I NGA RA O TE PAI, HEI PAI

Te Ao Hou, April 1958, Page 55

I NGA RA O TE PAI, HEI PAI 28 maori battalion by J. F. Cody; War History Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1956. Congratulations Mr Cody. This is not the kind of story that tells itself. How many years you spent in research, I do not know, but I suspect that it was many. For that work, we thank you. Out of the confusion of action and the boredom between action, you have traced a history that is neither confused nor boring. For there was confusion. In the early campaigns, especially, battalion action soon degenerated into company action, then platoons took over, and finally, sections finished it off. It was at the platoon and section level that the battalion excelled, where individual courage, cunning and initiative would take over and win a day that might otherwise seem lost. The Battalion reflected the faults and the virtues of our Maori people. One great lack in the earl stages was skilled technicians, for instance, wireless operators. Communications were liable to lose contact when they were most needed. This is no criticism of the individual radiomen, who did a tough job well, but of the general set-up. Heaven help the poor O.C. who wanted to fight by the book. When the boys went into action, the book went overboard. Time and time again the O.C. would find himself frantically trying to contact his various units. Yet the very individualism and fluidity that caused the breakdown in the coordinated attack would often win the action, as at Takrouna. Battles are by their nature confused and involved. Our many different memories of them are doubly so. Yet there are few who would quibble with the skill, the scholarship of this lengthy and yet all-too-brief history. All too brief because of the 1001 incidents that do not make a history. Of these, only the few have been recorded, to give a picture of the day-to-day life of the Battalion. The rest will have to wait for the next reunion. I suspect that on one or two occasions, regarding treatment of a batch of prisoners, for instance, the history skips over interludes where possibly the less said the better.

Perhaps another Buck, a Pomare or a Carroll lies in the deserts of Libya or the hills of Italy. Let us not name any one before another. This book is a fit memorial to the 640 dead of the Maori Battalion. Ka tahuna te ururua ki te ahi, ekore e tumau tonu ki te wahi i tahuna atu ai; kaore, ka kaa katoa te parae —Wi