Maori First World War contribution comes alive

Whitiki! Whiti! Whiti! E! – Maori in the First World War by Monty Soutar, published by Bateman Books, Auckland.

Understanding the impact of the First World War has been one of the results of the attention paid to the centennial of the conflagration over the years from 2014-2018. The world was a significantly different place 100 years ago and attitudes and understanding related to a completely antithetical social circumstance than what applied in New Zealand, and other countries.

New Zealand was still finding its way in the world, admittedly as an outshoot of the British Empire but starting to contribute in its own distinctive manner, especially to the dining tables of Mother England.

The country itself was a willing responder to the call of empire when war broke out in Europe and where Britain was drawn into the conflict on the basis of its treaty arrangements made over many years.

When New Zealand chose to be involved, the role of Maori to the contribution became a source of considerable discussion. Paternalism towards the indigenous people was a significant hurdle that had to be overcome before Maori were able to take their place among the forces who represented the country, in Samoa, Gallipoli and latterly, in France and Belgium.

Historian Monty Soutar has developed a significant reputation in his field serving for three years as the World War One historian-in-residence at the Auckland War Memorial Museum from 2014-2017 and also as a member of the First World War centenary panel and the Waitangi Tribunal.

He was ideally placed to provide the first Maori perspective of their contribution to the war effort. Coming as it did less than 50 years after New Zealand's land wars, the First World War was a test of attitudes for the country. The background to sending Maori overseas is a central theme running through this story as politicians and Maori elders attempted to reach common ground in the role for Maori in the war.

It wasn't easy as some tribes still harboured more than reasonable resentments at their treatment by the same crown that was now calling on them to contribute to the cause of empire. Soutar has bored into the nitty gritty of the debate and takes the issue beyond just war history into societal structure, contributing even more to the national understanding of New Zealand's story.

That is the most compelling feature of this story. While the deeds of the 28 Maori Battalion of the Second World War are more firmly entrenched in modern minds, that is largely due to the more recent time span, and the connection with those who, until recently, were still living and able to tell their stories.

What Soutar has achieved is a leap beyond that effort to 20 years earlier and the far different attitudes that Maori had to contend with. He has described the machinations which saw the contribution change, sometimes as the result of an administrative whim by less than understanding British commanders, or due to lack of reinforcements at key times.

There was also the placement of Maori alongside other units before finally winning recognition for their feats in the New Zealand Maori (Pioneer) Battalion which ended the war as a much more complete representation of the Maori involvement.

The politics being played out at home are another key element that is vital to the story and it appears that no stone has been left unturned in painting a complete picture.

Abilities demonstrated by those who played such a key part in keeping communications and logistics lines open through sometimes hellish artillery fire leave no doubt as to their role in the war. 

What Soutar has also ensured is that the gritty, dirty, wet, unhealthy, mud-bound conditions for all who fought on the Western Front are hit home in accurate fashion. You almost have to take a hot shower to rid yourself of the detritus of the battlefront after reading. 

Given that so many who took part, talked so little about their experiences, if they were unaffected by them, it is perhaps as well that the mothers of those sent across the world never had to know the full extent of what their sons were exposed to.

Time has allowed a perspective that both encapsulates the achievements of those who took part while adding the freshness of viewpoint provided by time. When coupled with brilliant illustrations and maps, this is not a book of military minutiae incomprehensible to all but the technicians who study these things. It is a book for the people, of the people, and has a resonance far beyond the deeds of the Maori who fought in the First World War.

Modern historians have done an outstanding job in their reflections of all aspects of the centenary of the First World War and Monty Soutar's book is yet another example of the worth of the joint exercise of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Massey University and the New Zealand Defence Force in applying a modern perspective to the war which had such a significant impact on the world we now live in.

Paul Jesson's tale well worth telling

'Oh, THAT Tour!' – The Paul Jesson Story by Des Williams. Last Side Publishing, 2019.

As New Zealand cyclists start popping up among the results lists of major European events, especially, in more recent times, it is timely that the autobiography of one of the trailblazers for Kiwis competing in Europe has been published.

 

Paul Jesson, an outstanding talent from Christchurch, wasn't one of the earliest pioneers, they were a generation or two ahead of him, but because it was so hard for Kiwis to break into the European scene, the gestation of more permanent opportunities was a long time coming.

But when they did Jesson was to the forefont of that happening. The reviewer was privy to the earliest days of Jesson's development as a competitor in the Tour of Southland and the less forgotten annual Queenstown tours that used to be raced over Queen's Birthday Weekends. If the Tour of Southland was notable for weather variations, the Queens Birthday weekend had one consistent quality – the cold.

Jesson had two wins and two second placings in the Tour of Southland, and in the season after his second win, the flood-plagued tour of 1978, he was racing professionally in Europe achieving 10^thand 13^thplacings in stage finishes on the Tour de France.

A year later he was the first New Zealander to win a stage in a major European tour, La Vuelta a Espana, where he won the 10^thstage. 

However, it was soon after that success in which he finished 29^thoverall that Jesson's career ended. Riding the criterium of the famed warm-up event for the Tour de France, the Dauphine Libere and impressing with how well he was doing, tragedy struck Jesson, around the eight-minute mark.

As Jesson said: "Our reconnaissance rides earlier in the day would have given me some idea of the road ahead, but about 800 metres from the end of the race itself I came around a corner, hell for leather, eyes down on the road and crashed into the back of a stationary Lancia car. The course had supposedly been cleared of all vehicles prior to the start of the prologue."

That was bad enough in itself, but what followed was worse. Having badly damaged his knee and suffering other injuries, he was taken to hospital but arrived during a shift change. That resulted in delays to his treatment and control of blood circulation.

It was then found the hospital staff lacked the expertise to treat his injuries and he had to be taken 700km by ambulance to Belgium. The surgeon there had a reputation for dealing with similar types of sports injuries but then he realised he couldn't handle the task and Jesson had to be transferred to another hospital.

He had 12 major operations over three weeks, three of them to deal with a gangrenous leg which eventually resulted in amputation.

Jesson spent another four years in Belgium where he had been based. But when he returned to New Zealand he became involved in support work for New Zealand cycling teams and became a masseur for sportspeople.

But as it turned out Jesson would resume racing. In 1995 after cycling experiences, while travelling through Europe, he returned to riding and became involved in competing in 'differently-abled' events. Those reached their peak, after any number of trials and tribulations, when he won a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympic Games time trial/road race at the Athens Paralympics. That followed an 11^that Sydney's Paralympics four years earlier and a fourth in the 3000m individual pursuit.  Back in 1998, he had won two world championships in the 4000m individual pursuit and 18km road time trial.

Jesson's story has not been as well known in New Zealand sports history as it should have been but Des Williams' effort in putting the story together is a worthy tribute to one of cycling's trailblazers. The resulting story reveals just how much of an impact Jesson had made in the hard world of European cycling and how bright his future looked.

While he was denied that as a result of his accident, his story is nevertheless a fulsome reminder of the triumph of the will and deserves its place in New Zealand's sporting literature.

Another slant on a famous NZ cricket story

What Are You Doing Out Here – Heroism and Distress at a Cricket Test by Norman Harris, Last Side Publishing, 2010.

In days when cricket was not the subject of wall-to-wall television coverage, the written word was the means by which the on-field events in games were transferred to those not lucky enough to be in attendance.

That was especially the case at Ellis Park in Johannesburg over the Christmas break in 1953. New Zealand were touring and playing South Africa in the second Test of a series in which New Zealand would be well beaten – they had never won a Test match by this stage.

And they weren't destined to win on this occasion either, but as Paul Irwin, the cricket writer for South Africa's Sunday Times said, the New Zealanders did win a red badge of courage.

This was the infamous test played against the backdrop of the worst rail disaster suffered in New Zealand's history at Tangiwai on Christmas Eve of that year. On the train, and one of the victims, was the fiancée of one of New Zealand's players, fast-medium bowler Bob Blair.

The story of that fateful Boxing Day which because of the time difference and body recovery at the scene of the tragedy meant that Blair didn't learn the sad news until early in the morning has been forever enshrined in New Zealand journalism, not just sports journalism, in tour correspondent R.T. 'Dick' Brittenden's book, Silver Fern on the Veldt, still one of the finest pieces of writing in New Zealand sport.

Certainly Brittenden covered the events for the immediacy of his daily writing requirements, but with the perspective of time, and there was plenty of that when the team headed home across the Indian Ocean by boat, he wrote so memorably of the dramatics that unfolded as New Zealand succumbed to the pace bowling of South African Neil Adcock.

Bowling in conditions that suited his fast pace and ability to lift the ball off a good length, Adcock had New Zealand reeling that morning. Players were hit, coughing up blood while ace batsman Bert Sutcliffe suffered a blow to his head which saw him taken to hospital for x-rays only to return to the fray, head bandaged and taking to the South Africans to avoid the follow-on. 

Then, when it appeared the New Zealand innings was complete, out of the grandstand emerged Blair, who distraught with grief back at the team hotel thought the one thing that might help him forget the change that had overtaken his life's plans, would be to go to the ground to be with his teammates. 

It was never intended he would resume playing, but in the side's dire need he decided to bat hence Sutcliffe's utterance of the title of the book, What are you doing out here?

The crowd, at the great old rugby ground which was in use while the famous Wanderers ground, the traditional home of Transvaal cricket, was being revamped, were on their feet in recognition of the great emotion of the event playing out in front of them, saw Sutcliffe and Blair take 25 runs from off-spinner Hugh Tayfield's over, a world Test record, before the innings was ended.

The story was revisited in 2010 when New Zealand sports writer Norman Harris, better known for his athletics writing in the 1960s and who had moved to Britain subsequently, penned his book. He added significantly to the story, especially in adding the geological background to the washout of the railway bridge at Tangiwai, the result of a lahar breaking high on the adjacent mountain, Mt Ruapehu.

Harris has also found how Nerissa Love, Blair's fiancée was only on the train because her friend and neighbour Janet Trevelyan had convinced her to take the place of another friend who was unable to make the trip. He placed them in the third carriage from the front of the train, and when the accident occurred six carriages and the engine plummeted into the flooded Whangaehu River.

Then the pieces are put together in a fashion that time never allowed for Brittenden. The story, woven around the tragedy and the Test match, is another raw telling of what happened which is not lessened as a result of the passage of time.

By placing paragraphs at the end of his book on those involved in the Test match, Harris has placed the story in perspective and produced another version well worth reading.