where they picked up American servicemen, sailed to the Port of Los Angeles and took the train to New York.

The SS Ile de France, which was converted to a troopship took them to Glasgow. He took the train to Portsmouth, enjoyed a week or two of leave in London, and was posted to HMS Duke of York.

They trained at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, in the North Atlantic. Dodging U-Boats they eventually got to Malta. Then when Victory England (VE) day came along they were off to the Pacific.

The HMS Duke of York was the flagship for the British Pacific

fleet. Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, joined them at Manus Island and went on to Hong Kong.

“We were practising off the shores of Japan to bombard Tokyo when the Americans dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. We saw the mushroom of it.”

They were at sea, about 20 miles off the coast. When the second one was dropped, they were sent to Tokyo Bay and by that time, the Japanese surrendered.

The HMS Duke of York anchored alongside the American flagship the USS Missouri where the surrender terms were signed. Admiral Fraser was the British representative.

“I was given time off to see the small Japanese destroyer come in with its gun depressed and a Japanese admiral walked up the steps of the Missouri, where he was frisked at the top.

We were given a certificate to say we were there – it was a

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wonderful sight and afterwards the Allied air forces had a fly past – I have never seen so many aircraft in all my life.

It was an enormous feeling of relief, and an amazing experience to be there.”

They went back to Hong Kong, but there the fighting was still continuing – it was a total blackout, they were behind the times. When they finally surrendered Rob could go ashore.

“Hong Kong was a bustling place at one time. There was nothing left in the shops and the poor Chinese were going hungry. The Japanese had stripped it.”

He signed off in Sydney and returned to Auckland and was discharged in Lyttleton.

Rob went on a two year carpentry course for servicemen and worked in his own business as a builder.

Bruce Hill, 87 Hilda Ross Retirement Village

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ruce was born 30th December 1931, and raised in New Plymouth. He was conscripted at 18, and this was his introduction to a long and distinguished career in the New Zealand Army.

After his three months training he decided to leave his job as a newspaper reporter and joined the army at 20.

During that time he was involved in three campaigns: The Malayan Emergency – a communist uprising which he decribes as the “British Vietnam” 1947 to 1958.

After World War II, the British, who had quietly supported and trained the Chinese communists to fight

the Japanese, refused to let them become leaders.

The communists retrieved their weapons hidden in the jungle, formed a guerilla army and shot some British rubber plantation managers, which created a rebellion.

Britain had a lot of losses but gradually forced the communists out of the towns.

Chinese market gardeners houses were burnt down and they were forced into new villages surrounded by barbed wire and search lights to prevent the communists getting supplies from them.

The British had a lot of power.

They were not only the army, they were the government.

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At times the New Zealanders would be in the jungle for two or three months. The Kiwis were expert in the jungle and were desperately quiet, often using sign language. This unnerved the communists.

If the communists were captured they would be hanged, but if they surrendered they would be treated well and given surrender money. An aboriginal leader brought in five communists to Bruce after he was assured he would get money and they would not be killed. Many others surrendered and got straight on a plane to Hong Kong!

»

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“As a regular soldier you don’t get to choose your wars.”

« Borneo in the 1960s – when the British were withdrawing from Borneo, Bruce fought against the Indonesians who didn’t like the idea that Borneo should be joined (with Singapore) to Malaya, to form the new state of Malaysia. Bruce was in New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) then.

During this time he was sent to Vietnam. He was 40 then, and a bit too old to be patrolling, so he was in Australian Headquarters in Nui Dat, Phuc Toi Province east of Saigon.

He was a young married man when he went to Borneo and his wife was due to have a baby.

He was in Borneo when the baby was born in New Zealand.

He was nearly killed in Borneo and he realised how hard that could have been for her.

“We were aware a lot of people did not want us there; but then a lot of people did. We were also aware there was good reason for us to be there. We were also conscious that our government didn’t really want us there, but were forced to send us there!”

Bruce and his family subsequently went to Singapore in the early 1970s for a two year posting and this time his family was with him.

New Zealand got a special trade deal to sell beef to America for the first time ever. “When we were fighting,

“We lost men there.

The communists were brutal, well organised and very determined.”

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risking our lives, we knew there was a trade deal going on and our lives were on the line!”

As a regular soldier you don’t get to choose your wars. When the soldiers got back, a lot of New Zealanders didn’t like them for having been there and they couldn’t wear their uniforms very often. “They should have been booing the government, not us!”

Bruce started as a private and went through every rank to finally become a major.

He was awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) after 30 years service.

Photo courtesy of Ron Cackett 55

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George Roberts, 87 Jane Mander Retirement Village

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eorge had a harder start in life than most, being a foundling baby in Christchurch, born in March 1932. His first few years were spent in an orphanage in Ferry Road before he was fostered out to the Roberts family.

six weeks training and joined the territorial army where he remained an active member for many years.

He remembers moving up to Auckland in primer four and going to Albany Primary and Northcote Intermediate.

He later worked as a firefighter and was based out of various Auckland stations including Parnell, Auckland, Takapuna, and East Coast Bays.

Like many children of that era, George left school at 14 and went to work at Stotts Butchers.

After the war, compulsory military training (CMT) was reintroduced and after turning 18, George was eligible for the first intake in 1950.

While the training was just a matter of weeks, the impact it had on his life was far-reaching.

He initially returned to the butchers but later did another

It was while he was with the 9th Coast Regiment of the Coast Artillery that he met his wife Hazel.

When CMT was stopped in 1972 George was one of those keen to see it reintroduced because of the skills it gave him in life.

He believed there were great benefits including confidence and discipline that could be instilled in young men who may have had a similar rough start in life to him, with the ultimate hope that would reduce the rising numbers in youth crime.

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George and Hazel married in 1954 later having two children, Gaylene and Gavin.

Hazel started driving school buses which eventually led to the couple buying into a bus business which later took them north to Whangarei.

At one point they had a fleet of 35 of Whangarei’s Blue Buses with George managing the business and Hazel still driving.

In 1996 George was awarded a Queen’s Service Medal for public services.

He wears that medal proudly alongside those he received for his CMT, his firefighting and his territorial army service and is always actively involved in village commemorations for Anzac Day.

Sheraton Gibbon, 92 Jane Mander Retirement Village

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He also worked on the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable as an engineer and has memories of landing aircraft on board ship.

The pair married and moved to New Zealand where Ben worked for a dairy company in Dargaville.

He joined the navy at 16, beginning his training in Portsmouth.

While the details are vague now, he remembers being in the Atlantic Ocean and travelling to Singapore and Hong Kong.

Ben and Ngaire had two children – a son and daughter, and Ben later worked as a taxi driver, a hospital orderly, and had a milk run.

In 1943 he was on HMS Tyne working as a stoker in the engine room.

He escaped any major incidents. “I was pretty lucky,” he says.

He makes a point of going along to Anzac Day commemorations every year.

“It was mighty warm down there; very sweaty work,” he recalls.

He de-mobbed from the navy in 1946, and met his wife, Ngaire, who was in the army.

heraton Eban Gibbon, known as Ben in the village, was born in Sunderland, England in July 1926, and later attended a grammar school in Wolverhampton.

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Darrell Grace, 96 Jane Winstone Retirement Village

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arrell grew up in Invercargill where he was born 8th June 1922 and attended Marist Brothers’ School.

He enlisted in the First Southland Regiment territorial unit at 18 years old. He was working as a clerk for the Southland Electric Power Board at the time. “Invercargill seemed about as far away from the war as you could be.”

Darrell went to Burnham for training and then returned to work, but as the war got serious and the Japanese threat became stronger, with enemy submarines reputed to be prowling offshore, he was called back to Burnham in December 1941.

He had joined the army, but to go overseas you had to be 21 or have parental permission.

Darrell didn’t want to put that pressure on his parents.

On 14th October 1942 however, he was accepted to join the navy. He was in the Officer’s Training Unit, Scheme B, which was later cancelled as there

were no ships available and no convoy to travel with.

Darrell then decided to join the air force as air crew. However, this was not for him. Growing up in Invercargill he had hardly ever seen a plane, so he wrote to the navy to ask to return!

The navy agreed to take him back as a signalman. ‘We were all mad keen to go overseas.”

He trained in Dunedin and was selected to go overseas.

He left from Lyttleton by ship and went around Foveaux Strait. Sailing past Invercargill, knowing his family would be sitting down to tea not knowing their son was going by, was a strange feeling.

“The last thing you thought about was getting killed.

We just wanted the experience of going overseas.”

He did advanced training in South Africa and was told the top signalmen would go to England.

They were posted on combined operations to do fighting. “We

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weren’t told where we were going; we assumed we were going to England.” They went off with no protection in a very small merchant ship across the Indian Ocean where two large ocean-going enemy subs were known to be.

They ended up in Trincomalee, Ceylon manning the main signal station of the Old East Indies Fleet and the British Pacific Fleet.

They were to take part in the combined operation of the invasion of Burma under the command of Lord Mountbatten, but this operation did not go ahead.

“We were stuck in Ceylon for the rest of the war. We didn’t get to go to England!”

Shortly after the war, Darrell served four years as a commissioned officer in the Royal NZ Naval Reserve.

Although not involved in fighting himself, Darrell lost a lot of friends in the war and Anzac Day is a day to remember them.

Donald Smith, 99 Jane Winstone Retirement Village

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on was born in Wanganui, on 28th March 1920.

He is creative, and his artwork and photographs adorn the walls of his room at Jane Winstone village.

He remembers the day World War II was declared and describes it as a horrible feeling.

He portrays his home-life as ‘very sheltered,’ and the territorials he belonged to before the war as “playing soldiers.” He was in the band and played the tenor horn.

It was not an easy transition when he was put in the army.

“I was yelled at – ‘you’re not a soldier!’ I hated having to go to war. I couldn’t get over that someone could tell me to do that. I was thrown into it.”

He wanted to transfer to the air force and was accepted.

He went to Woodbourne, in Blenheim, and trained to become an inspector of engines.

Don depicts his time during the war as being shifted to various centres and having about five different jobs in the air force.

At Waiouru his skills as a draughtsman were in demand. He had to multiply its size by nine.

“It was like designing a town.

It needed a hospital, live ammunition depots, fire station, everything new. To keep a record, I photographed it every day.”

That collection is now safely held in the National Army Museum at Waiouru.

His overseas posting to Fiji was at Laucala Bay, near Suva.

Laucala Bay had been chosen as the flying boat base. The lagoon there was calm water for the Catalinas to land.

Don was a draughtsman and photographer. “I had nobody over me and nobody under me.

I was my own boss. We went by Sunderland flying boat leaving from Mechanics Bay, Auckland in the dark of the night.”

Although his was ground work, he occasionally got to go up in the planes. Once he flew in a Hudson bomber with a blownout window and the weather coming in.

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He recalls the shock of seeing the belongings of a serviceman removed from the bed next to his. His fellow soldier wasn’t coming home in his Catalina.

It was an experience he sadly remembers and brought home the reality of war.

Don used to send home a sack of raw sugar and bananas to Wanganui from Fiji.

Surprisingly they all arrived.

“I see nothing glorious in Anzac Day. I have never attended a morning service and I have no big bank of medals. That wasn’t me at all. The war was over. My goal was to get on with the life I had left.

“I went to train as a minister and then I changed my thoughts to do teaching.

I taught in Auckland and Morrinsville.”

Don followed this with a successful career in real estate in Auckland.

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Photo courtesy of Donald Smith 64

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Bill Broad, 95 Jean Sandel Retirement Village

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ooking out the window of his serviced apartment at Jean Sandel, Bill Broad smiles and points to the sparrows and pukeko on the village grounds.

The peaceful outlook gives him much pleasure.

It’s a far cry from the battles on June 6th, 1944 – D-Day, when the Allies landed at Normandy, France – a time that Bill still has clear memories of.

Bill was born in Folkestone, Kent, England on 24th May 1923. At 15 years of age he decided to leave school and joined the fire service as a messenger.

Folkestone was in a vulnerable position and many people were evacuated. It became known as an area called “Hell Fire Corner.” They were busy dealing with situations caused by attacks from German fighter bombers, and later cross-channel shells.

He recalls having an Anderson bomb shelter in the garden at home, which was used when the enemy planes passed over the south of England. If they

hadn’t dropped all their bombs further north, they would drop them on land before they headed back out to sea.

At 18, Bill was called into the army and posted to Hilsea Barracks, Portsmouth where he joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. He was quite satisfied to get away from the sleepless nights at Folkestone.

After a bout of scarlet fever Bill returned to the barracks to find he was transferred to No10 Ordnance Beach Detachment where they trained for the upcoming D-Day landings in German-occupied France.

In Scotland they practised further landings on the Isle of Arran, before heading back to south England where they camped in the New Forest until they were ready to leave.

They finally left England on an American landing ship, under the cover of darkness and landed in flat bottomed boats in Arramanches, France, early morning.

Bill remembers a French woman pointing out to sea and

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yelling, ‘Go home Tommy!’

He thought, “that’s a really good welcome!”

In his hand, Bill still holds a treasure from that place: a small vial of sand, a keepsake from Gold Beach (the British code name for the landing area).

Their journey across Europe through to Germany lasted until the war ended. They had completed their jobs and kept the forward troops supplied with provisions, weapons and ammunition.

In Hanover, Bill was promoted to staff sergeant and met his future wife, Christa.

Seventy years after the landings, on the anniversary of the Battle of Normandy, the French Government acknowledged his services and actions by awarding him with the Legion d’honneur, France’s highest military honour.

“We need to be united as a world, where we are all the same. We need to talk, to try and work things out. I can’t understand what is going on in the world now,”Bill says.

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Jack Elliot, 99 Jean Sandel Retirement Village

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t was no surprise to young Jack Elliot of Inglewood when WWII was declared. The Empire was strong then. If Britain went to war, so did we.

His mates were going, and he volunteered to join the army in October 1940.

On the 19th December, 1940, just before his 21st birthday, Jack departed Wellington on the QSMV Dominion Monarch for training at Maadi Camp in Egypt.

He was drafted to 25th Battalion at Helwan camp, then sent to Greece.

During a night march, in Greece, Jack tripped and fell on his knees and later, found out he had chipped his kneecap. It was swollen and painful and he was sent south by ambulance, trying desperately to avoid the German raids.

He was then transported by Red Cross train to a hospital north of Athens where he stayed for two days before finally being evacuated by ship, to Crete.

In mid-May he was sent back to Egypt.

After a period of recuperation, it was off to the desert for Jack; into Libya and Sidi Rezegh where there were many battles. Early one morning they captured over 200 German soldiers.

Ammunition was getting low when they spied tanks advancing in the distance from the wrong direction. As the tanks formed a semi-circle around them, there was little they could do but surrender.

They were lined up and marched west where the Germans handed them over to the Italians, who shipped them to Italy. They sailed through rough seas heading to the Bay of Naples where it was bitterly cold and snowing.

They were moved north of Naples to a tented transit camp where they were given a blanket and Red Cross food parcel.

Two weeks later another train transported them to Chiavari on the west coast to Campo 52.

The conditions were crowded with around 120 in the big huts

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and 20cm of snow outside.

Rations were sparse, and a Kiwi doctor estimated if they remained in bed and did nothing, their rations would just keep them alive.

The prisoners’ health slipped, and body lice became endemic. As winter turned to summer, conditions slowly improved, however by Christmas 1942 the snow had returned, and the Kiwis and Aussies were marched back to the train station.

They had a long journey ahead to Campo 57 near the Yugoslavian border, in north east Italy.

By the beginning of September 1943 the war news was considerably better with Mussolini deposed and the Allied forces on Italian soil.

September 1943 saw the surrender of Italy, but the Germans still occupied Italy and were far from giving in. As the Italians fled the Germans arrived and sent them to Stalag 8A in Germany.

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“The Americans arrived and their long-lost freedom at last was regained. The 700km journey was over.”

« They were put to work in German camps. Jack worked in a sugar refinery for sugar beet – a twelve-hour day.

would be evacuated, and on January 20th they began what would become a long threemonth march westward.

When the beet season ended they were loaded on a train again, this time south, to a camp where they worked in a factory manufacturing rayon from wood.

Food was scarce, but at times they could grab a turnip from the roadside, or if lucky, catch a pigeon to cook.

In mid-December 1944 things changed for the worse. Red Cross parcels ceased to arrive due to the German railway system being wrecked.

The Russians were advancing.

The prisoners were given six days warning that their camp

In the middle of March, they were surprised by the arrival of Red Cross parcels. But still the long dreary haul of one foot after another continued, day after day.

They passed between Leipzig and Dresden and noticed increased Allied air activity.

Many men collapsed and died

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of exhaustion, disease or starvation.

In Ditfurt, West Germany, on Thursday April 12th, 1945 the Americans arrived and their long-lost freedom at last was regained. The 700 km journey was over. That and the stress of years of captivity took some time to sink in.

A troopship to England was the start of a trip home, then down to Margate on the coast for a break, before returning to New Zealand and their families.

Photo courtesy of Roger Gargett 71

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Jack Pringle, 93 Jean Sandel Retirement Village

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ack was born in the small Central Otago town of Naseby in 1925 and grew up in nearby Ranfurly.

on Manus Island and then joined the American fleet, south of Japan just before they attacked Okinawa.

He worked for the Post and Telegraph Department and at 18 he volunteered for the navy.

The 82-day battle began on April 1st and continued until June 22nd, 1945. During that time, they never left the ship.

Supplies were delivered about every two weeks including oil, food, ammunition, and aircraft to replace those lost.

Living in an inland part of the South Island and having never left Otago, Jack had hardly ever seen a ship before and certainly had never been in a boat of any sort!

His training began at Devonport Naval Base, then on to nearby Motuihe Island, Lyttleton and Auckland. While finishing training in Auckland the HMS Gambia arrived. “It was only about 8500 tonne but it seemed enormous to me. I had joined the navy and I wanted to go to sea,” said Jack.

Fortunately for Jack, a telegraphist had taken ill and Jack joined the ship which headed to join the British Pacific Fleet forming in Sydney. It was his first time on a ship. “I thought this was marvellous,” he recalls.

“Sailing into Sydney Harbour I couldn’t believe the sight.”

They headed to the Admiralty Islands where there was a huge American naval base

They were the fleet guides escorting their aircraft carriers. Their role was to supress Japanese air activity. They were bombing the Japanese airfields that kamikaze pilots were using.

“Eventually the Americans took over Okinawa and we all moved up.

“On the 6th August we detached from the main fleet to bombard some airstrips on Formosa (Taiwan).

“That day they dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. We thought the war would be over, but it wasn’t.

“A few days later they dropped the second bomb. We were just off the coast about 200km north of Tokyo.

“On the 15th August the Japanese surrendered.

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We were still just off the coast. I was on the bridge when I heard all this gunfire – but the war was over! I went outside, and a kamikaze was coming straight at us from the stern, being chased by an American fighter who shot it. The Japanese plane hit the water about 50 meters in front of us and blew up.

“I have often wondered if this one guy even knew the war was over, or was he determined to give his life to the Emperor?

“About a week later we sailed into Sagami Wan Bay near Tokyo Bay. We were given clear passage into Tokyo Bay where we anchored not far from the USS Missouri where the surrender was signed. We could see them (the Japanese) going up the gangway in their top hats.”

After the signing the Gambia was detached and sent to the inland sea south of Tokyo. There were Japanese prisoner of war (POW) camps there. “We went to help to get POWs onto hospital ships and send telegrams back, giving the names of the blokes who were rescued.”

“We never learn, and you never forget it.”

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Peter Brightwell, 94 Jean Sandel Retirement Village

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eter grew up in a remote part of New Zealand called Cape Turnagain, Herbertville on the East Coast of the North Island.

He was born on the 4th April 1925 and celebrated his 21st birthday on his way to Japan in 1946.

“I signed up just before the end of the war. I was excited after the army training,” he said, “and I was old enough to join up for the occupation force in Japan.

He sailed to Japan on the troopship, SS Empire Pride and was there as part of J-Force for about 18 months.

“I was a Jeep driver for our commanding officer, so I got to drive all over different parts of Japan.” There he witnessed

the remains of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombing and recalled it as, “just flat”.

Part of their job was peacekeeping but also to check for hidden stashes of munitions.

Many Japanese people did not want to surrender and there was always the chance some may retaliate.

It was such a different culture for someone who had never left New Zealand, but Peter picked up some of the language and can still count to 10 in Japanese!

“We made good friendships.”

On return to New Zealand, Peter attended a carpentry course offered by the army

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and an apprenticeship to become a builder. “I chose Masterton,” he said. He is a firm believer in the benefits and discipline of military training for young men and women today.

A keen musician, Peter bought a tenor saxophone for £25 while he was in Japan and he still plays it to this day.

He belongs to a band called ‘Top Hat’ and he sometimes entertains the village residents.

Peter commemorates Anzac Day. He had two older brothers who went to World War II and he said it brings back a lot of memories.

Clyde Wellington, 93 Julia Wallace Retirement Village

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lyde was born in Whangarei on 1st October 1925. He lived in Tutukaka on a small dairy farm and attended primary school in Ngunguru.

He left school aged 14 to work on the farm.

At 16, Clyde joined the Home Guard signal section with his father. Word came through they were getting uniforms but when Clyde lined up for his he was told he was too young.

“I was angry. Outside I met a fella who said, ‘why don’t you join the real army’?” Clyde headed off to the recruitment office and told them he was 18. Luckily his uncle who was a recruiting officer was not in the office that day!

After working in camps in Northland, Clyde was posted to a camp at Waitangi to help set up a small telephone exchange. In November of that year Clyde overheard a conversation with the commanding officer (CO)

that the air force were now recruiting, so he decided to apply. He sent his birth certificate away and even though he was underage he was accepted.

At the air force training camp in Rotorua, Clyde trained as a wireless operator and showed a natural aptitude for navigation, achieving over 80% in his exams. The air force wanted him to train as a pilot but Clyde didn’t want this and hatched a plan with a mate to fail their final navigation exams. “We failed alright – I got about 36%. I overdid it!”

Ordered to explain to the CO he said he wanted to be a wireless operator and train in Canada. He was promptly dismissed after being told he should be grounded.

Clyde finally got his wish to go to Calgary and left Auckland on the USAT Sea Barb to sail to San Francisco. He remembers having to wait until

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the submarine nets were lifted from under the Golden Gate Bridge, so they could enter the harbour.

Clyde was determined to do well and pass his radio exams.

He hadn’t had a lengthy education and found the theory and algebra difficult, but he studied hard late at night and passed with 73%.

He was thrilled to receive his radio flash, wings and sergeant stripes. Very soon he was recalled back to New Zealand as they required wireless operators in the Pacific.

They formed squadrons at Ohakea and headed to the Islands. Clyde served in Guadalcanal, Emirau Island and Los Negros until the end of the war.

Anzac Day is an emotional day for Clyde. “You think of your mates. We still lost 15 men even though we were not in any air fighting.”

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Rutene Irwin, 92 Kiri Te Kanawa Retirement Village

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oung, yet determined, Rutene Irwin tried numerous times to enlist in the army. He believed if you were fit and able, you should sign up.

New-born Rutene was raised by his grandmother in Torere, East Coast.

At 14, he tried to sign up. He arrived from school at the Post Office in his shorts, to enlist.

“At my medical examination the doctor took one look at me and said, ‘boy go home and grow some more hair on your chest’.”

That’s when he left home.

He ran away to Edgecumbe and worked in the butter factory. He tried again in 1942, and three months later was accepted into the army.

His boss told him he couldn’t go because he was working in an essential service, but Rutene was going! After his training in Papakura was completed he was told he was to be deployed overseas and given leave.

He went to Napier to visit his mother who was surprised to see him in uniform. He told her

he was on final leave before heading overseas. She was furious and demanded the army kick him out. He was only 17 and was given his marching orders and told to pack his gear and go home. “I went into the toilets and cried,” he said.

Rutene returned to Auckland and went straight to the recruiting office to re-enlist.

Six months later he was accepted. “I was sent to Fort Dorset, then I requested to go to Trentham where the Māori Battalion were training.” He joined C Company 28 Māori Battalion. “I was too late; the 12th contingent was about to be deployed and I was too young.” He stayed at camp till the end of war, then Japan surrendered, and he finally left to serve in J-Force.

He was sent to Chōfu then Etajima where he was promoted to sergeant. “I was just a child.” Most soldiers were sent home but Rutene refused.

“I wanted to stay. I was a staff sergeant then. I was later promoted to sergeant major – I was 23.”

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Rutene was seconded to Hiroshima for about six months where he suffered burns and was hospitalised.

When it came time to return to New Zealand, war had broken out in Korea. He asked to travel straight to Korea, but it wasn’t sanctioned.

On arrival home he was recalled to Trentham. He joined the armoured corps, but Rutene was involved in an accident when a bridge collapsed. “I was invalided out of the army.”

Rutene returned to Japan three times. On visiting Hiroshima, he was astounded by the changes. “You would never believe there had been a war – all evidence was gone.”

He recalls the camaraderie of those days. “We were mischief, we got drunk and played rugby, all of those kinds of things – you always remember them [your mates].”

Rutene was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the community in 1999.

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Jock Miller, 85 Malvina Major Retirement Village

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orn 2nd March 1934 and educated at boarding school in Gisborne, Jock’s home was on a farm in an isolated area near Ruatoria, on the East Coast.

Jock said he had an interest in mechanical things, but his employment was in a bank!

“It was good. We had to make sure everything was in working order.

sent away on back of trucks amongst stores of blankets and provisions.

“My father was a sharemilker, and in those days an average farm had about 30 cows. Very small compared to today.”

“I was lucky as I worked in the Commercial Bank of Australia, and they had a generous scheme where I was paid the difference between my CMT pay and my normal pay.

“CMT was a good thing – I had skills I didn’t have before.”

“I was doubly lucky, as I ended up in Papakura rather than Waiouru for training. It was quite civilised as I was living in Auckland. I went to camp on Sunday night, and most weekends we were allowed to go home.”

Jock’s thoughts on the military today are, “We need forces to protect us. Our training meant we could fit in quickly and do what they needed us to do.”

There were annual training camps when they were

Jock stayed with the bank for his working life.

At 18 Jock was drafted into the army under compulsory military training (CMT). “I had to go, I had no choice,” he said.

Jock belonged to the Royal New Zealand Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RNZEME) a corps which was formed in 1946 and comprised of army trained craftsmen who repaired and maintained army equipment and vehicles.

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Jock was in the corps over a three-year period. “Three or four times a year we went to camp.”

They learnt survival skills at the camps. “I enjoyed my time on camp. We all enjoyed it.”

He was a member of the RSA in Paraparaumu and on Anzac Day he marched on parade.

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Michael Button, 83 Malvina Major Retirement Village

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ike was born in the United Kingdom in May 1935, and left London at 18 to come to New Zealand to avoid conscription for two years.

He did his national service in New Zealand where he was a military policeman training in Waiouru and Auckland.

Mike then decided as a single man he would volunteer to go to Malaya during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960).

He left Wellington, sailing on the SS Captain Cook to Kota Tinggi, Malaya. “We were waited on hand and foot by the crew. It was luxury.”

On arrival in Kota Tinggi he was transferred to the rifle company. His captain said, ‘I don’t know what we are going to do with you Button, you’re a policeman.’ “So, I was assigned to the armscote. Every night I put all the weapons in the cote and locked them in.

“We finished up at Ipoh. We had a good life there – we guarded the guys when they were relaxing and swimming; always with a Bren gun.”

Mike recalls a night patrol outside Ipoh. “There were six of us on patrol. Two with machine guns, two with shot guns and two with Bren.

Suddenly, six guys walked into the village. I thought, ‘this is it.’ We got five of them and the sixth guy jumped into the swimming pool.”

The guy in the pool pulled a grenade from a bag threw it at them. It landed close by, smoked and stopped. Later, the others asked Mike what was in the bag. It was full of hand grenades and they were all live. They were so lucky.

“It would have been a mess,” said Mike.

Mike has a vivid memory of when he was going to relieve another soldier. “I walked up the track settled behind the Bren. I could see about 50 metres of the track, then all of a sudden, I heard a rustle.

I thought, ‘Oh god,’ when a ruddy bear stepped onto the track! The smell was terrific.

He stared at me, and I stared at him then he rushed back into the bush!”

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Another time one of their guys got separated from the company. It took him two weeks to get out of the bush, helped by the local people.

“I was two years in Malaya – many times when I was in the dark with the geckos and mosquitos I thought, ‘what a bloody fool am I. I could have stayed home’.

“But it was good, and it taught me a lot about life. I can’t recall complaining about things again, I just rolled with everything when I got back. It didn’t worry me.

“I was 25 when I came home.

I went back to Whitcombe and Tombs where I had been working before.

“I realise now, how lucky I am.

“During the war, when I was in Malaya, there were times I thought if anyone twitches I will pull the trigger. I have given up on the idea of shooting people.

Enough is enough. I don’t feel killing people is justified.”

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Noeline Ritson, 101 Malvina Major Retirement Village

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oeline was born in Auckland on Boxing Day, 1917 and finished her school days in Papatoetoe.

Noeline had been a member of St John Ambulance service since she was 12, first-aiding at local events, so, on hearing the army were looking for women to recruit to work in the Middle East, she decided she would like to go.

She was 23 when she showed the application forms to her parents. “My mother started to cry, and my father was grumpy, so I thought, this is no good – I’ll tear it up and not go.

“Six weeks later, the New Zealand Air Force wanted recruits, and I thought, I’ll do my bit. Being in New Zealand – that was ok.”

Noeline was placed at Whenuapai to work as a medic.

“The matron said, ‘I don’t think you’ll stand up to it my girl.’ I said, ‘I think I will’.” And Noeline proved her wrong. She stayed in the air force until the end of the war in 1945.

At Whenuapai they worked in the small hospital located in a nearby house. For living

arrangements, they were billeted in local homes.

There were a lot of accidents from the Tiger Moth training, and that meant some serious injuries to treat, as well as diseases and sickness like influenza.

She worked at Whenuapai for about 18 months before she was transferred to Seagrove Station, just out of Papakura.

It was a small station on an old farm. The accommodation was in the lower part, and the hospital up the top of the hill.

“We had to walk about a mile to the hospital. On early morning duty starting at 6.00am we got a lift up the hill from the transport men. When matron heard about this she was not happy. She said, ‘You’ll not waste petrol. You will walk!’.”

So, walk they did.

She was also sent to Hobsonville, No1 hospital.

There they were treating “the boys coming home with skin complaints.”

Noeline says, “It was like an ordinary job, but we had shift work till 10.00pm. You were restricted, and you couldn’t

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leave the station without a pass and had to be in by 10.00pm.

“You had a life on the station. I wanted to go to Suva, Fiji and gave my application to the matron. My mother had been in hospital and I had earlier applied for leave to look after her. The matron would not allow me to go – ‘you won’t get leave from Suva to care for your mother,’ she told me.”

After the war Noeline married.

Trying to arrange a marriage with her in Auckland, and a fiancé studying in Dunedin was difficult. Noeline remembers the day he sent a telegram to say he had managed to get enough navy suiting fabric to make a wedding suit.

“Navy was a bit out of fashion – dark grey was the thing in those days,” she said. “I sent back a telegram saying, ‘Hold suiting; letter following.’ He looked at it and thought – God! She’s going to jilt me!” she laughed.

They finally got married with the groom wearing the colour of the day – a dark grey suit.

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Murray Drury, 84 Margaret Stoddart Retirement Village

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urray Drury was born at his family home in Christchurch in 1935 and trained and worked as a butcher while also enjoying a role in the Army Territorial Force.

town’ of Waiouru. Murray says there was a real party atmosphere on the train to Picton, and then getting kitted out with the required gear on arrival at base at midnight.

He joined the military after being conscripted in 1953. Compulsory military training, known as CMT, was reintroduced to New Zealand following World War II.

He has fond memories of driving Scorpion tanks. This was around the time of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in June 1953, and her later visit to New Zealand.

He became a territorial within the 1st New Zealand Scottish Regiment, which was later converted into an armoured unit of the Royal New Zealand Armoured Corps.

The training on the central plateau included tank manoeuvres, small arms training and sessions on the firing range. He and fellow territorial soldiers did some preparatory work for involvement with ‘Kayforce’ in the Korean War, but in the end did not join other Kiwis stationed overseas.

Murray is a Cantabrian and a details man. He even remembers his intake number, 821135, and has fond memories of the territorial force, also known as the army reserve.

His initial six-week “boot camp” training involving marching, exercise, and camping out, took place at Burnham, south of Christchurch.

Later he and other young men took trains and a ferry to the central North Island ‘military

A “pretty good” Waiouru army rugby team was formed, doing well in a North Island competition including teams from townships like Taihape.

Over his eight years with the territorials he rose to the rank of sergeant and very much enjoyed the comradeship.

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Each February territorials from Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin would gather for two-weeks at bases like Linton Military Camp.

Back in Christchurch, the old Addington prison was used as the headquarters for the Canterbury territorials, he says. The prison and grounds were big enough to be able to store three armoured cars, and some smaller Ferret scout vehicles taken on weekend camps. Often on a Friday night he and mates would gather for a drink. He now remembers them on Anzac Day. Later, Murray represented Canterbury province as a front row rugby player, binding down with the likes of Dennis Young and Jules Le Lievre (both All Blacks). He also loved salmon fishing at the Rakaia river mouth.

Now at Margaret Stoddart he is living just down the road from his old neighbourhood and family home in Wharenui Road, Upper Riccarton.

Norman Henderson, 86 Margaret Stoddart Retirement Village

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orman Henderson was born in Dunedin, and used his civilian tailoring skills to make a smooth transfer into the military.

Norman served for 26 years in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, becoming a warrant officer. He also enjoyed running and boxing, becoming a ‘gloves’ champion in the armed forces.

His bespoke tailoring skills, learned at Dunedin’s J&J Arthur, put him in good stead for his air force career.

He did his compulsory military training from 1951 to 1953.

He learned how to pack parachutes for the Territorial Air Force at Taieri Aerodrome near Mosgiel in Otago.

Norman stepped up, eventually becoming a warrant officer.

He transferred through a good number of the New Zealand bases including Wigram, Shelly Bay, Woodbourne and Whenuapai. He spent the longest amount of time at Ohakea, before finishing his

career as a clothing inspector at Te Rapa base.

He married his wife Ann in 1954, in time to take her to Ohakea. They lived in nearby Bulls and had two children, Sharon and Brent, now aged in their 60s.

He points to his hearing aids when remembering the “screaming” noise of the British-made de Havilland Vampire jet fighters at Ohakea.

He has other memories. One of the squadron commanders took him aloft from Ohakea, then handed him control. “He said: ‘here you are, you take the stick for a bit … I said this is a bit expensive for me to be playing around with’.”

On another occasion, one of the squadron leaders at Woodbourne asked him at the last minute for a new mess dress uniform. He was up until 4am one morning doing the required tailoring to make the white mess uniform to be worn with a formal bow tie.

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Twice he was part of escorts and guards of honour for Queen Elizabeth II on her December 1953–January 1954 New Zealand coronation visit, firstly at Whenuapai and then when she departed from Bluff.

He has kept his own air force garb including a formal mess kit jacket and is proud to show them off, as he is the certificates and photos mounted on his wall.

In 1955 he took out the air force featherweight boxing event, then the crowning glory was a combined services certificate for a bantamweight championship title in 1957, coached by an ex-British commando. The commando told him, given that his opponent knew he’d not fought for two years, not to throw punches in the first round. In the second round the coach told him the navy opponent was wide open for a ‘right cross’. That advice won him the fight!

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Brian Moore, 96 Ngaio Marsh Retirement Village

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rian Moore was born in Christchurch and went to St Andrews College.

He enlisted in the army in 1942 and joined the signal corps.

He was trained to report Japanese movements in the Pacific but was sent to Italy after the tide in the Pacific war turned against the Japanese.

In Italy he had just disembarked at Bari Harbour when the liberty ship SS John Harvey was hit by a formation of 40 German bombers, exploded and sank.

Brian was just 50 metres away when the John Harvey exploded and was injured in the blast.

The secret of the John Harvey was sealed for 60 years, but it was later revealed the ship was carrying deadly mustard gas, and Brian was a victim of the gas explosion.

He was blinded in one eye and lost the hearing in one ear. He also contracted hepatitis.

When he was discharged the army medical board told him

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not to plan for anything after his 60th birthday – because he was unlikely to live that long.

He wasn’t discharged until 1946 and when he landed back in Christchurch a girl called Audrey – who he’d met at a club in 1942 – was there to greet him. They were soon married.

Anzac Day is the day he remembers his mates, his experiences in the war and celebrates the bonus years he’s lived.

Dick Yates, 99 Ngaio Marsh Retirement Village

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or Dick Yates, recounting his memories of wartime in Italy does not come easy.

“I came home with a very determined decision to forget the war. I hate war and I hated being in the war.

I never joined an RSA.” Dick, who was born on November 1st 1919, grew up in Christchurch, has never forgotten the day New Zealand joined Britain in the war against Germany. He was 19 at the time and working as a clerk for South Island Motors.

“The army commanded me”, he said. “They put their finger on me and said ‘Hey! We need you’.”

After doing some basic training in Ashburton where Dick learnt to drive a truck he was sent to Waiouru. The Japanese threat to New Zealand meant they were held back from going overseas immediately, so Dick spent a freezing winter there sleeping in a tent.

Dick was sent to the Middle East, but by this time the

fighting was over in North Africa. He recalls Maadi Camp in Egypt, “When you open your tent in the morning, you are looking at the pyramids.”

By this time support was needed in Italy so Dick went by ship to Bari. He remembers feeling sorry for the plight of the Italian people.

More than 70 years on, some of Dick’s memories of his time at Monte Cassino are still raw and heart-wrenching.

He lost his best friend in Italy – shot by a sniper when he was standing up in his tank.

“This was not something I chose to do,” he said of his war service.

In Trieste, Dick was able to begin his studies to become an accountant. They were based there for some time as the first ships going home were used to repatriate prisoners of war.

The education officer gave him further papers to study on the way home on the SS Strathmore. With thousands

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of men aboard, during the passage he was reunited with his oldest brother.

On his return home he continued studying night classes at Christchurch Technical College and graduated as a professional accountant.

When he returned to his earlier job, and was greeted as “boy,” Dick knew it was time to find another job. He read in the newspaper that Firestone Tire and Rubber Company were going to build a factory in Christchurch.

He applied for and was appointed as an assistant cost accountant. He later became chief accountant and then financial director of Firestone.

After retiring at 65, Dick worked tirelessly until he was 90 when his eyesight deteriorated, doing voluntary accounting work for his church in New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

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Gwen Stringer, 95 Ngaio Marsh Retirement Village

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wen was born in the city of Derby, in England, on 8th June, 1923. She stayed in England for the duration of the war and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).

To begin with, it was difficult to get permission for her to join the air force as both her parents had died and her older sister was required to sign the papers. She initially refused but at 17.5 years, Gwen convinced her sister to sign.

“I didn’t want to go into a noisy munitions factory, so I put my name down for teleprinting.”

1n 1941 Gwen was called up to Bridgnorth, a town in Shropshire, for an eight week basic training course. She remembers needing 30 words per minute to pass and she

was more than capable of this.

Gwen recalls that there were 30 teleprinter operators to a hut, watched over by a sergeant and a corporal. It was secret work and they were not allowed to talk about it. Once Gwen saw her flying instructor fiancé Lester’s name come in on the teleprinter. It said he had been shot down.

She panicked but was quickly told by one of the operators it was not her Lester.

Her memories of this time are of the wonderful cameraderie between the women.

Everyone was a friend. True and loyal, lifelong friends.

They took it in their stride – they weren’t afraid – they just got on with their lives.

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She can remember being stationed in Box, Wiltshire.

Unbeknown to them, the Box Hill Tunnel and surrounding area was a labyrinth of tunnels and mines used as a secret ammunitions depot by the Royal Air Force since 1936 and stored up to 3,000 hand grenades, 31,000 tons of explosives and TNT – all right under them! “We only found that out after the war!”

“It was the best, a wonderful time with nowhere near the fear of today. We made our own fun. At Cranwell in Lincolnshire there was always a dance on.”

“You lived for the day.”

Jim Calder, 96 Ngaio Marsh Retirement Village

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im’s a Cantabrian through and through. He was born on 16th July, 1922 in Christchurch and attended West Christchurch District High School, but in the depths of the depression years his parents could not afford a uniform, so he enrolled at Christchurch Technical College.

His first job was with the New Zealand Farmers’ Cooperative, as, in his own words, “a dogsbody mucking about the office.”

In 1939, Jim followed his older brother into the navy by joining the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy.

One memorable moment was seeing the departure of the First Echelon for the Middle East.

“I was in Cook Strait on a minesweeper in January 1940 and saw them leave.”

Jim witnessed the Second Echelon leave when he was working on the Wairangi and recalls the remarkable sight of the brand new 30,000 – 40,000 ton Andes and the HMAS Canberra which lay at heads.

Jim served on the HMS Monowai – a merchant cruiser strengthened and refitted in Auckland with outdated guns made in 1901! “Pea shooters.

44 gallon drums in the hold were welded together to keep it afloat!” It was used to patrol and escort between New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands, and escorted the Rangatira to Fiji as part of the Third Echelon.

being sent to HMS King Alfred shore establishment for officer training at Hove.

In 1942 Jim volunteered to be trained as an ASDIC (Sonar) operator at the anti-submarine division in St Mary’s Bay, Auckland.

Following this he was drafted to the HMNZS Rata, a minesweeper protecting Wellington harbour and port.

A registered letter awaited him in London saying a passage home was booked on the HMS Victorious.

Later that year Jim trained in Petone where he qualified as a higher ASDIC operator.

It was 1944 when Jim was recommended for a Fleet Commission Warrant. He had to go to England for training and left from Port Chalmers on the Port Wyndham fully loaded to the gunnels and no escort.

After training Jim appeared before the daunting Admiral’s Board and was told he was

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“I enjoyed it; you meet a lot of people.” As the war in Europe came to an end, Jim was sent to navigation school, promoted to a temporary sub-lieutenant and in Blythe appointed as a pilot to a newly built landing ship, tank. “I was all set to go to the Far East when the war collapsed there too.”

Jim was discharged from the navy at Easter 1946.

Back in Christchurch he became an electrician and qualified as a professional engineer for the Post Office.

He was elected as the Post Office Association President in 1973 and held that position for many years.

Jim was appointed to the establishment board of Telecom where he served for three years.

“A lot of water gone has under my bridge – I only wanted to be a sailor.”

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Everard Otto, 97 Possum Bourne Retirement Village

v was born in Waiuku early 1922, and later his family moved to a farm in Pokeno, North Waikato.

E

past his eyes. His mates pulled him out, but he still suffered from hypothermia and spent a week in hospital recovering.

At 18 he joined the territorials.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Ev, then in the Army Service Corps (ASC) – helped supply food for American soldiers heading to the Pacific.

In early 1944 they travelled to the west coast of Italy trying to get to Cassino. He found a hole in the side of a hill where he lived for four months.

At 21, following six weeks training at Trentham, he boarded the QSMV Dominion Monarch and left Wellington for Egypt.

Ev laughs as he remembers the stop in Perth. “I remember some soldiers lifted a little car up to the top of some steps!

I saw it, but I didn't do it!” he stresses.

Arriving at Maadi Camp, Ev was appointed a staff car driver and took officers to Cairo and back.

Six months later he left for Italy.

In Italy, Ev recalls falling into the icy Sangro River when trying to cross after a heavy snowfall. He slipped and fell into a water hole up to his chin.

Blocks of ice were floating

He recalls over 200 planes bombing the Monte Cassino monastery. “The air vibrated, it was unbelievable – cold and wet.”

He remembers with sadness the losses of the 28th Māori Battalion. “They had to take the railway station.

128 were killed and many wounded. It was gruesome.”

Ev had a close call nearer Rome. They were camping, hidden from the Germans. A convoy of ASC trucks pulled into the field behind them and caught the attention of the German artillery in the hills. Ev had just gone to get his beer and chocolate rations from the truck, when an officer yelled ‘get out’, which they did smartly. But the officer was wounded. Ev went to get his

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wagon and take him to the medics, but as he got nearer his wagon he heard guns going off again. He threw himself on the ground as the three shells came over. One dropped short and blew up his truck.

They did a record trip from Rome to Naples, then Florence and towards the River Po. The approach to the crossing took ages as the division travelled slowly over a makeshift folding boat bridge.

With the war over in Europe they still had to assist in preventing Trieste being taken by Yugoslavia.

A representative rugby player, Ev played a game in Bari, before heading home.

He scored four tries!

He was demobbed in March 1946, but he still feels for all the families of the boys who did not return home.

He returned to Monte Cassino for the 60th and 70th commemorations where he laid the wreath on the Cenotaph for the 28th Māori Battalion.

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Roy Taylor, 87 Possum Bourne Retirement Village

oy was born in Taumarunui in 1932 and was educated at New Plymouth Boys' High School.

R

He put this into practice at Terendak camp in Malaysia as company commander of D Company,

Originally, Roy trained as a secondary school teacher, however, when he did his compulsory military training in 1952 he was offered an officer cadetship and promptly jumped at the chance.

Roy became a training officer in Terendak to prepare Victor Company to go to Vietnam. This coincided with his citation for an MBE, which he received in the New Year’s Honours List in 1968.

So began what would be an illustrious 32-year career in the New Zealand Army.

Roy still has vivid memories of his first venture overseas, a year in Malaya, which was the first emergency requiring New Zealand involvement since the end of World War II. “There was no school of jungle warfare in New Zealand, so we had to learn it there,” he says.

He still clearly recalls the eight-hour trek through the thick undergrowth to reach his platoon.

Roy worked on the defence planning staff at Defence Headquarters before being posted to Townsville as 2nd Command of the Australian 2RAR. When posted to Vietnam for a year in 1970, he ended up taking command of the battalion, which was reported in the New Zealand press.

He only discovered the negative effects this had on his family afterwards.

“That night my wife was rung by some bloody woman asking how many babies had I killed today?

“It was pretty tough going with 10 days rations on your back, having to forge a pathway through.”

“Then she said she hoped the next item in the paper was that I’d be dead.

During the 1960s Roy worked stints back in New Zealand, UK and at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, USA to train for further leadership roles.

“You don’t realise the way the family are hurt the way she was,” he says.

More controversy was to follow on his return.

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“When we were coming back from Vietnam they told us to get into civilian clothes and not be in uniform,” he says, adding that the official ‘welcome home’ parade didn’t take place until 2008.

Still, Roy remains philosophical in his attitude, pointing out the difference between peace time service compared to during World War II. “During the war, service in the army was no problem as it was there for everybody.

“After the war, there were certain obligations that the country had that not everyone agreed with.”

Roy’s health also suffered from exposure to Agent Orange.

There were more army highlights to come, including being promoted to colonel general staff at army headquarters, responsible for all the training of the NZ Army; a visit to Antarctic Base assisting the Americans at McMurdo Sound; a further promotion to brigadier in June 1980 and finally retiring in 1984.

Following retirement, Roy and his wife Jennifer bought a 10-acre block in Whenuapai where they grew kiwifruit.

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John Garland, 96 Princess Alexandra Retirement Village

J

ohn was born on 22nd of November 1922 in Christchurch and went to Christ’s College where his father had attended before him.

He also followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a wartime pilot. His father flew in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I and John flew Corsairs for the Royal New Zealand Airforce (RNZAF) in the Pacific between 1944 and 1945.

After finishing school with University Entrance at 16, John joined the Bank of Australasia (now the ANZ bank).

Before he turned 19 John was called up to do three months compulsary military training (CMT) at Wingatui Racecourse near Dunedin. Later that same year the Japanese entered the war and all those who had done CMT were mobilised.

John wanted to be a pilot and applied for the air force.

He was assigned to the Air Defence Unit to protect the airports if the Japanese invaded New Zealand.

He was finally selected to be a pilot and, after a time in Harewood training in Tiger Moths, John was sent to Calgary in Canada under the Empire Air Training Scheme.

At this time Britain and the USA dominated the air in Europe and didn’t need many replacements.

But the threat of the Japanese meant he was needed by the RNZAF in the Pacific.

John returned to New Zealand and trained in the Waitakere Ranges to prepare for the jungle environment, before being posted to Ardmore.

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Flying the Corsair was a massive change, but John said they were beautiful to fly. “They were strong and powerful. They were the world’s fastest single engine, propellor driven aircraft capable of speeds more that 700km/hr and they could carry two 1,000 pound bombs.”

The squadron was supporting the fighting on the ground and took part in the campaign against Rabaul.

The Australian advance was pushing the Japanese back into the jungle and there was a danger of snipers in trees. The Australians would send smoke bombs along the trails and they would bomb the smoke bombs. The bombs had a stick on the end so they would

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“As he was flying home, the captain sent a message to say the war had ended.”

« explode the moment they hit the ground and sweep through the undergrowth.

about to follow but instead he turned out to sea, dropped his bombs and headed home.

in Honiara, the captain sent a message to say the war had ended.

John explained, that after the bombs were dropped the pilot needed to swing away towards the sea. If the plane had gone down on enemy-held land, you would not survive.

John served three tours with 20 Squadron in Guadalcanal, Green Island (between Rabaul and Bougainville) and at Jacquinot Bay on New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea, where they patrolled the coastline searching for Japanese movements.

After arriving home John chose to be discharged from the air force. He was engaged to be married and started night classes studying accountancy. He worked as a manager for the bank in many cities including a five year stint in Fiji. He retired from the bank as the Regional Manager for East Coast Branches.

He vividly and sadly, recalls seeing his best friend flying ahead of him ploughing into the ground after dropping the bombs. To this day he cannot understand what happened. John had been

His last tour at Jacquinot Bay ended as the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. As he was flying home, overnighting

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Photo courtesy of Warren Warburton 105

Marjorie Watson (nee Moore), 100 Princess Alexandra Retirement Village

P

rivate Marjorie Watson was a nurse in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service, and during her five years abroad she served in Italy and New Caledonia.

She decided to volunteer when she met up with her two best friends in Christchurch, and the discussion turned to the call which had just gone out for young women to volunteer for the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC).

They decided it would be fun to enlist together, partly out of a desire to contribute

to the war effort, but also to have some adventure.

They trained at Trentham, but their vision of having fun together did not materialise when they were sent in different directions.

She recalled that they were not allowed to use army trucks so walking was the order of the day. However on leave she was able to hitch a ride – once to Rome and another time to trek in the Dolomites – her family have a picture she painted while she was there.

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She emphasised how polite and chivalrous the “army chaps” were to her and how much fun they had.

In the early days of the war, she met her husband Ernest Watson.

Separated during their years of service Marjorie and Ernest corresponded throughout wartime, even though their letters were censored.

Born on 7th February 1919, Marjorie must be one of the few remaining New Zealand Red Cross nurses who served during World War II.

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Bruce Cunningham, 99 Rita Angus Retirement Village

B

ruce Cunningham was a flying officer in 514 Squadron, Royal Air Force (RAF) and a Lancaster pilot.

Bruce was also a prisoner of war in Sagan, East Germany from 1944 – 1945.

He was born in Masterton on 11th April, 1920 and lived there up until the time of the war.

After receiving his wings Bruce went straight to England to Bomber Command. He was based at Waterbeach, near Cambridge.

On the 11th May 1944, Bruce and his crew were on their 10th operation, heading to Belgium in the early hours of the morning. They were on a mission to bomb marshalling yards and were flying low. The Lancaster was shot and the starboard inner engine caught fire, which within five minutes spread to the entire wing.

Bruce ensured all his crew exited the aircraft and then he bailed out.

Bruce will never forget what went through his mind as he watched the rest of his squadron fly back and he parachuted to the ground:

“I distinctly remember thinking, they’re a mile above me. I’m sitting down here and they’re going home for eggs and bacon.”

The plane crashed in a nearby field but Bruce with his parachute landed on the roof of a two-storyed village café.

He was captured immediately and taken to Frankfurt for interrogation. “They knew more about me than I did.”

As a prisoner of war, he was sent to Stalag Luft III in Sagan. He escaped twice.

The first time he was caught and sent back, the second time was successful.

As the Russians got closer a decision was made at midnight in one of the worst winters in 80 years to march the prisoners north through the snow, and about 30km south-west of Berlin the Russians finally got them.

However, they wouldn’t hand them over to the Americans.

Bruce was finally helped by an American correspondent to find a bridge manned by the Americans to get him across the Elbe River. They were good to him and gave him some basic necessities

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In 1996 Bruce returned to Belgium. He was given a civic reception. He also had the parachute returned. He has it to this day. A daughter of the café owner had made the prized silk into a wedding gown.

Bruce is a former treasurer and the longest serving life member of the Wellington RSA. He has assisted them with 100 collections selling flowers. After the war there were two street days a year– Poppy Day and Rose Day. Bruce collected for 34 Rose Days and 66 Poppy Days.

In June 2012 he flew to London with other veterans for the unveiling of the Bomber Command Memorial, by Queen Elizabeth II to mark her Diamond Jubilee.

Anzac Day is a day of remembrance says Bruce. “A serious day – all those young people killed. They never seem to learn. There’s too much greed.

I’m a bit old now, I don’t want to be caught up in that again. It’s a shocking business war; we take our freedom for granted.

Killing people is not right.”

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Penwill Moore, 98 Rita Angus Retirement Village

P

enwill Moore was born in 1920, grew up in the eastern suburbs of Wellington and was educated at Miramar South School, Rongotai College and Victoria University.

based at Littlehampton in Sussex, in the United Kingdom.

preparation for the Battle of Normandy.

In 2014 he was one of nine New Zealand veterans to attend the 70th anniversary commemorations of D-Day in France.

When the beaches at Normandy were stormed, he thought it could spark the liberation of the country.

He joined the Royal New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy in 1941 and spent the war based in the United Kingdom.

He trained as a navigation officer and was involved in missions in the Atlantic, Iceland, Russia and Africa.

In 2015 Pen was awarded the Medal of Knight of the French National Order of the Legion d’honneur. It is France’s highest military honour awarded to the brave men and women who fought to free France from German occupation.

On D-Day, June 6th 1944, he was the officer responsible for all the navigation instruments of the landing crafts destined for Juno beach at Normandy and for naval firefighter ships

He was praised for the commitment and professional qualities he demonstrated when entrusted with great responsibilities in the

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“I had no doubt that we would get ashore in France, but I must admit, I didn't know if we would manage to stay or if we would be pushed back.”

“I don't deserve the medal.

I was just doing my job.”

He says Anzac Day is special because “it’s a day of memories...of my cobbers” and important also as a day to commemorate, because “we never want another war.”

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Brenda Hicks, 100 Rowena Jackson Retirement Village

B

renda Hicks was born in Invercargill on 7th March, 1919. Twenty or so years later World War II figured large in her life.

I couldn’t have enjoyed that part of my life better really, it was a great time for me because I was meeting so many people.”

She was keen to be involved, joining the New Zealand Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in 1942. At its peak in 1944 the corps had 4600 women serving in New Zealand and overseas.

Men’s teeth were also checked and repaired, before the soldiers were discharged.

Brenda became a dental assistant at Trentham Military Camp, and remembers a great camaraderie was felt amongst the fellow WAACs. She loved the Trentham lifestyle.

The WAACs had the privilege of sleeping just four to an army hut, while the men tended to be housed in larger groupings.

In her work uniform, she helped provide dental care to hundreds of men. Sending the troops off overseas, knowing their teeth were in good shape, gave her satisfaction.

She loved the lifestyle.

“Everyone was so good to me.

By VE (Victory in Europe) Day on May 7th, 1945 she was back in Invercargill. It had been an exciting time for her, and the day itself was very memorable.

“We all danced on the streets (including Dee Street and Tay Street). It didn’t matter who you danced with, you just grabbed somebody, and everybody was so happy because it was the end of the war.”

She had been invited by a couple of dentists to stay on working in Wellington but said the pull home was too strong.

She married George Hicks in 1946, after he returned from the frontlines. The wartime experiences and marriage provided some of the most

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exciting times of her life, but there were sad moments of course amongst the happiness.

Many men never returned from the war fronts. Some of her friends had to face up to the brutal truths of war.

She and George later enjoyed running a Bernina sewing machine business for a good number of years. “George, my husband, he was a man who could turn his hand to anything.”

In early March, Brenda celebrated her 100th birthday, receiving congratulatory messages from the Queen, Prime Minister and Governor General. She is “as fit as a fiddle” and enjoys the fact she has grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Husband George died in mid2017, two days before his 98th birthday. His service included being an anti-aircraft gunner in Egypt, Syria and Italy. He also cooked for his gun crew.

Warren Warburton, 97 Rowena Jackson Retirement Village

W

arren was born in Invercargill on 9th June, 1921 one of eleven children.

He was an apprentice in the family’s jewellery shop in Gore in 1938, and to get to know the locals, he joined the local cricket and football clubs as well as the territorials.

Warren remembers when war was declared: The whole Southland Regiment was required to go to Burnham Military Camp for full unit training. The troop train to take them there did not arrive.

Eventually a phone call came through to say the war had started and the camp was off.

They had to go back to work.

Due to a shortage in training facilities the Southland Unit was sent to Forbury Park in Dunedin until further facilities were added. They lived in Bell tents at the racecourse. Later he went to Burnham for a few years, worked on farms, helped during a strike at Lyttleton wharf, and camped at Sumner.

As a machine gunner, he

remembers digging gun pits in the rose beds of front gardens.

“There were bigger things at stake than rose beds.”

They left Wellington late afternoon on the Nieuw Amsterdam. They stopped at Fremantle, (‘got into a bit of trouble there’) and sailed through the Suez Canal to Cairo. As reinforcements they were sent to Helwan Camp near the pyramids.

As the Germans and Italians had surrendered in North Africa, Warren, who was a machine gunner in the 27th Infantry Battalion and his Division were moved to Italy. They landed in Taranto and over the next two and a half years they worked their way up to Trieste.

They were in Monte Cassino for 32 days. About ten of those were needed to settle in and prepare for the fight.

Warren was left bewildered and shocked that on the first day an Allied bomb landed in

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their camp, leaving a massive crater. The bomb wounded five, and killed two men.

On the second day American planes appeared lost. They turned and headed back their way dropping bombs through their camp.

“I will never know why they turned and bombed us.”

The day the abbey was attacked, the bombing went on all morning. It was terrible and intense.

Warren was chosen as one of 50 men to visit England at the end of the war in Europe. He watched the New Zealand Army rugby match at Twickenham and travelled to Edinburgh.

He left for home on the Dominion Monarch from Taranto.

He recalls being exhausted on his return, and continued his career as a watchmaker and jeweller.

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Kenneth Lambourne, 96 Weary Dunlop Retirement Village

K

en was born in London, England on 27th May, 1922. Times were hard for the young lad, so when war was declared in September 1939, he joined the British Army. At least he knew he would be fed in the army.

Ken isn’t one to talk about his war experiences; he lost his best mate in an explosion when he was standing right next to him, but his daughter Karen, said he fought in Italy where he learnt to write and speak Italian – something he can still do to this day.

Karen said her father drove a tank and was a Rat of Tobruk.

For the last part of the war he was a military policeman.

Ken suffered recurring bouts of the debilitating sandfly fever throughout his life.

Ken is a member of the Caulfield RSL in Victoria, Australia and was President of Carry On – an organisation which offers returned servicemen and their families assistance in times of need.

In England, after the war Ken became a baker along with his father and brothers.

Ken and his wife Greta both knew Sir Weary Dunlop and Greta who was an accomplished ballroom dancer would often be asked to dance

by Weary. She remembers him saying “C’mon Greta, let’s show them how it’s done.”

He was asked to come to Australia by a baker in Melbourne to teach traditional bread baking methods and moved to Melbourne with his young family in late 1954.

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Steve Costelow, 72 Weary Dunlop Retirement Village

teve Costelow was born in Melbourne on September 25th, 1946.

S

The magnitude of what was about to happen hadn’t yet dawned on Steve.

That date is significant because 21 years later it would be drawn from a ballot determining which young Australian men would be called up for two years’ compulsory military service during the Vietnam War.

“It probably upset me to see mum crying, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. It probably took me a while for it to sink in.”

“I found out living at home with mum and dad and I can remember mum sitting on the end of my bed crying. “[The Vietnam War] wasn’t really on my radar because I was working, I’d just started in the rag trade and I didn’t take a lot of notice of what was going on.”

Steve was assigned to ordnance – “that was just luck of the draw, you couldn’t ask where you wanted to go” – which, after 12 months’ training in Australia, saw him deployed to the Second Advanced Ordnance Depot (2AOD) in Vung Tau, near Saigon.

2AOD, where Steve would serve for a year before returning home, was a fastmoving logistical hub of Australia’s war effort.

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“Once a month a ship would come in that we would unload.

We had huge warehouses and it was our daily job to issue something as small as a screw or as big as a tank.

Arms, ammunition, whatever.

“It was always full on, and when the ship was in and unloading we’d work all night.”

Steve was good at his job and was quickly recommended for promotion from private to lance corporal.

While Vung Tau was a relatively peaceful part of the county, the grim realities of the war were ever-present.

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“I’m proud that I’ve represented the country. People’s attitudes these days have changed... they now say, ‘well done’.”

« In some respects, though, the hardest thing for Steve and many Australian soldiers who served in Vietnam was returning home.

Public sentiment towards the controversial conflict had soured, and the returning servicemen bore the brunt of it.

“When I finally came home, you wouldn’t want to be wearing your uniform.

People were spitting on you.

They didn’t agree with the Vietnam War, but it’s not our fault – we got told to go.

“We didn’t have a choice – we were over there for our country, doing what we could.”

And the full extent of what those young men had gone through wasn’t yet apparent.

Several of Steve’s friends who served in Vietnam suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, some of whom ultimately took their own lives. Others were diagnosed with cancer attributed to their exposure to the defoliant chemical Agent Orange.

Vietnam soldiers weren’t officially welcomed back to Australia until 1987.

Steve travelled to Canberra for the ceremony, and “that probably closed a lot of issues that most of us had.”

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More than 50 years after that fateful letter arrived in the mail, Steve can see his service with the kind of clarity only time affords.

He’s made peace with any bitterness about how Vietnam veterans were treated when they returned, and in its place now there is a strong sense of pride.

“I’m proud that I’ve represented the country. I like wearing my medals when I get the opportunity to wear them, and people’s attitudes these days have changed.

They now say, ‘well done’.”

Photo courtesy of Michael Button 121

Alan Horsman, 100 Yvette Williams Retirement Village

I

n 1920, two year old Alan Horsman accompanied his parents on an assisted passage to New Zealand. They had lived in the seaside resort of Bridlington, Yorkshire.

The family settled in Auckland, where Alan attended Northcote schools and the University of New Zealand, Auckland.

He describes his war service as, “not a bit exciting. I was in the army before I knew I was in the army! They didn’t know what to do with me.”

Alan was studying for his MA at university and the army allowed him to continue with it. “It was their practice to let people who were nearly qualified to finish.”

He completed his degree in December 1941 and was called up in January 1942.

“I was put into the artillery first, though I don’t know one end of a gun from the other.

“After a while they decided I was no good in the artillery and put me into the pay office.

and somebody must have thought I would be more suitable for that, so I was a foundation member.”

Alan’s new role was to give lectures to the troops. The lectures could be on any topic.

Perhaps it was serendipitous that Alan, who went on to a lifetime teaching at university, was given this position, or possibly somebody with foresight recognised his natural ability. Whichever, Alan says, “I learnt what I could do.

It taught me how to do my job that I held for 40 years.”

The orders came from Wellington on a Monday and he had until Wednesday to prepare.

“The one I remember most when the instructions came, was on the nervous system of a frog – I knew nothing about the frog nor the nervous system.”

It had to be ready for the Wednesday lecture.

“I worked there for a year or so – it was awful.

“I managed to learn enough about the nervous system (I forgot about the frog) and I gave a lecture. I didn’t know anything about it at all.

“Then they started the Army Education and Welfare Service

“Anything might come up – the next one was on termites!

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“I had to learn how to keep order.

It was good practice for lecturing Stage 1,” chuckled Alan.

“It turned out to be one thing I can do – absorb it quickly and make sense out of it.

“I don’t know what sort of a fool I made of myself because there was only a limited scope for discussion. With 500 men what could you do? I got used to projecting my voice.”

Were the men interested?

“Well they didn’t slaughter me,” he joked. “They were waiting to be drafted somewhere and this was better than drill outside in the sun.”

Alan had been awarded a scholarship and chose to study at Oxford University. He booked a passage to England.

He and his fiancée, Dorothea, departed New Zealand on the day the Americans dropped the atom bomb on Japan, August 9th, 1945.

Emeritus Professor Alan Horsman MA(NZ & Oxf) HonLittD(Otago) English, was formerly Professor of English at the University of Otago; editor, author and literary critic.

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Betty Rawlings, 87 Yvette Williams Retirement Village

B

etty was born in the small town of Harvey, Western Australia, on 5th December 1931. Three years later her parents brought the family back to her father’s homeland, New Zealand. They settled in Invercargill where Betty attended Southland Girls’ High School.

Betty joined the New Zealand Women’s Auxiliary Airforce (WAAF) in 1949 after seeing an advertisement in the newspaper for recruits. She joined at the youngest age possible, which was 17 ½ . “I was 17 ½ and three weeks,” she said. “It sounded great, but it took my parents quite a while to agree to let me join.” The contract was for two years.

At the completion of the two year contract Betty now 19, was stationed at Woodbourne and her parents wanted their

only daughter closer to home.

They agreed to her extending the contract if she could be posted to Taieri, near Dunedin.

She had qualifications in shorthand typing and went right through the ranks from aircraftwoman recruit, to aircraftwoman auxiliary 1st class, then leading aircraftwoman. She was promoted to corporal, then at 20 years of age, sergeant, and was later commissioned to became a flight officer.

officers’ mess, at Worser Bay in Wellington.

A highlight of her career was being chosen to represent the Taieri Station at Whenuapai when Queen Elizabeth II personally presented her Colours to the RNZAF during the 1953 – 1954 Royal tour of New Zealand.

The presentation was made during a ceremonial parade on 28th December 1953.

Betty recalls, as a WAAF officer, one had to wear a hat and gloves, even in civilian dress. “It was very proper.”

After 13 years service, Betty resigned in February 1961.

She was married and expecting her first daughter.

“Not many girls stayed that length of time,” she said.

Betty had several postings throughout the country, but after she was commissioned, she became the personal assistant to the chief of air staff and lived at the work

Betty met her husband at a tea-dance with the Victoria League. Betty has continued with that connection and is a former President of the Otago Branch of the Victoria League.

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Photo courtesy of Rae Dempsey 126

Photo courtesy of Frank Baigent

“To me it [Anzac Day] means remembering the loss of chaps I knew and grew up with – a day of remembering friends and people who did not return.”

—Jack Morgan