by Michael King
Voluntary enlistment for the war began on 12 September 1939, and the first echelon of 6600 troops sailed for training camps in Egypt in a convoy of six ships which left Wellington Harbour on 5 January 1940; the second left on 2 May. They included a smaller number of men who had enlisted for the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Ormond Burton, decorated for bravery at the Western Front in World War I but now imprisoned in Mt Crawford gaol, watched them go with tears in his eyes.
The great ships passed immediately below the prison garden. Some twenty-five years before I had been with the cheering transports that swung out from Mudros to the beaches of Gallipoli where the gallant companies were torn to bloody shreds by the bursting shrapnel and the hail of machine-gun fire.
In my mind’s eye I could see the battles that were to come and how the strong and exultant young men who crowded these decks would be broken under the barrages. I found it very moving, as one always must when one senses the willingness of men to suffer and die for a cause that seems to them right. So, standing in the garden in my prison dress of field grey, I gave the general salute with my long-handled shovel – very reverently.
The naval and air force volunteers went on to England for training; the troops found themselves encamped close to where their fathers and uncles had trained in Egypt for World War I. Another generation experienced the discomforts of the desert, the delights of Shepheard’s Hotel, the Muski, Groppi’s and Shafto’s, and had themselves photographed on camels with the Sphinx and the great pyramids of Giza in the background. The major camp was at El Maadi, eight miles south of Cairo, where the command headquarters became known as Bludgers’ Hill. As subsequent transports arrived in Egypt, an esprit de corps built up that led Freyberg to believe that the division was ready for combat by March 1941, when a German invasion of Greece was imminent.
Meanwhile there had been a change of political leadership and direction of the war effort at home. Michael Joseph Savage had, after a prolonged illness, died of cancer on 27 March 1940. His body was returned to Auckland by train, with frequent stops en route for mourners to express their grief. He was buried at Bastion Point on 31 March after his cortège had driven along a route lined by 200,000 observers. Peter Fraser, his deputy and a strong Minister of Education and of Health, succeeded him. In this respect the country was singularly fortunate. While Fraser, a dour Scotsman, would never be loved as Savage had been, he was far more intelligent and shrewd, and a more able political operator (he had the ability to ‘see round corners’, his private secretary would say).
Fraser imposed firm controls on the wartime economy in an effort to accomplish what he believed the administration during World War I had neglected to do – to conscript the country’s wealth in addition to its manpower. In July 1940 he established a War Cabinet in which the Opposition was represented by its leader, Adam Hamilton, and former Prime Minister and World War I veteran Gordon Coates. The National Party changed leaders in November 1940 and Hamilton’s successor, Sidney Holland, an abrasive small businessman and hobby farmer from Canterbury, demanded a coalition government. Fraser, who doubted his ability to work harmoniously with Holland, refused. Holland eventually joined the War Cabinet, responsible for the administration of the war effort but not domestic affairs, and the wider War Administration, of which the War Cabinet was the executive.
In fact, the politicians on whom Fraser relied most for support were his deputy and Finance Minister Walter Nash, who eventually went to Washington for sixteen months in 1942–43 as New Zealand’s resident minister, to keep the Roosevelt administration aware of New Zealand’s position and needs, and Coates, who, before he died suddenly in May 1943, was Minister of Armed Forces and War Administration in the War Cabinet. The nominal Minister of Defence, Fred Jones, worked at Fraser’s close direction. Paraire Paikea of Northern Maori became Minister in Charge of Maori War Effort, and William Perry, a member of the Legislative Council and immediate past president of the Returned Services’ Association, took Coates’s portfolios after the latter’s death. Another important figure, trade unionist Fintan Patrick Walsh, never sat in cabinet but ran the administration’s Economic Stabilisation Committee. The key civil servants were Alister McIntosh and Treasury Secretary Bernard Ashwin. Over all these personnel and activities, however, Peter Fraser held a tight rein. He persuaded Parliament to postpone the general election due in 1941. When it was eventually held, in 1943, Labour won comfortably, but only because domestic discontent at rationing and restrictions on such things as petrol and travel was outweighed by the overwhelming support of servicemen overseas.
In Greece, the New Zealand Division was in combat for the first time against German forces in April 1941 (they had previously been involved in limited actions against Italians in North Africa). This campaign represented a disastrous start to the country’s overseas war effort. Misunderstanding the significance of an exchange of cables, the New Zealand Government believed that Freyberg had approved the viability of the operation when he had not, and Freyberg believed that the New Zealand Government had approved it, unaware that that approval was based on his own putative support. As it transpired, the Allied forces – eighteen Greek divisions and one each from Australia and New Zealand – were heavily outnumbered by 27 German divisions, and by 800 German aircraft against the Allies’ 80.
From the time fighting began in early April, New Zealand troops were on the back foot, though they fought strong rearguard actions at the Servia Pass and Mount Olympus, in mountainous conditions for which they had not been trained, and later across the Thessaly Plain to Thermopylae. The decision to evacuate was made on 21 April and accomplished by 1 May. New Zealand had lost 291 men killed and 1826 taken prisoner; a further 387 were seriously wounded.
Sadly, many New Zealand troops and officers moved directly from one defeat to another. Most of the Commonwealth and Greek evacuees from the Greek mainland were transported to Crete, which they believed to be an assembly point on their way back to Egypt. But by the beginning of May they learned that they were to play a major role in the defence of the island, which had considerable strategic value for both sides in the war. Allied forces would be under the command of General Freyberg. Numbering around 32,000 men, they were again under-equipped, and they were to fight alongside some 11,000 poorly trained Greek troops. There was no air support.
The German airborne invasion began on 20 May 1941 with an unopposed aerial bombardment followed by a mass release of parachutists and troops in gliders. The sight of this mass of men silently dropping out of the sky was almost hypnotically beautiful. Once stirred into action, however, Allied soldiers began to pick off the parachutists as they floated to earth. The German losses from this phase of the campaign were appallingly high. Sufficient soldiers were landed to secure some positions, however, and they directed the full force of their attack at the three airfields on Crete’s northern coast, and at the harbour at Suda Bay. It was the loss to the Germans of one of these airfields, Maleme, in controversial circumstances in which senior New Zealand officers made ill-judged decisions, that allowed the invaders to land transport aircraft and more troops, and consequently gain a substantial foothold on the island.
After less than a week of fierce fighting, in which Captain Charles Upham won the first of his two Victoria Crosses, Freyberg decided that the battle was lost and began to make plans to evacuate as many troops as possible from beaches on the southern coast. New Zealand troops and their British, Australian and Greek counterparts then began an arduous and dangerous trek over the island’s central range in an effort to reach the points of embarkation. Total Allied casualties amounted to 15,743 men. Of these, 671 New Zealanders were killed, 967 wounded and 2180 taken prisoner. This was a high cost for a country whose population allowed it to contribute, at this point, only one division to the entire war. And it would have been even higher had Peter Fraser not been in Cairo at the time and persuaded the Royal Navy to take off a further 3700 men.
Afterwards there were recriminations in plenty. T
he New Zealand Government came close to losing confidence in Freyberg, some of whose senior officers went behind his back to raise doubts about his competence. Senior British officers and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill continued to express confidence in him, however, and this swung the pendulum back in Freyberg’s favour. With the passage of time, some historians have suggested that the task of defending Crete may have been beyond Freyberg’s capacities, and that he appeared to lack the imagination to consider the implications of an airborne invasion (he continued to act as if he believed that the major German threat would come from the sea).
Of all the New Zealand battles in World War II, none engraved itself more deeply on the national consciousness than that for Crete. It was the Gallipoli of its era (and both campaigns, of course, were conceived and overseen by Churchill). As Glyn Harper has noted, ‘there a scratch force made up largely of New Zealanders and Australians came tantalisingly close to inflicting Germany’s first land defeat of the war. It was a tragedy and a serious defeat for the Allies but by only the narrowest of margins.’ The links between New Zealanders and Cretans were further strengthened by the fact that some soldiers, such as Dudley Perkins, returned to the island to fight with partisans for the remainder of the war. Perkins, known as Vasili (‘the Lion’), was eventually shot in a German ambush in February 1944. He was but one of hundreds of examples of mild-mannered civilians who discovered that, faced with wartime conditions, he was possessed of great courage and considerable military skills.
The New Zealand Division’s lengthiest contribution to the war was made in the North African campaigns from 1941 to 1943. This region was of vital strategic importance because of its proximity to the Suez Canal, the Middle East oil fields and the mid-Mediterranean base of Malta. The first engagements in which New Zealanders were involved came as part of the British Army attacks on Italian positions in Egypt and Libya in late 1940 and early 1941. The arrival of General Erwin Rommel and his armoured Afrika Korps greatly strengthened the Axis forces, and British Army units were driven as far back as Egypt by April 1941.
Back from Greece and Crete, New Zealand troops were in action against German and Italian forces in the North African desert from November 1941. The conditions were trying – hot and fly-ridden during the day and freezing at night, while wind-blown sand played havoc with machinery. Nevertheless the division forced its way westwards, helping push the Axis troops almost back to the Libyan border. There was a series of battles around Sidi Rezegh and Belhamed as an attempt was made to relieve one of the British divisions besieged at Tobruk. In one of these engagements, on 23 November, one New Zealand battalion lost over 100 men. There were further casualties and around 700 New Zealanders taken prisoner when Rommel overran 5th Brigade headquarters on 27 November. Two days later two New Zealand battalions were overrun by the Germans, as was a third on 30 November. By this time Rommel’s supplies were depleted, however, and his forces withdrew to El Agheila, west of Tobruk. The New Zealand Division returned to its Egyptian base to recover. It had lost 4620 men in that series of battles. A further 80 drowned when the Chakdina, carrying wounded men away from Tobruk, was sunk on 5 December.
While New Zealanders were resting and training in Egypt and then Syria, Rommel’s men had again attacked British forces and driven them back to the Egyptian border. Tobruk fell to the Germans and Italians on 21 June 1942. New Zealand troops rejoined the battle and almost the entire division was cut off and surrounded by Axis troops at Minqar Qaim in late June. The solution was a desperate night-time breakout, which succeeded, but at the cost of almost 1000 casualties and the temporary loss of General Freyberg, wounded by a shell splinter. Early in July the division attempted to take Ruweisat Ridge, which dominated the El Alamein position. But this action ended in disaster with over 1400 New Zealanders killed, wounded or captured. One of the few pieces of eventual good news was that Charles Upham had become the only combatant to win a bar to his Victoria Cross.
The setbacks experienced by the Allies in mid-1942 resulted in changes in the British command, most notably in Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery’s taking charge of the 8th Army. His professionalism and determination lifted the morale of Allied forces as a whole, and New Zealand troops were especially relieved when Freyberg returned to lead the division. Montgomery launched the crucial Battle of El Alamein on 23 October 1942, and by 4 November the Axis forces were in retreat, with New Zealand units among those in pursuit. By January 1943 New Zealand troops had reached Tripoli, and by March they were fighting the rearguard Axis positions in Tunisia. During one such action on 26 March Moana-nui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu of Ngati Porou earned a posthumous Victoria Cross at Tebaga Gap.
He was killed on his feet defiantly facing the enemy with his tommy-gun at his hip. As he fell he came to rest almost on top of those of the enemy who had fallen, the number of whom testified to his outstanding courage and fortitude.
The following month, at Takrouna, Sergeant Haane Manahi came close to earning another VC for the 28th (Maori) Battalion when he led his men through intense fighting to retake a position that had been lost. The battalion as a whole won the admiration of other units in the New Zealand Division, other Allied troops and the Germans and Italians for the determination of their fighting in North Africa, especially in hand-to-hand combat. Brigadier Howard Kippenberger, most popular of the senior New Zealand officers and commander of the New Zealand forces at Takrouna, commented that Maori were ‘splendid troops’ but ‘needed an iron hand’ to keep them under control.
The fight for Takrouna was the last in which New Zealanders participated in North Africa. The Axis forces collapsed in May 1943 and 238,000 troops surrendered. The New Zealanders began the almost 3000 km journey back to their Egyptian base. Unbeknown to them, the Government back home had been debating in the latter part of the campaign whether or not to leave them in the Middle East. The situation back in the Pacific had changed, and there was now a fear that another Axis power – the Japanese – might threaten the mainland of New Zealand itself.
New Zealand’s security in the Pacific had long been based on the twin propositions that the British Navy would sail to the region if the safety of New Zealand and Australia was threatened, and that the British naval base at Singapore was able to paralyse or deter any threats originating in Asia (and Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe had identified Japan as the most likely source of aggression as early as 1921). By June 1940, however, the New Zealand Government knew that this basis for security in its region was flimsy. The British Government, alarmed by German victories in France, told New Zealand that, if France did fall, Britain would be unable to deal simultaneously with the German, Italian and Japanese navies and would have to rely on the United States to safeguard its interests in the Far East.
The Singapore base was not completed until 1941 and almost immediately showed itself unable to meet the expectations invested in it. On 7 December 1941 the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawai‘i and simultaneously moved against other American and British territories in South-east Asia. The British naval commander at Singapore, Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, took the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse north to try to intercept Japanese landings in north-east Malaya. Both vessels were sunk by shore-based bombers. The shock was complete when Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942.
This series of disasters resulted in Walter Nash being sent to Washington as, in effect, the country’s first ambassador there, to reinforce New Zealand representations already made to President Roosevelt and strengthen the likelihood that the United States would indeed guarantee the security of Pacific countries.[1] A debate was simultaneously ignited in New Zealand about whether the country’s troops should be left in the Mediterranean theatre of war in pursuit of a ‘Europe first’ policy (it was regarded as axiomatic that there would be no future for New Zealand if Britain fell to the Axis powers), or brought home to defend New Zealand against Japanese invasion. Australia made an early decision to bring home two
of its three divisions from the Middle East, and the third followed after the Battle of El Alamein. After debate in cabinet and in Parliament, which took into account the ‘Europe first’ arguments, shipping problems and dangers, and the fact that American troops were already in New Zealand in large numbers by June 1942, the Government decided to leave the New Zealand Division where it was and allow it to take part in the Italian campaign which followed the collapse of Rommel’s army in 1943.
New Zealand troops were also despatched to the Pacific, however. A garrison was maintained at Fiji until relieved by American forces in June 1942. After the crucial battles of the Coral Sea (May 1942) and Midway (June 1942), in which the Americans turned back the Japanese naval advance, New Zealand reorganised its Pacific division as an amphibious unit to assist in American assaults on islands held by the Japanese. Its troops took part in mopping-up operations at Vella Lavella in the Solomons, losing 32 killed and 31 wounded. In October 1943 they invaded the Mono and Stirling Islands in the Treasury Group at a cost of 40 killed and 145 wounded. In February 1944 they captured Nissan and other islands to the north. Although the war had another year to run, the threat to New Zealand was clearly over and this division was disbanded.
New Zealand airmen had participated in the war with Japan earlier than soldiers and sailors, however. It was a Maori pilot, Sergeant B. S. Wipiti, who was credited with shooting down the first Japanese plane over Singapore. He was one of a squadron of Royal New Zealand Air Force pilots training there with the RAF. Others, more than 100, had already fought with distinction in the Battle of Britain in 1940 and were the largest group of Commonwealth pilots in that action. Another New Zealander, Keith Park, was in command of 11 Group, which bore the brunt of the Battle of Britain. New Zealand pilots were also part of Britain’s Bomber Command and Coastal Command, and they fought with distinction over Europe, the Atlantic, North Africa and the Middle East. In the Pacific, they saw most action over the Solomon Islands. By war’s end, more than 12,000 had served as pilots, gunners and mechanics, of whom 3285 had died and around 500 been taken prisoner.