FIJIAN SOLDIERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 14

FIJIAN SOLDIERS

THE HISTORY ‘OF THE FIJI MILITARY FORCES 1939-45, by Lieutenant R. A. Howlett; published by the Crown Agents for the Colonies on behalf of the Government of Fiji. Price, 7/6. SOME eleven thousand men served in the Fiji military forces during the war. About 1,500 of them were New Zealanders, officers and NCO’s most of them, from the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, who commanded and trained and led in action Fijian troops only a little less picturesque in battle

dress and steel helmets than in their native sulu and sandals. Two of the Colony’s five battalions, the Ist and 3rd Battalions, Fiji Infantry Regiment, fought with distinction in the Solomons between October, 1943, and July,

1944, Ihe ist Commando of the Fiji Guerrillas, whose Special Party on Guadalcanal in December, 1942, was the first Fijian unit to see action, won

fame for its exploits on New Georgia and Vella Lavella; the 2nd Commando fought on Bougainville, where another Fijian unit, the 1st Docks Company, Fiji Labour Corps, worked seven days a week, three shifts a day, unloading supplies for the Torokina beach-head. AY these units earned commendation from the commanders of the American forces under whom they served, and at Mawaraka, Bougainville, on June 23, 1944, Corporal Sefanaia Sukanaivalu, of the 3rd, Battalion, won, posthumously, the V.C, Many others, eager to see active service, were left behind in Fiji on garrison and home defence duties, That, briefly, is the history of. the Fiji Military Forces. With 43 photographs, five good maps, and three full-page black and white sketches, Lieutenant Howlett, has had to tell the story of these 11,000 men in a thin book of 267 pages; fewer than that, for a Roll of Honour, lists of honours and awards, and nominal rolls of officers of the Fiji

Military Forces, the Fiji Home Gudrd, and of the 2nd N.Z.E.F. who served with the Fiji forces fill many pages. He has made only fair use of the space left to him. Relying largely on unit war diaries for his material, he has borrowed from them much of the official language in which they were written, Too many of his sentences ‘in the early part of the book begin with the date ("On the 25th of ...") and include that unhuman word "personnel"; too"

much space is used to record changes in officers’ appointments and the moves of units from place to place; and the arrangement of the text has meant some repetition. No attempt is made to assess Fiji’s contribution to the war in the Pacific; instead the writer prefers the. florid generalisation: "the flower of the country’s manhood was assembled and trained and then sent into conflict against a cunning and vigorous foe." It is easy to pick holes and find fault. Lieutenant Howlett’s book is more than the souvenir history its two-coloured cover with the Fiji badge ‘make it seem at first sight, His account of the difficulties of raising and training the force in a community unprepared for war points its lesson of the folly of this lack of preparation, a lack given. emphasis by the examples used throughout his narrative to illustrate it: the two dummy guns (borrowed.from New Zealand) that comprised the heavy defences of Suva harbour for the first three months of the war; the difficulties of training, with inadequate staffs and equipment, Fijian recruits with little or no knowledge of English, who preferred bare feet to, wearing Army boots; the camping ground that had first to be freed ceremonially of its tebu before a.

company could occupy it.

W.A.

G.