OVER 100 MAORI BATTALION MEDALS TO BE CLAIMED AT LAST
The New Zealand Herald: Monday, September 7, 2020 – Page A8 By Te Aniwa Hurihanganui
The never-received war medals of soldiers in the Maori Battalion’s C Company are about to be claimed after 75 years.
Lawyer David Stone has found the names of 134 soldiers from the company who never received their medals and has put a call out on social media, asking their descendants to come forward and claim them.
We put the post out there because I didn’t really know where to start, and the response has been really overwhelming. People are coming forwarding saying, “That’s my dad, that’s my uncle, or that’s my grandfather, or they’re tagging their relations, “ he said.
I met a daughter of one of those soldiers and she said her dad died in 1991 and she had no idea that he had medals. I’ve had fully grown men burst into tears when I’ve stood face to face to them and said, ‘Hey, did you know we’re doing this kaupapa and your dad hasn’t received his medals?” They just couldn’t believe it.
Stone’s journey to recovering the names began a year-and-a-half ago, during the Waitangi Tribunal’s Military Veterans Kaupapa Inquiry. He was there to present evidence about his great uncle, Private Dooley Swann from Manutuke, a settlement to the west of Gisborne, who also never received his war medal. I was sitting with my dad one day and I said to him, Óur uncle could not have been the only soldier from the whole East Coast who never got his medals,” he said.
So, I wrote in to the medals department and requested the files from Muriwai and Manutuke [both near Gisborne], which is where he was from and sure enough he wasn’t.
Stone eventually found two soldiers from Manutuke and two soldiers from Muriwai who never received their medals.
He decided to search even further, and requested the files for soldiers across all four Maori Battalion Companies.
He and his team looked through 103 files before realising they wouldn’t be able to look through all 3600 files on their own.
“I wrote a memorandum to the chief judge of the Waitangi Tribunal to let him know I’d looked through 103 files and found 17 soldiers who had not received their medals, but that I couldn’t look at every file. I proposed that he ask the Crown to do the research,” he said.
“The crown eventually came back saying that the Maori Battalion have a huge legacy, and that sort of stuff, but they ended of declining the request. I was flabbergasted, and massively disappointed about that.”
But, Stone didn’t give up. Instead he decided to focus on soldiers who served in the Battalion’s C Company.
“We went through every file, from village to village, throughout the whole of the East Coast. We literally just finished two weeks ago,”he said.
“The medals department triple checked our names, and we now have 134. Stone said there were a range of reasons soldiers never received their medals.
One of the reasons that I got from one of the children of these soldiers is that it was a tikanga issue. Soldiers felt the medals need to be presented to them face to face, [kanohi ki te kanohi], but the policy of the time was that you need to write in to request your medals, and they would be sent out to you in the post.
“That’s one of the reasons!”
Stone will be at the C Company Memorial House in Gisborne from Wednesday 9 September to Friday 11 September with forms for descendants to fill out if they wish to claim a medal. He is working with the New Zealand Defence Force to organise a formal ceremony where the medals will be returned.
My mother is very keen on genealogy and had four of her paternal uncles serve in WW2, one of whom was KIA. The family story went along the lines that he stepped on a landmine during the defence of Crete and was killed. However, with the help of the NZDF medals and service documents section we were able to get copies of his service records which confirmed he had served in Crete. Contrary to the family story, he was evacuated from Crete saw further service in North Africa and was unfortunately killed during the fighting at El Alemain. From this investigation and that information gathered my mother disclosed that her father had also been conscripted into the NZ Army and had completed his basic training in 1943. My grandfather was awaiting posting overseas when his father-in-law was unfortunately struck by illness and he was then assessed as being required to return home to South Taranaki in order to run the family farm. It was not until I suggested that we ask for copies of his service records that my mother discovered there were two medals that were waiting to be collected for my grandfather and would my mother like them to be sent to her? The answer was of course yes, and subsequently she received the 1939-45 War Medal and the 1939-45 New Zealand War Service Medal in the mail. I have subsequently had these medals mounted and will, when appropriate, wear them with pride. No-one in the family (i.e. my mother’s brothers, as both my mother’s parents have now been deceased for a number of decades) ever knew their father had medals for his service).
I highly recommend anyone who reads this who believes they may have had relatives that may have served in New Zealand’s armed forces at any time since the beginning of WW1, and they don’t know of the location of that relative’s medals they contact the NZDF Medals section at Trentham and ask.
I live in Australia and have no idea where my dad’s medals for Pioneer Maori Battalion from World War 1 are. How do I go about getting them?
Monique W Petersen
Hi Monique,
Please use the following link which should take you to a site that you can make inquiries. Please be aware that you may receive a reply to say the medals have been issued and therefore their location may not be known. Hope this helps.
Cheers
Steve
https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/nzdf/personnel-archives-and-medals/
An excellent family summary. Your Grandfather will be bursting with pride knowing you’ll be wearing his medals on appropriate occasions. BZ Steve’s Mother.
This afternoon I sent the following script to the Editor NZ Herald to be published in the “letters to the Editor page.”
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Article by Te Aniwa Hurihangnui – NZ Herald 9/7/2020 – Page A8
“Over 100 Maori Battalion medals to be claimed at last.”
I was astonished to read about the ‘never-received war medals of soldiers’ and how badly the NZ Maori Battalion C Company had been treated following their return to NZ after WWII. I am deeply ashamed of the then NZ Government and NZ Military for their gross incompetence and the mishandling of such an important historical WWII tragedy. The Government of the day not making time to publicly honour those brave young soldiers and their families by presenting them “kanohi ki te kanohi” [face to face] with their WWII medal is I believe a mega national disgrace! Thank the almighty the New Zealand Defence Force is now likely to put right that scandalous wrong.
Yes Neal. My mother was very pleased and as far as we all know, not even my grandfather was aware that he was entitled to the medals as he probably thought because he didn’t actually deploy overseas (unlike his brothers) he wasn’t entitled to any. By the way, neither my grandfather, nor my great-uncles served in the Maori Battalion, I believe this was the case for almost all soldiers who probably didn’t receive gazetted medallic recognition (i.e. bravery awards, M.I.D., etc), or who weren’t told they had to apply for them. Quite sad really, and pretty shortsighted and mean of the NZ government at the time.
Hi how do you claim war medals maori battalion company c my father M. Christian
Hi, Joy,
Go to this link and follow the prompts. https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/nzdf/personnel-archives-and-medals/
Frank