Onerahi Orbit – April 2015 – Page 1
Free to you from the Onerahi Community Association Inc. April 2015
Peace reigns over field of fire Trooper Allan Pike, 91, of Mackesy Rd, has been to Italy twice in his life. Once to fight in World War Two, and a second time last year for the commemoration of 70 years since the Battle of Cassino. He was one of 38 veterans chosen to attend the commemoration. Instead of a troop ship, this time he flew business class in an air force Boeing 757 with stopovers in Darwin and Dubai. “Each two men who shared a room had a caregiver and we had a young corporal from the medical corps who looked after us. We didn’t have to worry about a thing. They issued us with two long-sleeved shirts and two shortsleeved shirts and other odds and ends. “We were all treated like VIPs, we had a wonderful time”. He reckons he got the best window seat and could see the world clearly below from his roomy seat all the way to Italy. On landing “we travelled by bus down to Cassino itself and the first day we went to the big Commemoration Service they held at the Railway Station. “That was where the Maori did such a fine job. They lost such a lot of men capturing that railway station. It was a very moving ceremony, rather like an Anzac parade, and New Zealand had some very important people there. “And the next day we went to
Trooper Allan Pike shakes hands with HRH Prince Harry during the commemoration of 70 years since the Battle for Cassino held in Cassino last year. the Commonwealth Cemetery ... concentrated mostly on the New Zealand Corner. We have got 456 graves there. That too was moving. Then in the afternoon we went to the British ceremony. “Oh, at the New Zealand one we were just lining up, shaking hands with MPs and the Governor-General and to my surprise the next one was Prince Harry. I shook hands with Harry. I valued that. It is about as close to royalty that I‘m likely ever to get. “Harry’s a great guy. He was genuinely interested in what we were doing. The fellow I’d been rooming with, he was flying Wellingtons and Mosquitos in Italy and he was telling Harry about it because he was interested and Harry
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A poignant moment as Trooper Allan Pike lays a poppy on the grave of a soldier from his unit, the 18th Armoured. was saying: ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘that took real skills.’ He said ‘the planes we fly, fly themselves’. I think they do, not like the ones we had. “He’s coming out here shortly too, isn’t he. I don’t think he’d be coming out to see me, though,” he says with a grin. Pike reaches for an album of photos. He opens it slowly with care and enters a world where only he can go. “This is a book they sent us, Soldiers Return.” He turns a page. “The following day we went up to the monastery and we could see the Poles’ cemetery. Theirs was up there,” he says, pointing, “across on the hill. Quite a big cemetery.”
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INSIDE: Ray White Allens Kids’ Triathlon Page 9
Margaret Anderson Page 11
Haddon Simpkin Page 13