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.

Track and field historian/statistician made great contribution

World track and field lost one of its great contributors when Italian statistician Roberto Quercetani died in Florence, aged 97 on May 13.

One of the great historians and statisticians of world athletics, Quercetani, or RLQ as he was known, was a founder member of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians, serving as president of that group from 1950-68.

 

He first published his A World History of Track and Field Athletics in 1964, regularly updating it and added other titles all highlighting statistical and historic areas of interest in the sport.

When undertaking research for Conquerors of Time, the story of the great era of mile and 1500m running bounded by the 1932 and 1936 Olympic Games, I arranged to meet with Quercetani while on a European trip to discuss one of the central characters in my story, Luigi Beccali, the winner of the 1500m in Los Angeles in 1932 and bronze medalist in the 1936 classic race in the Berlin Olympics.

He walked into the hotel in which I was staying and said it had been where all the athletes had stayed for a major track meet in the city. 

He explained then that Beccali had been his inspiration to becoming involved in athletics. He carried with him a copy of a special issue of the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato which was devoted to Beccali's career. He thought it might be of help to me, although sadly it was in Italian and I would need to get it translated.

He was surprised when I told him I already had a copy of the magazine, and that it had also been translated for me. It was then that I was able to tell him that Luigi Beccali's son Gene had loaned me a copy after I met with him at his home on New York's Long Island in 2003.

At the same time he was delighted to learn that Gene had been such a fund of information about his father, because there was so little known about Luigi Beccali after he left Italy to live in the United States from 1938. 

Quercetani said that while he had spoken with Beccali when he was awarded an Italian knighthood, Caviliere in 1965, he thought, it was only a brief conversation and there had not been the time to talk about his life beyond Italy. He did tell Quercetani, "I'm too American to Italians and too Italian to Americans."

Quercetani was very supportive of the effort going into the book and highly complimentary when it was published.

Appreciation of Quercetani's achievements by New Zealanders may have been diminished due to Kiwi Peter Heidenstrom establishing himself as a track and field statistician of the highest order in this country.

However, there is no doubting the knowledge and understanding that Quercetani brought to track and field and his history is a must-have source for every event on the track and field programme.

He was a big fan of New Zealand runners, Jack Lovelock, Peter Snell and Murray Halberg especially.

Quercetani was in no doubt of the significance of the 1500m final at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

"The Berlin 1500m is still remembered as a classic in the history over the event, were it only for the tactical skill displayed in it by a man who had keyed himself up for the occasion with unsurpassed precision. This man was Jack Lovelock," he wrote in the 2000 edition of Athletics – A history of modern track and field athletics (1860-2000).

And in my interview with him he said: "The 1936 1500m final was a masterpiece. It was one of the greatest 1500m races in history because it put together three great champions." They were Lovelock, American Glenn Cunningham, and Beccali.

All Blacks pictures worth a thousand words

Black Boots – New Zealand's Rugby Legends, words by Phil Gifford, photographs by Barry Durrant and Morrie Hill, published by Bateman Books.

New Zealand's rugby history has traditionally been well served both in written and visual form and the latest offering Black Boots continues that legacy not only through the photographs of Barry Durrant but also the late Morrie Hill.

Writer Phil Gifford provides the mortar to their brickwork with his knowledgeable and authoritative captions, many of them classic vignettes in their own write (pardon the deliberate pun).

If rugby has changed since that day in 1995 when southern hemisphere rugby administrators bit the bullet and decided their future lay in a professional enterprise, then so too has the coverage.

Demands of commercialism and brands have seen photographic rights tied up and restricted and the sort of pictures included in this selection may never be seen when illustrating the modern era of the game.

The book is also representative of a more evocative, amateur age. 

The choice of Bryan 'Beegee' Williams on the cover stepping his way past a London Counties defender en route to the goalline, was a telling reminder of the frustration that attended Williams and many other backs during their careers. 

Inhibited by the damages caused the game by what was known as 10-man rugby played by New Zealand during the 1950s and for the first half of the 1960s, and as a default mechanism when things got tough in the 1970s, players of the quality of Williams had to wait their time to get a chance to do what they did best, run with the ball.

Williams had suggested a potential change in the All Blacks game on his brilliant tour of South Africa in 1970, a tour on which he set the rugby world alight with his speed, power and sidestep when barely out of his teens.

Yet New Zealand's rugby strategies of the day rarely allowed him the opportunity to show that quality again. That he scored only nine tries in 38 Tests was an indictment of the rugby played and the squandering of talent was all too common in that era.

At the same time, New Zealand produced some winning rugby and photos from both Durrant and Hill provide memories of some significant occasions.

Colin Meads, naturally, appears in many but was there ever a more representative photo of the skills he brought to the game than that from the outstanding 19-0 win over Wales at Lancaster Park in Christchurch? Ball tucked in his left hand, resting on his hip, he is looking to cut inside a defender while right on hand in support is prop Ken Gray with hooker Bruce McLeod behind.

Shots of crowds streaming out of the old Athletic Park after the second Test of the 1956 series with South Africa, are not only representative of the rugby of the era, but they are a snapshot of New Zealand society.

Another shot of a distressed loose forward John Graham being held by local medical men as they try to prevent him going back onto the field in the days when replacements for injuries were not allowed, is a reminder of the arcane practice of that era. 

Nowadays Graham would have been taken away for a head injury assessment and judging by the photograph would not have made it back onto the field. And he would have been replaced.

The concentration of photos are on the respective 1963-64 and 1972-73 tours of Britain, Ireland and France, because the two photographers covered one each of the tours, but there are many others from other years which round out a book which is another telling reminder of the legacy of rugby in New Zealand, but also of an enduring era in the game.

Maori Battalion B Company story vividly told

Ake Ake Kia Kaha E! (Forever Brave) by Wira Gardiner, David Bateman Ltd, Hobsonville, 2019, Price $49.95.

World War One centennial commemorations have faded in a publishing sense, after the scramble of activity between 2014-18, and the field of military interest has widened again.

One of the latest offerings is the immensely-readable, prodigiously-illustrated Ake Ake Kia Kaha E! by Wira Gardiner.

If military history to the general populace is about reducing the amount of jargonised description of battles and skirmishes in all their technical detail, then Gardiner has managed to tell his story appropriately. 

This is written in an easy format and while dealing with military matters, as it must, it is in a readable style that those with a non-military upbringing or background can enjoy.

What will appeal most in this story of the B Company of 28 Maori Battalion is the description and personalisation of events as they affected the Company whose members were drawn largely from the Central North Island and Bay of Plenty. This is not only of the eye-catching examples of personal bravery and acumen but also of some of the less palatable behaviour of Kiwi young men overseas.

Gardiner, already a chronicler of 28 Maori Battalion nearly 20 years ago, has backed his writing with a marvellous collection of photos of many of those who were part of B Company throughout the Second World War, not the least being the roll call of all who served, with a high percentage of photographs to accompany their individual placement in a special section towards the end of the book.

But, as in all the most readable war histories, it is the personalisation of war activities that lends authenticity to the book. 

There is time for a brief appreciation of what a Maori Battalion represented especially after the efforts of the Maori Contingents, the subsequent Pioneer Battalion with its mixture of Maori and Pakeha Companies, and then finally the creation of the New Zealand Maori (Pioneer) Battalion in 1917 during the First World War.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, much discussion occurred on the best way to involve Maori and by January 1940, 28 Maori Battalion was established. Issues of establishing the command structure of the group, and the recruiting for the Battalion are covered by Gardiner before they sailed, initially for Egypt with the Second Echelon, but then being transferred to England when the invasion of Britain appeared imminent.

Once joining the Division in Egypt, there was little time before they were shipped on to Greece and the sorry episode that resulted in the retreats from Greece and Crete, both with significant numbers left behind and to spend the rest of the war in prison camps. Stories of escape and derring-do began in those difficult days, not least being the famed bayonet charge at 42^ndStreet on Crete. Accounts of the action and its aftermath make for chilling reading.

Likewise, the accounts of B Company's involvement in battles fought in the to and fro of the early years of the North African campaign are supplemented by personal description which capture the events vividly, especially in the breakout at Minqar Qaim.

Equally, the key battles at Tebaga Gap and Takrouna are brought to life, and the toll on B Company in the latter, is especially telling and evocative.

Across in Italy and with the impasse at Cassino there was some humour in one instance where a patrol under Stewart Black, that had been given instruction in mine warfare, and how to clear mines, had picked up 25 mines. At one stage they were carrying out their tasks, initially some distance from the Germans. Black related: "We got closer, ten yards, five yards and then we stood still. A section of Germans was passing us and our section passed them at the same time. They did not seem to know we were there. However, we knew they were there. They marched and we marched too into the night."

Having been close to some German pillboxes during the incident they reached the last pillbox and one of the members of the group said: "Bugger this, we're not going to come all this way without some excitement." 

Black said: "He returns and lobs a grenade into the pillbox. Everything exploded. Well that was the fastest 250 yards, the fastest time in the world we ever ran."

Progress beyond Cassino was slow as they and the NZ Division crossed river after river before finally war ended with the securing of Trieste.

Gardiner's story does not end there. Returning home, and all the adjustments that took are also described while on-going activities of B Company and the Battalion overall are included to complete a full and rounded tale that is not only a worthy record of B Company but highly readable for those without any connection to the group.

Vale Ray Harper - a true rugby man

You're lucky in life sometimes when in your everyday working life you come into contact with people like Ray Harper, the former New Zealand Rugby Union councillor and life member of Southland Rugby, who died on Thursday after a lifetime of devotion to the game.

For 10 years as sports editor of The Southland Times, it was my privilege to work with Ray in his role as Southland's representative on the NZRU of the day and as member of the Southland Rugby Union's management committee.

Ray Harper, right, showing off Rugby Park's readiness for the 1987 Rugby World Cup games played in Invercargill to the tournament boss John Kendall-Carpenter while the writer tagged along for a few words for The Southland Times.

He was a terrific representative for the province who never held back if the province needed defending and ensured that every time a North Island rugby team was in town for a game with Southland, and the sun was shining, he would enquire if their travelling reporter ever needed sunglasses in order to cover the game.

There was none happier on the July day in 1977 when Bay of Plenty visited and the ground at Rugby Park was so dry that dust was raised whenever a high kick fell to ground. It helped that Brian McKechnie completed the feat of scoring in each possible way in Southland's win.

But there was a much stronger connection to the province. He was well known and respected in the commercial sector for his carpentry business.

It was at one SRFU management committee meeting around about 1980-81 that Harper said it was only a few years until Southland was due to celebrate its rugby centennial and he thought a committee should get together to start preparing for the occasion which would be in 1986. From that arose a relationship with Craigs Publishing which saw me commissioned to start working on a book to celebrate the occasion that became Something to Crow About. The luxury of five years to research the subject was typical of Harper's thinking.

It was while interviewing Ray about his own extensive playing and coaching involvement with the province in which his side beat the touring British & Irish Lions in the opening game of their 1966 tour and which a year earlier went within an ace of relieving Taranaki of the Ranfurly Shield when they drew 6-6, that he revealed how much rugby had helped him recover from the loss of his father as a youth when the pair of them were cycling on a street in Invercargill and his father had been killed.

He worked through a tough period in the New Zealand game around the 1981 Springbok tour which created so much division while running into him on the 1986 morning it was realised that the country's best players had flown out the evening before on an unofficial tour to South Africa he was mortified that such a thing should have happened.

The game was always the thing for Ray and it was fitting that he should have been given the job of managing Graham Mourie's side on their centenary tour to Wales in 1980. He revelled in the opportunity and carried his style into the international league with a memorable speech at the centennial dinner in Cardiff. He said he knew he could never hope to match the eloquence of the speakers who had gone before him, but as he listened to them and gazed above to the intricacies of the woodwork in the ceiling of the famed establishment they were in he wondered aloud how many of them might have been able to construct something like that they were seated under.

He was also a good guardian of the significant financial resources the SRFU had carefully built up over the years and anyone seeking to spend some of that money had to have a pretty good case to get it past himself and the SRFU treasurer Fred Ward.

So it was with some interest, having been forewarned, when the late Peter Tait suggested the SRFU needed to do something about further developing the all-weather grounds at Oreti Park that Ray's reaction was slightly less than muted when ballpark (excuse the pun) figures were thrown around about what it might cost. But it was decided to form a committee to look into the venture.

This resulted in the specific advancement of what became the Les George Oval with its own small grandstand and superb turf as a back-up playing surface to the often water-logged grounds in the city. Ray became one of its firm supporters and once again it proved a timely development.

Behind it all was his Pirates Rugby Club, now but all a distant memory in the wake of inevitable club mergers. However, throughout fair weather and foul, of which there tended to be plenty in Southland, Ray Harper was a constant attendee and there can be no greater measure of his commitment to the game. All the trappings that came with his subsequent appointments were just that, trappings. Ray Harper was your true rugby man.