HOLDING A REDOUBT.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1920, Page 9

HOLDING A REDOUBT.

defence ov turutuku mokal.

STOiIV OF A VETERAN.

-fr. Cosslett Johnston, a pioneer farnn'i' of the llawera district, who died a lew days ago, \va> oni! <if tlie heroes if the liiituric flu'encc of Tiiruturu-mok-.ti Keiloubt. 'i'liw frontier post, which Sergeant .fohn.; ion and feu ,jy th:in a score "t comrades deiY-itded w ;ii!t great ;.»;i!Inntry one wintry 11; .ning in if?6S against many i imes iheir numlwr of Jlnuhiu!?. in,in '|\. Xgiini-o-te-manu .I'll, i'-ioi! a short dhraiice from the sp'ot "here Hav.'oi'.a town now is .situated. The (mm did not then exist, and the nearest military camp was the Wai'ii Redoubt. Johnston Ma- one of the very fey/ survivors of Turutuni-mokoi; tho.-.e still living on tlie West Coast are Mr. m ( 1' Berm;sh < of Patea, and Mr. George niffin, of Wanganui, both of whom were severely wounded in the fight. The veteran, a sketch of whose career is given here, had been bedridden..for the last fe..v years, from the result of exposure on the night and morning of the battle. Mr. James C'owan, -who is writing for the Government the history of the wars and the pioneering period'in New Zealand, was acquainted with Mr. Johnston, and some i irao ago the old soldier gave him the following summarised narrative of his adventurous life and the desperate action at Turuturu-mokai:—

"When I earne out to New Zealand trom Ireland, in the early 'sixties, after serving for a while in the Royal Irish Military Settlers, and had several years Constabulary, I joined the Tarann.ki Military Settlers, and had several years of service on the Coast. We built a number of redoubts, from Patea' to the White Cliffs. I took part in the capture of the strong Maori fortifications at Kaitalce, on the western side of Mi. Egmont, and also served at Te Ahuahu in 1864, when the Tfauhaus made their fust 'attack; this was the first experience we had of the Pai-Marire fanaticism, I was then a sergeant in the Military Settlers. We and a company of the 57th Regiment went up into the Patua range to destroy Native cultivations, and after carrying out that work we were resting, with piled arms, near Te Ahuahu, within two miles of the ocean beach. Suddenly we got a great volley at very close (quarters,, from the high fern. Then the Maoris came yelling out upon us with guns and tomahawks. We were completely surprised, and could'make little resistance. Those of us who survived made for the beach.

"In 1868 I was settled here on my military grant of 80 acres. I had commenced clearing the section, a few months before, and had built a whare. All his country around Hawera was very beautiful in those days. Up to t!w heavy bush the gently undulating land was covered with thick high fern, flax, tutu, and - koromiko, with here and there Native cultivations and great groves of peaches. Maori tracks wound through the plain, and there were Mauri clearings, and very picturesquo they were, in the forest that came close down to my farm.

"The Turuturu-mokai Redoubt, which had been built in ISG6 by a company of the 18th Royal Irish, was an bad repair when we began to occupy it in 1868. It had been used by a settler as a yard for his sheep. The parapets were not hign, not more than four or five feet on ths inside, and then there were no loopholes. The ditch which surrounded it was about six feet deep, quite enough to stop a war party temporarily. We set to work to put it in order, but had not properly repaired it when we were attacked. The garrison consisted of Armed Constabulary, under Captain Ross, and a few military settlers who used to come in at night after doing what they could on their sections during the day when free from garrison duty. Just" inside t'le gateway, where the ditch was crossed by a plank, there was a small earth rampart or screen, to blind the entrance.

"On the morning of the attack I and Oarrett Lacy (an old 57th Regiment soldier, and Irishman) were on sentry duty. My post was at the south end of the redoubt, near the gateway; Lacy did sen-try-go on the north side, near the northeast angle. I was armed with a long luifleld rifle and fixed bayonet, and carried 80 rounds of ball cartridge in the big pouch at my hip, besides 20 roundj loose in a pouch in front. The.Enfield we used was a good straight-shooter; it would kill -a man at a mile. The Armed Constabulary were armed with carbines; only the military settlers carried the Enfield.

"Suddenly, just before the first fa?nt break of day, I heard Lacy challenge, 'Halt! Who goes there?' Then there was a single shot, followed by a volley The Maoris from Te Ngutu-o-te-mami had crept up the gully on the west and north side of the old Native pa of Turu-•turu-mokai, and silently lay in wait not far from our north-east flanking bastion, which was the angle upon which they now chiefly concentrated their attack. Lacy was wounded in the shoulder by one of the Maori bullets, and as he saw that ho was cut off from the redoubt, he did the best thing he could, and ran into the fern and escaped to Waihi. At the first shot Captain Rossr' was up and out of his whare, and he ran over the plank and in through the gateway. I bolted in and took post in the north-east bastion, with Milmoe and several others. Milmoe and I were the only two armed with Enfield rifles and bayonets, and I think it must have been the of oui fixed bayonets as much as anything else that kept the Maoris from rushing us. Our weapons were unhandy—it took a long time to load and cap them —but they shot well. Then at it we went, fir-, ing away for our lives, whenever we could see anything at which to shoot.

"There was a cry that the Native? were coming in at the gateway, and a number of us rushed for the entrance, to hold it. I found a dead man, Gaynor, .sitting there; I knew it must have been he, although it was dark. He had evidently just been in the act of firing over (he screen (parapet) in the rear of the gateway when a Maori tomahawked him in the temple, as was discovered in the morning. He slid down, turning round as ho fell, and remained in a sitting position, his back, against the parapet, his rifle resting in the hollow of his arm—dead. Captain Ross was killed at the gateway, and his heart was* cut , out. After the fight we discovered two dead Maoris in the trench and another dead just outside; the others were dragged away. Lennon, the -canteen keeper, was killed outside the redoubt, and his heart, like the Captain's, was cut out by the Hauhaus. They had tomahawked 'him in two cuts, slanting downwards on his temple, like an inverted V. Then they cut out his heart. They certainly made a clean job of it. Lennon's heart was taken away, but we found Captain Ross's afterwards in the ditch, not far from his body.

'1 was wearing a Glengarry cap—l uniform, as I was ft voluntear

settlor. A man fireil a! me ov<" the parapet at such close range that tlie explosion blew my cap off, and sent mi down half-stunned in a sitting position. Now we hoard some of the Maoris iu tins! ditch cut ling away at the parapet with their long-handled tomahawks, in an attempt i) undermine it. We shouted out from ime to time, 'The troopers are coming!' but the Maoris only laughed fiendishly, and continued their chopping ami digging. It was well after daylight before help arrived, from Waihi redoubt, just in tune to save the remnant of the garrison.

"After this affair we improved the redoubt. and I. lived in it for some time, until things became more secure. We made a drawbridge we could haul up, and also made loopholes in the parapet with timber; these loopholes we plugged up with fern in the daytime to make the. rampart look like a. solid wall. Fern was generally used between the layers of earth in the building up of these defensive works. We could pull out these plugs from the inside at night. There was a plank walk running along the inner side of the parapet a fire-step or banquette, but it was not quite finished when we were attacked, and it was so wet and slippery that I had asked the captain to let. us do sentry duty outside."

Ever since that thrilling piece of work in ISfiS Mr. Johnston had Jived on hii farm within about half-a-mile of his oid battle-ground at Turuturu-mokai. He was one of the very few men who were not disabled by wounds in the flghfc, and his comrades declared that it was largely due to his coolness and pluck,,and to tiie bravery of Michael Gill, an old Imperial Soldier, that the redoubt was not captured by the Maoris. It was said of this action that every one of the few men who held the redoubt till relief came deserved the Victoria Cross.

The spot on which the redoubt stood 13 now a public reserve, because of its historic interest, and is held by the Hawera Borough Council.