Armistice Day

Guest article by Max Avery

Great War Memorial, Tauranga Town Hall, 1919
Postcard photograph by Robert J. Rendell
Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0308/08

The 104th anniversary of Armistice Day, which signalled the effective end of World War One, passed recently, virtually unnoticed in Tauranga. The signing of the ceasefire document on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 is still recalled annually in large memorial services in England, yet we in her former colonies seem to forget the cost in human lives of our contribution. At least 107 Tauranga men died in that conflict.

Pamphlet dropped over front lines from German aeroplane in November 1918, collected by NZ soldier
Courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection

That the Armistice, although most welcomed, was a rather hurriedly conceived affair was made clear in at least one respect when an English newspaper printed the following account after an interview with a British army trumpeter named Revett:

                                       THE GREATEST BUGLE-CALL OF ALL

Who sounded the greatest bugle call in the world? There can be no doubt about the answer, They were eight Englishmen.

Millions had died in the four most terrible years since Time began. The European War, with all its horror and misery, all its splendid heroism and sacrifice, was shaking the world. For the British, the darkest hour was past and the Great Push was carrying terror into the enemy’s country.

On the 10th November 1918 Trumpeter Revett was mounting his horse - he was stationed at General Headquarters - when he was ordered to dismount and put up his horse. Then with seven comrades, all trumpeters, he went on parade and was ordered to a wayside station where he and his companions were locked in a cattle truck.

The train steamed out of the station. Not one of the trumpeters knew where they were going but hour after hour passed, and after a day and a night the train stopped. They made tea and warmed pork and beans on a Primus stove, cleaned their buttons, and went on parade without a wash.

“Slow March” was the order. They went without looking right or left. They passed a railway coach and when Revett glanced at it he heard a sharp order, “Eyes front!”

The command “Halt” rang out. The Sergeant-Major stood watch in hand. A few seconds ticked by. Then the Sergeant-Major put his watch in his pocket and said, “Eleven o’clock, November 11, 1918. Ready…. Sound the ‘Cease Fire’.”

The call was sounded.

Two minutes later he gave the command “Sound the ‘All Clear’.”

The call was sounded.

The eight men marched back, passing the railway carriage in which, had they known it, the Armistice had been signed.

The Great War was finished.

British and French military staff outside Foch's railway carriage after signing the Armistice, November 1918
Courtesy of Wikipedia

After demobilisation: Arthur Weber Todman, b. 8 October 1888

This close to Armistice Day, we might pay some attention to the “what happened next?” question for those who served in the Great War.  

Life in Te Puna turned out to be not so easy for returned soldier Arthur  Weber Todman.  Just 30 years old when the war ended, he took up land on the Wairoa after his discharge from the army and tried to make a go of marriage, and a small farm, there.  Both failed.  The muddles and difficulties in getting land at a fair valuation, and a loan to support it, were the subject of comment in the Bay of Plenty Times as early as September 1918. [1]

The perceived unfairnesses of life as a returned serviceman may have been particularly sharp-drawn for Arthur, who has elsewhere been described as a “headstrong union leader.” [2] Certainly he was not afraid of trouble.  The skills he developed as an organiser of working men showed in both his military and civilian lives.

As a young man, before the war, he trained as a chef and was appointed assistant secretary of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union in January 1916.  By March of that year he was elected to the Committee of the Trades and Labour Council.  This promising function as a union official did not last long in the face of recruiting efforts that really got under way at this time.  Possibly to spend time with his family in Wanganui before call-up, he resigned his office as assistant secretary in May.  By July he had a job as chef with Fosters Hotel, the address given on his army History Sheet when he was eventually enlisted into the Canterbury Regiment in August.

By January 1917 the Regiment was in the Étaples Camp, now notorious for the mutiny of colonial troops that broke out in September.  Once again Arthur’s union training came into play.  He was a member of the small council of action whose threats and action [3] made it possible to negotiate an end to the mutiny and important reforms to military discipline. 

Arthur was probably lucky to be wounded in December 1917.  He was hospitalised, and sent home in October 1918. His 3 January 1919 discharge arrangements [4] show an amendment to his intended address: c/o GPO [General Post Office] Wairoa, Tauranga, Bay of Plenty. 

The shipping list for the Ngapuhi in December 1918 [5] shows that he had been in Tauranga, presumably viewing, and choosing, the land he was to settle on.  A man of property now, he married Gladys Victoria Shears in 1920.

He also joined the Tauranga Returned Servicemen’s Association, moving procedural motions [6] and opposing the racism of soldier settlement policies intended to offer land only to pakeha [7], as a union man knew how to do.  As a landowner, however, he was vigilant as to his rights, publishing many, many public notices against those trespassing on his farm. 

We know what kind of farm it was, and what Arthur did with it, because in February 1924 a clearing-out sale [8] took place.  The sale, the result of a declaration of bankruptcy at the end of January, and a creditors meeting on 5 February, showed he ran dairy cattle and poultry, and had lived with Gladys in a four-roomed cottage.

Arthur’s loan from the Lands Department had been called in.  Gladys, who had taken several trips to Auckland in 1922-23, was aboard the SS Matangi three days before the creditors meeting.  It seems they did not live together again.

I surmise this because, although Arthur was able, within three months, to clear his debts [9], he shows up as one of a group of striking coastal seamen in September 1925. [10]  He was one of the six ‘ship’s boys’ who were convicted, forfeited six days’ pay, and returned to the Port Dunedin (the vessel, not the place).

Arthur eventually re-settled in Wanganui.  In his old age he was living at 49 Dublin Street, which still stands.

Arthur died in 1983. He is listed among the servicemen on the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s ‘online cenotaph’:

http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/search

There were no poppies against his name when I searched for it, but one is there now.  If you think his short stint in Te Puna made him someone to be remembered by us locals, you can leave a poppy there too.

---

[1] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19180911.2.4

[2]  John Fairley and William Allison, The Monocled Mutineer, Allen & Unwin 2015

[3] His account of the work of the Council of Action is given in The Monocled Mutineer: “We marched to the clink, which was half of the MPs [military police] quarters, let the prisoners out, doused the place with kerosene, and set it on fire.  This created a very dangerous situation as it was very near the ammunition dump.”

[4] https://discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/browse/person/986853

[5] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19181223.2.2.1

[6] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19200527.2.17

[7] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19200714.2.18

[8] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19240223.2.2.2

[9] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19240611.2.2.5, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19240628.2.119

[10] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/STEP19250911.2.30

 

Recent ANZAC Tradition in Tauranga Moana

Flagpoles, Tutereinga Marae

In April 1995, Howie Wilson says, he and three of his mates found the Anzac Day crowds at the Mount Maunganui RSA too large for their liking. The press of people in the club did not allow for the quiet reflection and exchange of memories that marked the day for him and Lincoln Smith, Perry Smith, and Tapuraka Dickson, all veterans of New Zealand’s campaigns in Malaya, Borneo and Viet Nam. They took themselves off, with a couple of crates of beer, to a retreat within sight of Hairini marae.[1] (This was not a new thing - old soldiers had made it their informal catch-up place as early as the 1980s.)

Marae are places of connection and re-connection, places imbued with meaning. It is not, therefore, surprising that the idea that came to Howie and his former brothers-in-arms on Anzac Day 1995 brought together past and future commemorations and began a new tradition. Five years later, after much korero and organisation, Ngāti Tapu hosted a dawn ceremony at Waikari marae on the Matapihi peninsula.

Howie and Donna planning, Tutereinga Marae

The first Parade Commander was a retired former Regimental Sergeant Major of the Hauraki Battalion, WO Ist Class Ben Morunga. The Hauraki Battalion has proved to be staunch in its support ever since, an acknowledgement of the large proportion of Maori who served in the three South East Asia campaigns. All of the veterans mentioned, except for Howie himself, have now passed on.

This was to be the first in a nineteen-year sequence, interrupted in 2020 when Covid-19 restrictions prevented any but the tiniest of Anzac gatherings.[2] The original plan was to hold the service at Hungahungatoroa, but a tangi intervened and the planning pivoted to nearby Waikari, “which was better, really,” says Howie. “The mist was well down and the contingent just came up out of it.” He was surprised and gratified at the turnout – about 500 people attended, many of them young.

Other marae were not slow to put in their bids as hosts. Over the years, dawn services have been held at nearly every marae in Tauranga Moana, including Hairini of course (in 2019) and Opureroa on Matakana Island. Given that there are 22 of them by my count [3], it was quite some time before Te Puna’s turn came.

This was to have been in 2020, the Covid year. Pirirakau elders were to be sadly disappointed; even sadder, two of the most forceful bidders, Maria Ngatai and Kiritoha Tangitu, had passed away before they could see their home marae, Tutereinga, be the venue for the service.

 “I did form the Tauranga Moana Tumutauenga Returned Services Association Inc [4],”  Howie told me.  “But I never really needed it. The service stays the same each year – only the people change.”  As the ranks of the original 38 members of the society – many of whom had served in the South-east Asian conflicts – dwindled, Howie found Tania Smith standing alongside him. She took on the takohanga in memory of her own dad, Lincoln. And the crowds, especially the presence of young people, got bigger every year.

Tania held the promise to Pirirakau as Covid restrictions relaxed. At the end of March 2021, a small group of planners got their marching orders: the wreath-making, the breakfast menu, the site of the rum station (just outside the marae), the lighting – Howie does not want anything too bright – the Ratana band and the Parade Marshall. Tania wistfully wonders if the kura choir might be coached in time to sing Hikoi kia toa, “but ke te pai if not ...” and the after-party venue (the Te Puna Rugby Club) is sorted. Photos of tipuna for the order of service, and their placement and presentation on the porch of the wharenui, no detail too small:  this will be a big day for Te Puna and Pirirakau are on their mettle.  “Expect the wharekai to  be full,” Tania tells Pirirakau whaea Donna Bidois.

“It’s an honour and a privilege,” Donna responds.

“Each marae has its own wairua,” Howie concludes. The old soldier stands in contemplation in front of the wharenui, flanked by Pirirakau whanau. Suddenly the connections are everywhere – those who are to be remembered, those who are yet to come. Marae are not monuments or memorials, but their power to contain time and memory, for “learned discourse, customary oratory, laughter, nostalgia and sharing sorrow and tears” [5] as the Ngai Te Ahi Trust describes Hairini, means it is no surprise that his idea of aligning military Anzac traditions with Maori tikanga has taken root and flourishes.

References

[1] For a useful description of this marae from interviews with twelve members of the Ngai Te Ahi hapū,  see Teddy, Nikora and Bernard, MAI Rreview, 2008, 1 Article 3; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/33051444_Place_attachment_of_Ngai_Te_Ahi_to_Hairini_Marae
[2] For instance, a few locals waited for dawn outside the near-completed Te Puna Memorial Hall, maintaining social distance.  Elsewhere, people followed public health messages and stood at the end of their driveways at 6 am.
[3] https://maorimaps.com/node/14479
[4] Records of the society, now dissolved, can be found at https://is-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/
[5] https://www.ngaiteahi.co.nz/rohe/hairini-marae/

Tauranga Domain

Rotunda in the Domain, Tauranga, Postcard, published by F.G. Radcliffe (3565)
Collection of Justine Neal

Early days ... Ngai Tamarawaho and Ngati Tapu hapu occupied the land before the Ngati Maru taua attack in 1828. The taua was heavily armed and the loss of life was great.

The origins of the present day park go back to 1873 when Tauranga residents applied to the Native Minister for a domain to be set aside. Five years later the park was extended to the south. In 1881 the northern part was set aside for a secondary school. The southern part of the Domain was called the Wharepai Ground or Domain after David Asher’s boarding house, Wharepai, which was built in Hamilton Street in 1901 and demolished in 1971.

In 1890 a temporary tent hospital was erected in the grounds to cope with typhoid patients, the disease having been caused by the poor sanitary conditions in the town.

The band rotunda was well used over the years, on August 1 1906 the Bay of Plenty Times reported: The newly formed brass band will make its first appearance in public, when the members will give an open air concert in the band rotunda, in the Domain. A collection is to be taken up in aid of the fund in connection with the recent shipwrecks in Gisborne.

Unveiling of the statue of Canon Jordan, 28 Jan 1916, Postcard
Collection of Justine Neal

On 1 July 1914 the Bay of Plenty Times reported: A committee in connection with the Canon Jordan Memorial met on Friday last, and after considering various proposals, including fountains, memorial gates etc., they decided that the memorial take the form of a statue. The statue to be of Sicilian marble, with polished red Scotch granite pedestal, the material of which the base is to be composed to be decided at a further meeting in July.

On November 3 1915 the paper reported that the statue has arrived in the yard of Messrs. W. Parkinson & Co. who report it as an exquisite piece of work.

The unveiling ceremony took place on January 28 1916, well attended by local citizens and town dignitaries. Over a hundred years later Canon Jordan is still standing there, although somewhat weatherbeaten these days.

Tauranga's War Memorial Gates, Undated postcard
Collection of Justine Neal

After the end of WWI Tauranga, like many other New Zealand towns decided a War Memorial was needed to recognise the brave sacrifice of the many local boys who had gone to fight and not returned. On March 29 1919 a public meeting was held to decide what form the memorial at the Domain should take. It was agreed to a War Memorial in the form of an ornamental gateway and gates to the Domain. The gates were to be funded partly by public subscription, although according to the paper the people of Tauranga had not been exactly forthcoming with their money. On December 11 1921 the opening ceremony for the Memorial Gates was held. The official parade was in charge of Lt. Col. Wilson. Immediate next of kin of fallen soldiers were invited to wear their war medals on their right breast and were seated with veterans and returned soldiers.

On December 9 1924 tenders were called for the erection of a Ladies Pavilion.

Aerial view of the Tauranga Domain. Photo by P. Browning
Postcard published by A.H. & A.W. Reed (SR 615) Collection of Justine Neal

Today the Domain remains as a huge asset to a busy city with its sport fields, tennis courts etc. and its collection of amazing old trees. Now wouldn’t they have some stories to tell!

References
A Centennial History of Tauranga, 1882-1982, Don Gifford
Bay of Plenty Times
Papers Past
Musket Wars, Ron Crosby

White Crosses on the Waterfront

The first of one hundred and nine white crosses were installed on Tauranga's waterfront this morning. The crosses are being progressively installed between October 17 and November 8, each new group representing a month of the four-year war and the soldiers from Tauranga who died during that time. The public is invited to join cadets from the Western Bay of Plenty Cadet Unit in bringing the crosses out at dawn. On November 11, Armistice Day, there will be an 11am centenary service at Memorial Park marking the day and time the war ended in 1918.

All images Copyright and courtesy of Fiona Kean

Raymond John Baker (1890-1915)

Read more: http://tauranga.kete.net.nz/remembering_war/topics/show/2358-ronald-tracey-matheson-1874-1915

Frederick Hugh Dodson (1891-1915)

Read more: http://tauranga.kete.net.nz/remembering_war/topics/show/2321-frederick-hugh-dodson-1891-1915

Ronald Tracey Matheson (1874-1915)

Read more: http://tauranga.kete.net.nz/remembering_war/topics/show/2224-Raymond-John-Baker-(1890-1915)

New Tauranga Street Names

Tauranga is growing more rapidly than ever, and this means new subdivisions and new street names. Areas on the outskirts of the city are being filled with housing to cope with the increasing demand. In Pyes Pā, the new streets have some interesting names: Te Ranga Memorial Drive, Puhirake Crescent, Penetaka Heights, Materawaho Way, and others. The choice of these names reflects a new determination to commemorate some of Tauranga’s most important – and tragic – history. It acknowledges tangata whenua in a way that was very rare until recently.

Image courtesy of Stephanie Smith

Te Ranga Memorial Drive – At the battle of Te Ranga, on 21 June 1864, Tauranga Māori were crushed by a British force anxious for revenge for its defeat at the Battle of Gate Pā or Pukehinahina on 29 April 1864.

Image courtesy of Stephanie Smith

Puhirake Crescent – Named after Rawiri Puhirake Tuaia, Ngai Tukairangi leader from Matapihi. He was mission-trained and reluctant to take up arms, but the arrival of troops in Tauranga spurred him to action. After a victory at the Battle of Gate Pā, he was one of the 103 Māori killed in 1864 at the Battle of Te Ranga. As a tribute to his chivalry and courage he and other leaders were later buried in the Mission Cemetery.

Pene Taka Tuaia, Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library

Penetaka Heights – Pene Taka Tuaia, a cousin of Puhirake, was the military engineer who designed the complex earthworks of Pukehinahina or Gate Pā. He probably learned his skills in the wars in Northland in the 1840s. Unlike his cousin, he survived the 1864 battles to fight in the Tauranga Bush Campaign of 1867. He died at Te Puna in 1889, still conscious of the land grievances that resulted from the conflicts of his youth.

Image courtesy of Stephanie Smith

Materawaho Way – Te Materawaho was the name of the historical hapū, a subtribe of Ngāti Tapu, that occupied the Otamataha Pā at the north end of the Te Papa Peninsula when the missionaries first visited Tauranga in the 1820s. 

Sources

Jinty Rorke. 'Puhirake, Rawiri', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1p30/puhirake-rawiri (accessed 25 July 2018)

Alister Matheson. 'Tuaia, Pene Taka', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1t107/tuaia-pene-taka (accessed 25 July 2018)
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/war-in-tauranga/te-ranga

New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill https://www.parliament.nz/resource/en-NZ/50DBSCH_SCR6178_1/7616c72fecde83eec51f6f52371de9e971c81f85

WW100 Headstone Project

Heather McLean and a damaged headstone

This project was started back in April/May 2014.  Heather McLean (a committee member on WW100) raised $1170 towards the cost of three new headstones.  The stones have now been
installed in the Tauranga Catholic and Presbyterian Cemeteries.

Heather and the restored headstone of Tpr R.B.B. Cooper

Heather would like to thank the Tauranga Historical Society members for their kind donations.

Headstone and plaque for Cpl Lewis Jones

These two headstones are new ones in the Tauranga Catholic cemetery for Pte Lewis Jones and Pte.  P. (Barney) Retimana.  Someone had removed the Bronze plaque for Lewis Jones, possibly taken for the scrap metal value.

Headstone and plaque for Pte P. (Barney) Retimana

Private Retimana never previously had a headstone