by David B Hill
Over the next five days a huge amount of activity occurred around the US3. HMAS Australia departed to join the hunt for the German battleship Gneisenau in the North Atlantic. The aircraft carrier Hermes arrived to provide air cover, accompanied by several cruisers and a number of destroyers. The Governments of Australia and New Zealand had asserted their authority, and were providing significant protection for the convoy before it entered the Atlantic.
The five days passed very quickly. On 31 May US3 departed, heading for Freetown.
At first, the cool of the South Atlantic prevailed. Big swells were swept by wind gusts, and the white caps that tumbled down the wave fronts were occasionally whipped up into the air and flung in fine spray over anybody exposed on deck. Being sailors, Len and the boys did not shy from a bit of spray, and enjoyed congregating on deck and leaning into the wind. How Len wished to be actually on the water though, instead of sitting high above it.
As US3 tracked north to West Africa, things changed. When they entered the tropics the heat and humidity intensified again. When not exercising, the men lay about on bunks or anywhere where shade and breeze might coincide, bellyaching about the conditions. Lofty announced he was volunteering for service in the Arctic; that he’d earned it after tolerating heat that rendered even Tim speechless.
One night Len went topside, in search of cooler air. There were plenty of others doing the same thing, but he knew of a spot under a lifeboat and beside the ship’s rail that was both cool and private. He had no sooner crept under the lifeboat and relaxed with the breeze on his face than somebody else crawled under beside him.
Haami Parata!
‘I saw you disappear. Nice spot.’
Len lifted his eyebrows in response, and moved a little bit to make more room for the visitor. Together they sat watching the Aquitania’s wake colliding with the waves and listening to the sound, as long swooshing gestures of foam glowed briefly in the night, and spume sprayed up into the air like snowflakes, before fading and disappearing into the gloom. They could feel the vibration of the engines under their backsides, and the odd shudder when a big swell brought the screws close to the surface.
The soldier offered the sailor a cigarette.
‘I wanted to apologise, e hoa. I didn’t mean to cause you more shame the other day.’
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’
Len knew exactly what he meant, but it wasn’t shame he felt rising now. It was anger. And it wasn’t about being Māori. It wasn’t even about being part Māori, which was more accurate. His anger was about not knowing. How ignorant could a man be, not knowing himself? After the conversation with Ree, and especially since the encounter with Haami Parata and his mates after the tournament, he had begun to consider how things that might have been Māori might have shown up in his life without him ever recognising it. There were Kate’s skills as a healer and a gardener. She could conjure up a poultice out of anything to make stone bruises disappear, and could grow anything on the terraces she had fashioned at the bottom of the garden. In spite of having told them she was brought up as a Pākehā, she could name birds – all birds – in Māori. The list went on.
‘I think you do. It’s called whakamā. Shame. We all feel it. Or felt it. At some point all Māori are shamed for being Māori, or are ashamed of being Māori; for not measuring up, as my Pākehā teacher used to say. But me: I got over it. I’m not measuring myself by Pākehā standards any more. I don’t want to be the same. Just equal.’
‘I don’t know I’m ashamed of being Māori. Although some of the boys try to shame me, now they know, calling me fulla. “Hey, fulla!” I just keep quiet.’
‘Now that is whakamā! You’re embarrassed by it. Own up! Kia kaha. Stand strong!’
‘But I didn’t know! I certainly didn’t know how much it mattered to everybody else.’
‘Don’t worry, e hoa; every Māori finds that out sooner or later.’
Haami dragged deeply on his cigarette.
‘You know the word Māori means “ordinary man”; at least, that’s what it means in Māori. It is one of the great ironies that we are treated like strangers in our own land.’
They fell to silence, the motion of the ship lulling them both into reflection. Len caught a glimpse of his companion as his cigarette glowed: a broad, strong profile, nut brown and weathered. Parata was perhaps ten years older than he was.
Parata quizzed Len on his family circumstances, and as they sailed through the night, he learned about Arthur, Kate, his brother Bill and the uncles in the Great War.
‘Tūmatauenga is a voracious god. He feeds on people.’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘The sacrifice of your uncles brought your family great mana.’
Len knew the word, but didn’t know what it meant.
‘Honour. Respect. Authority. When my father went away as a pioneer in the Great War, he was not allowed to carry a rifle.’ He blew smoke in a long, concentrated stream. ‘There was no honour in that. That is why I joined the Battalion: to recover some of that mana. Now we are given rifles and told fortune favours the brave! Ha! Māori know how to fight, and we have a similar phrase. Kia mate ururoa kei mate wheke. Better to fight like a shark than an octopus. If I die in battle at least they can say that of me. Aue!’
Len had recognised one of Haami’s words immediately.
‘What does ururoa mean?’
‘Ururoa? It means shark.’
‘I know of someone with that name. He doesn’t sound like a very nice person.’
‘Maybe not,’ replied Haami. ‘But he does sound like a person to be respected.’
They lit another cigarette, and Haami continued the conversation.
Like most Māori, he had been employed by the Government, on an East Coast sheep station. A remote part of the North Island, and rugged. He worked for the Department of Lands and Survey as a farm labourer, doing fencing, mustering, docking, shearing – all of the essential tasks.
‘Apart from my mother, the thing I miss most is my horse,’ Haami told Len.
Len laughed.
‘Don’t you bloody tell anybody that!’
They both laughed. Haami continued his story. Like many Ngāti Porou, his whānau had been dutiful citizens, and fought as kūpapa during the Land Wars. This did not protect them from the confiscations, though; they had been dispossessed of their land in spite of their loyalty to the Government. Like most Māori deprived of their greatest asset, they struggled at the bottom of the food chain, quite literally, queuing at the grocer’s with their social security money, deferring to Pākehā not out of courtesy but out of shame and embarrassment. Len thought of his own mother at the shops, patiently waiting at the back of the queue while others gladly took advantage.
‘What about getting your own farm?’
‘Wake up, e hoa! Where do I get the money? I don’t have any assets, and bugger all income. Jeez, you fullas live in a dream.’
Len was chastened, remembering how hard it had been for his own family to make ends meet. Both dragged on their cigarettes.
‘Sorry, mate.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I was glad to come into the army. In uniform everybody’s equal. You can look a man in the eye. It’s a chance to earn some respect and recover some mana. Ngata is right about the price of citizenship. He wants to turn the tables, embarrass the Government. At least that’s what I think. He’s right. If we fight and die for the country, we deserve to be taken seriously. No more digging bloody holes on somebody else’s farm.’
Conditions were freshening. They sat for a while in silence, shielding their cigarettes, letting the breeze take care of their damp clothing, gazing into the darkness looking for signs of their escorts and the other vessels in the convoy, ducking and diving at speed through the night.
Over the course of what remained of the voyage, they met many times, and during their conversations Haami shared much of his tikanga with his young friend. Len listened and learned. Every time Haami used a Māori word, Len asked hi
m what it meant, and, little by little, he began to understand some of the beliefs and practices that distinguished Māori. He was surprised to learn from Haami that the haka was only the beginning of a ritual, a necessary challenge to declare identity and intent, after which people ideally became more congenial. He got used to his mentor invoking proverbs to illustrate his point. He smiled at the imagery, but came quickly to respect their aptness and their universality. Many of them had equivalents in English. Haami as a toa invoked martial words and images more often than not, and Len began to see the subtle and remarkably appropriate ambiguities in the language. While toa meant ‘warrior’, it also meant ‘brave’. Len learned the meaning of niwha, grit or fortitude, and about the fear that had gripped him, called wehi, which he was told he would have to harness if he was to make himself stronger. He struggled to remember most of it. But of all the whakataukī Haami invoked, ‘Kia mate ururoa kei mate wheke’ stayed in his mind. As a warrior’s dictum, it was obvious and compelling, and Len soon saw it as an expression of cultural determinism. But it went further than that, deeper, expressing succinctly the growing internal debate around personal identity that he knew he would have to deal with, one way or another, sooner or later. The question he kept asking himself was ‘how?’
★ ★ ★
As they entered the South Atlantic, the voyage took on a different character. There was greater vigilance, and a mood of anticipation. Their arrival in Liberia was an opportunity not for recreation but for intensification, and when the convoy departed Freetown, it had grown to become the biggest of its day. The scene was deeply impressive. Warships outnumbered the troopships, and included the battleship Hood, His Majesty’s largest fighting ship, the aircraft carrier Hermes, a number of light cruisers and over a dozen destroyers.
Nevertheless, given the air of festivity that prevailed at departure, one might not have thought the fleet was about to sail into the war zone. The local population thronged the waterfront in the late afternoon, and it seemed the whole city had gathered to watch the spectacle. Where the viewing was limited, people crowded onto rooftops or stood on vehicles. Several youths clung halfway up palm trees. Yet another brass band played manfully on, its music overwhelmed by the general hubbub, except for the occasional clash of symbols and the regular beat of the bass drum, which rolled across the inner waters of the harbour to disappear in the heavy air.
As the ships began to get up steam, they sent up smoke that hung low and moved sluggishly across the horizon, against which the vast spectacle of military manpower created an extraordinary impression. Suddenly there were three long blasts from the Queen Mary’s horn, a sound that reverberated so powerfully across the water it engulfed the crowd and caused stomachs to tremble. Then, as one, the entire fleet sounded their horns three times, and the noise rolled right across the city and halfway up the mountainsides behind, to the wild acclaim of the assembled masses. One by one, the ships weighed anchor and slowly made their way out to sea, to form a convoy again under a darkening sky.
Once at sea, routines were quickly re-established. To celebrate the fact that the long voyage was nearing its end, a series of concerts was organised on board the vessels. The Māori had provided music and laughter since the day they boarded the train in Hamilton, and being at sea had not deterred them at all. Unsurprisingly, now too they formed the nucleus of the performances. They sang now familiar songs such as ‘Pōkarekare Ana’, and the new Māori Battalion song. It was rousing stuff.
There was dancing too, if you counted a couple of beefy artillerymen dressed as ballerinas in tutus and lipstick, tripping back and forth across the stage to the tune of ‘The Sugar Plum Fairy’.
The programme included prose and even poetry, and individuals among the complement disclosed hidden talents, standing and reading their reminiscences of home with passion and genuine sentiment. Contributions such as these were met with a deep, emotive silence.
Then Lofty and Jackie Hayward brought the house down singing a love duet from Gilbert and Sullivan. The sight of the two of them tripping hither, tripping thither – of Jackie, a mop masquerading as his hair, passionately expressing his undying love to Lofty’s navel, while Lofty gazed expressionless over the top of his head – caused great hilarity. The audience urged the two to take the relationship a little further.
‘Give him one, Jackie!’ Tim yelled above the din.
‘If you can reach, mate,’ added Jackie Hayward.
At this moment the war could not have been further from everyone’s thoughts.
A programme had been printed, with an effusive compliment to the Captain and crew for their care and diligence on the voyage, written by the Māori Battalion’s Colonel Dittmer, the senior officer on board. Len thought the occasion somehow worth preserving, and he invited those nearest to him to write their names in his programme. When he got it back, there were dozens of names, seventy-nine in all, neatly written in columns. T N Hill, Jack Kindred, Jackie Hayward, Bill Neville … even the Colonel had contributed.
★ ★ ★
When the convoy rounded Cape Verde and addressed itself to the home straight, the mood on board again shifted: dramatically this time. Watch duties were doubled, and spotting aircraft or periscopes became a preoccupation, even for those who were not on duty. Of course, occasionally aircraft did fly overhead, and while they always proved to be friendly, that didn’t stop the men reacting with anxiety. This increased as the news of the evacuation of Dunkirk became known. It appeared that the Germans had the upper hand. Vigilance on blackout at night was meticulous.
In this way US3 made its way across the Bay of Biscay safely and entered the Irish Sea, where the vessels picked up speed. They ploughed through wreckage, evidence of a recent attack, and sailed past a blazing tanker sinking slowly by the stern with only its bow visible above water. There were no signs of life. Men lined the sides of the passing ships in sombre silence.
Then land came into sight, and on 12 June 1940 the convoy made landfall at Greenock in Scotland and anchored in the Firth of Clyde. The voyage from Auckland had taken forty-two days.
★ ★ ★
The arrival of a convoy of reinforcements like US3 did much to improve Britain’s morale at a desperate time, and the large body of Dominion troops offered up a powerful symbol of unity among far-flung nations who saw fascism as the mutual enemy of humanity. No one on the newly arrived convoy realised the gravity of the circumstances around them. The British army had been evacuated from Dunkirk, and Italy had joined the Axis. No one yet appreciated that the British Isles were under siege, let alone what a siege would look or feel like, but the horizon around the island nation was dark indeed, and the battle itself had now shifted to the skies. In the streets, men and women could look up and watch a few brave champions fighting to the death on their behalf, contrails arcing and slicing through the sky, as they strove to keep the Luftwaffe at bay.
Since Dunkirk all the transport systems were overloaded, and the shore experience was semi-chaotic. Rather than heading into Glasgow as had first been intimated, the New Zealand Naval Reservists were marched to a railway station and told they were to be split into three groups. One was headed to Chatham, one to Devonport and one to Portsmouth.
With departure looming, Len looked around for Haami. He would miss the special relationship they had had during the voyage. He had come to admire the man himself, for his strength of character. He had learned respect for his culture, too; for its robustness. And he knew he had grown – a little perhaps, but grown nevertheless – a better understanding of the meaning of being Māori. He saw now a platoon of Māori standing at attention further down the station platform, Sergeant Parata ramrod straight front and centre. As they were stood easy, Haami looked towards the Navy contingent. He saw Len and came towards him. They shook hands. ‘Good luck, my friend,’ Haami said. ‘Okea ururoatia, e hoa!’
‘Okay ururoa-tia?’ Len struggled with the pronunciation.
‘Okea ururoatia. Fight like a shark.’ You f
ullas would say, ‘Never say die.’
Each time they had parted company on the ship, Len had heard Haami use a particular phrase; he had memorised it. He thought he understood its meaning, and so he said now, ‘Ka kite anō, Haami.’ See you again.
‘Ha, ha! Ka pai, ka pai. See you again too, e hoa!’
Deeply gratified by the gesture, the Māori drew the young sailor towards him and offered a hongi. They touched noses briefly, allowing their wairua to co-mingle. In the middle of a busy platform, the act was profoundly personal.
Then they parted company for the last time, Haami in search of mana and Len in search of himself.
★ ★ ★
The sailors were loaded onto a train to begin another journey, this time heading south into England, officers in one carriage and ratings in the remainder. Four men had to squeeze into bench seating for three. Having hoisted their kitbags up into the carriage and climbed on board, Tim and Len found themselves standing next to the two McVinnie brothers. Coincidently the four smallest boys in the unit, they recognised their opportunity simultaneously, and immediately threw themselves onto the nearest available seat. They were then able to relax and enjoy the rest of the journey in moderate comfort.
Lofty was disgusted. He looked down at the occupied alternative opposite, and forced his way onto the seat, deaf to complaint. He sat opposite the others and scowled back at them, head, shoulders and ears above his neighbours. Tim couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Don’t worry about it, Lofty, you make a great periscope. Can you tell us what’s happening down the back?’
The two Macs laughed. Lofty didn’t seem to get the joke.