Pipiwharauroa ' Ngā Tama Toa ā Tū'
For God, for King, and for Country
. . . the great fighting record of the Māori Battalion has been due to the fact that we relied on God above, to guide us through the victory.
This statement was made by one of the padres of the 28th Māori Battalion, Captain Chaplain Wi Te Tau Huata, during the unit’s last formal church service at the end of the Second World War. The service was conducted on board the Dominion Monarch when the Battalion was en route to Wellington from Australia. In January1946 the Māori Battalion arrived in the country with a tremendous reputation as frontline infantrymen. That the unit had performed superbly, defying expectation and establishing its reputation as an elite unit was undeniable. Its effectiveness as a rifle battalion, on average winning fifty percent more decorations than any other New Zealand battalion, has been attributed to a combination of factors: the unit’s discipline, the warrior ancestry of its soldiers and its structure based on tribal lines. Rarely, however, have commentators given thought to the unit’s spiritual foundation as the basis for its success. On Anzac Day just passed, while observing the religious ritual associated with the dawn ceremony, I pondered the extent to which Padre Huata’s statement rang true. I asked myself had I, because of the growing rejection of Christianity and the decline of morality that we have witnessed in our nation and, indeed, throughout the world in the past three decades, undervalued the influence of the Christian faith in the story of the Māori Battalion? When collecting material for the book Nga Tama Toa I came across more than a few anecdotes related to the religious beliefs and experiences of the men in the Battalion. Many of these did not appear in the book due to its word restriction and the subsequent editing process. So, I thought I would recount some of them here and let you, the reader, draw your own conclusion about the reality of the padre’s statement. CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE ON SOLDIERS The majority of men who volunteered to serve in the 28th Māori Battalion had some form of Christian upbringing, whether Protestant, Catholic, Mormon or Ringatū, and this Christian influence revealed itself especially on the eve of battle. As Don Stewart put it, ‘I don’t say that we were a religious battalion, but we never lost sight of our religion.’ The young officer was commenting on an incident that occurred in the Libyan Desert just before a bayonet charge. During the early hours of the morning a section of Bren carriers had been detailed to watch the unit’s flanks as each company dismounted their vehicles. Then came a moment rarely witnessed on the threshold of modern battle: the company commanders had all the men go down on their knees for prayer. It was a touching sight, 400 men with heads bowed as Captain Rangi Royal’s words cut the night air. ‘The atmosphere was absolutely electric,’ recalled Stewart. Karakia or prayer before moving to the start line was an essential part of the Māori Battalion’s preparation for battle. So much so that the unit’s padre would often find himself risking his own life to ensure he was at the frontline to consecrate the companies, just as the tohunga once prepared the ope taua in pre-European times.
a wētahi e karakia ana. Koirā, wēra mahi katoa ka whānau mai i roto i te tangata. Mōhio koe, hika, koinei tonu pea te mutunga.
Not a word was said, we just went. There were no lights though we were moving at night. You could hear some of the boys praying. All that sort of thing one thinks about when in a pensive mood. You knew, hey, this could be the end for me.
After battle the men deemed it equally important to give thanks. When a Battalion muster was held the day after the fateful assault on the Cassino railway station in 1944. B Company was so reduced in numbers that its men travelled in the company’s jeeps to the church service. Jerry Taingahue recalled the expressions on the boys’ faces as they looked at the gaps in their ranks: There’s only one thing in our minds, to get back in and kill the buggers. You can’t help it, and you look around at all the faces māro tonu ngā kanohi, nē (they’re all sullen-faced, eh), ā, mutu ana te karakia, ā ka āhua pai koe (and it’s not until the prayer service has been conducted that you start to feel better). Burying the dead was a time when the men realised more sharply their own mortality. After a memorial service at Gazala to fallen relatives and comrades Iver Whakarau wrote: I think that was the saddest day I ever experienced in my life. Saw the hardiest of men shed tears during the sermon; in fact I couldn’t hold back myself. Happened to be wearing a pair of goggles, so I just pulled them over my eyes so no one could see me
VALUE OF SONG From its first days in camp the Battalion’s religious needs were apparent. Captain Chaplain Kahi Harawira, a First World War veteran, was appointed as the unit’s first padre. Each Sunday he conducted divine services and distributed communion among the companies, a practise that subsequent padres would continue each Sunday throughout the six years of the war. Services where the whole Battalion was brought together were the most moving; seven hundred or more men singing songs of praise in four part-harmony was something to see and hear. On the afternoon of Anzac Day 1940, for example, the Battalion paraded in full kit in the Palmerston North Square. Before a large audience Sir Apirana Ngata, after thanking the city’s residents for hosting the Battalion, led the soldiers in their marching song ‘sung as only Māori could sing it,’ wrote one reporter. Captain Chaplain Wi Huata
The lyrics, ‘We will march, march, march to the enemy and will fight right to the end, for God, for King and for country’, were a fitting declaration of what the unit aspired to.
Where no padre was available, one of the soldiers themselves would lead the others in prayer in their absence. To enter the fray without an opportunity to collectively ask God for his protection was discouraged in the Māori Battalion. In August 1942 when Brigadier Kippenberger visited the unit in the dark of night before their raid on the El Mrier Depression, he found ‘the Māori padre’ [Wharetini Rangi] speaking to the men, most eloquently and impressively, before saying a prayer, he found that very moving in the utter silence. There were also the individual prayers. Sitting in the cold on the back of one of the trucks headed for battle in 1941 was 22-year-old Tautuhi Sadlier. He was one of half a dozen men in the convoy from the tiny community of Whakawhitirā near Tikitiki. It was their tipuna, Taumata-ākura, who had introduced Christianity to many of the hapū of the Tairāwhiti region. A century later his descendants called on Divine Providence to save them from harm: Kāre he kōrero, koianō te mahi, haere. Kāre hoki he raiti, i haere i te pō. Ka rongo atu koe i
Captain Chaplain Wi Huata leads members of the Māori Battalion in song.
Then Padre Harawira started ‘Āue e Ihu’, ‘Jesus Lover of My Soul’, by now adopted as the unit’s hymn, before he too addressed the audience, reminding them that it was ‘the only hymn sung at Gallipoli by members of the Māori
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Battalion in the previous war.’ For those who were there they would never forget the occasion, for it seemed the Holy Spirit was present, especially as a perfect rainbow like a giant halo appeared through the clouds immediately above the men as they sang. There were many Māori songs composed during the war that served as a reminder to both the soldiers and their whānau of the need to trust in God. Perhaps none is more well known than Tuini Ngawai’s ‘Arohaina Mai e te Kīngi Nui.’
Karakia was important for the Captain Chaplain Kahi departing soldier. Many a veteran attributed his return to New Harawira Zealand as a direct result of the prayers said over him before he left the country. Joe Waenga, for example, on ‘final leave’, had gone back to his mātua whāngai (foster parents) at Pōtaka: My real father was a Ringatū. He stayed at Cape Runaway. My [whāngai] mother [Keriana Tupaea] said, you go to your father to the Ringatū Church. Both of us, me and Wi Mouranga, went to the old man for karakia [prayer]. I rode on a horse and he took me to the water. I expect my brothers did the same. And what happened, we all came home.
FINDING FAITH IN THE HEAT OF BATTLE For some who did not rate their faith highly, this was to change dramatically the first time they found themselves in battle. Many are the stories of young men under fire or hearing bombs explode about their trenches weeping and crying out to the Lord to save them. When a shell burst wounding Steve Brooking, and just missing Wharau (Flo) Houkamau, he observed: Flo was praying like anything, crying, calling Jesus. Knowing that fulla, we went to school together, more or less brought up together in Hicks Bay. Well, I heard some fullas lie, lie like anything. Well, I back that fulla . . . And I said, ‘That’s the way. Now you’re talking sense. Keep it up.’ He was crying; he was calling the good Lord, eh. He had to go right there first. Yeah, ol’ Wharau.39 Others, facing death, bargained with God that if He spared them they would repay his mercy. Private Natana Te Whitu swore he would stop doing all the ‘hianga’ things he was renown for and from that moment cease profanities. Sergeant Kahutia Te Hau, went further, when he was carried into the RAP (Regimental Aid Post) on a German parachute during the battle for Crete. Dying from a bullet wound below the heart, he promised, if his life was restored, he would dedicate it to serving God. Te Hau, kept his word and became an Anglican minister. That so many had to face death before they were prepared to change the way they were living was unfortunate, but a reality, as it is even in today’s world. The context in which Padre Huata made his statement is probably worth quoting more fully: Go now to your homes, live Christian lives, for it has been said, in truth, that the great fighting record of the Māori Battalion has been due to the fact that we relied on God above, to guide us through the victory. Many did indeed follow their Padres’s counsel for during the war they had experienced a real change of heart and, as a result, their lives were transformed. The religious enthusiasm of others, however, withered away when the threat of death in war dissipated. There would be a few committed returned men, however, who would hold fast to their convictions through the years of change, and they provided the core element of leadership in Māori churches during the eighties and nineties. In fact, after the war more than one per cent of the men who served in the Māori Battalion became ministers or pastors in the various denominations to which they belonged. The last of these is the present Bishop of Aotearoa, the Most Reverend Brown Turei, who was present when Padre Huata conducted that final service. Nā Monty Soutar