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.
[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.”
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