ANZAC DAY

A strange fact in my life is that ANZAC Day has never had much meaning. I say strange, because my grandfather joined the Royal Navy and fought all through the First World War. My father-in-law was posted to a military hospital in Africa and Italy in the Second World War and my father was in the same war until a Monte Cassino German shell caused him serious harm. We are a family well used to war.

I knew my grandfather well. In fact, I lived with him through my three years at Victoria University in Wellington. We discussed all sorts of things but very little about his five years crossing the Atlantic protecting merchant ships suppling the UK with food and guns. He was a wireless operator. That was a novelty in itself. The first wireless message was sent in 1890 only 24 years before my grandfather was using wireless as a vital communication link in a World War.

He told me a story of a convoy that got lost in thick fog somewhere in the Atlantic. My grandfather’s captain asked for a message to be sent instructing the ships to reassemble at an agreed location. Two hours later smoke from dozens of ships could be seen around the horizon as they came together. The captain said, “You know Alex, I don’t understand all this. You tap out a few dots and dashes. They run up the mast and disappear. Two hours later 25 ships scattered across the Atlantic are back together. Unbelievable.”        

My grandfather never lost his morse code skill. I intended to join the New Zealand Air Force after University. Part of flying training involved learning morse code. I used to practice with my grandfather. Study as I might, try as I did, I was many words per minute slower than the World War One model. 

My father-in-law went to war early in 1940. He spent four years working in a military hospital in the African desert. The authorities decided he had earned a holiday back in New Zealand. After a few months at home, during which he married my mother-in-law, he was on a ship heading back to war. This time to another military hospital in Italy. There he stayed until the war ended in 1945. I have often thought his trip home and then back to war was hugely courageous. The second time he had a new wife. He knew what war involved – the danger, the death, man’s inhumanity to man. And still he got on a ship to do it all again. He was a modest, quiet gentleman in every sense of that word. But without question, a man of duty, a man of steel. World War Two was won on the courage of people like him.

My father, on the other hand, I didn’t know all that well. My mother and father divorced when I was two and I didn’t meet my father until I was forty. My mother never made any secret of the divorce. I knew all about his war service and their life together. My father also paid for the personal portion of my scholarship education in the United States. We just never met.

His war ended at Monte Casino in Italy. His tank was one of those attacking the German held Monte Cassino monastery. A German shell hit my father’s tank. He survived, but only just – and without an arm and an eye. Fortunately, my father recorded the events of that day. Here is what he had to say.    

Jones (my father’s name) had trouble from enemy snipers. ‘It was getting very uncomfortable with the head out,’ he reports. ‘I tried commanding with the turret closed, using the periscope, but between fumes from the guns and the rough going found it impossible. He continues:

Buck was killed. He was shot through the head by a sniper. His other tanks had a further attempt with equally disastrous results – a wireless operator, Tom Middleton killed and one or two of the crew badly wounded. Jones lost an arm in one of these tanks.

It was while looking at the possible route that we were hit. Regaining consciousness, I saw that my arm was bleeding badly and must have a tourniquet quickly. I looked up to see Joe Costello gazing through the turret at me. How he wasn’t hit is a mystery. Steve was slumped over his 75mm, bleeding badly from his back and head. Tom Middleton was lying on the floor, having fallen off his seat by his wireless. With difficulty I managed to traverse the turret by hand to allow Jack to scramble through to apply the tourniquet.

This applied, I told Jack to try the motors. It was with a prayer on our lips he pressed the starter. The left engine roared into life to be followed by the right immediately afterwards. With his head out of the driver’s hatch, the better to see and get maximum speed, Jack drove out through our own tanks, which were still pounding away at the enemy, to the forward casualty centre.

Many years after the Second World War I was at school in the United States. One of my best friends was Karl, a German foreign student. Ironically his father had been an artillery gunner in the Monte Cassino fortress. He could well have fired the shell that almost killed my father. And now their sons were the best of mates.

The day before I met my father, I cut my finger with a kitchen knife. It needed six stiches to repair. Later that evening Jane and I arrived to have a barbeque with my new extended family. My Dad opened the door and took one look at my bandaged hand and said, “Snap.” There was never any chance I wouldn’t get on with him or my half brother and sister.   

And that’s the story of three amazing men from my family who fought in World Wars. Snap indeed.

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