Pre-war territorial force
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ADJUTANT, Captain Arthur Stafford incidentally was the man responsible for the adoption of the scarlet tunic and the white sulu. On a visit to England, he went to the army clothing factory, where the brigadier in charge suggested the Fijian should wear scarlet and white. So it was decided.
When the war ended Lieutenant-Colonel Stafford was in charge of the Second Battalion. This newspaper published an article about these servicemen on Monday, January 11, 1960. Prominent among the officers in those days were three captains who might be called the three musketeers of the force.
They were A B Ackland, FG Forster and Devon McCaig. All three had seen service in World War I, they were company commanders together, and all three retired as lieutenant-colonels.
Frank Forster, incidentally was at the land at Gallipoli, arriving of the beach on April 19 which was his 19th birthday. All three had given valuable service to the colony in war and peace.
During the period between wars they helped to keep territorials going and many of the men who served under them became valuable officers in another war. Apart from maintaining two battalions overseas there was home defence, which became of crucial importance when the Japanese naval air and land forces steadily forged south.
Realisation of the danger that faced Fiji became more apparent when captured Japanese plans showed two points of landing in Viti Levu, with the chances heavily in favour of Suva’s becoming a second Singapore.
Another officer who joined up in peace time and one who was to leave an indelible mark on the Colony’s Military history was J B K Taylor, who had been a regimental sergeant-major in the New Zealand Rifle Brigade in World War I.
In Fiji he was destined to occupy a big place in rugby football and in training the First Battalion.
As commander of the First Battalion he served in the Solomons until he was wounded in an air raid and was invalided out of the service.
On his shoulders fell the task of making the First Battalion a keen fighting force. He was a strict disciplinarian, but those who served under him admit that his hard training made the battalion into a tough fighting force and in the fighting in the Solomons his officers and men had reason to be thankful for the hard training which had made the battalion fighting fit and a force of which the colony was always proud of.
The Americans were the first to admit the value of the Fijian troops not only as frontline troops, but as scouting and patrol units beyond the line.
Captain Merv Corner, afterwards LieutenantColonel Corner was with Colonel Taylor when he was hit, but he escaped with comparatively minor injuries.
Merv Corner had much in common with JBK. He had been one of New Zealand’s international half-backs and shared the bond that exists between Fijian and New Zealanders in their devotion to rugby football. JBK Taylor was a keen rugby man having represented both Wellington and Auckland.
He coached and managed the Fijian team which toured New Zealand with outstanding success in 1939.
The team was on tour when war broke out and on its return he was posted to the First Battalion. Among those who followed him into the navy was Isireli Korovulavula, the full-back on the New Zealand tour. Isireli had been a keen territorial and the initiative and determination which had transformed a boy from Kadavu who had never seen rugby, into Fiji’s last line of defence on the 1939 tour was eventually to make him a keen and resourceful officer on active service.
A New Zealand newspaper described him as ‘the smiling full-back’ and the name stuck to him throughout the tour.
While he was on the staff of the Tourist Bureau (later called the Fiji Visitors Bureau and now Tourism
Fiji) which he had joined as a boy, he spends his spare time immersed in an out-of-date book on ‘How to Play Rugby Football’.
Those apparently were the two main objectives in Isireli’s young life.
In the territorials he was soon promoted to corporal. There was some suggestion that at an evening parade, when a few corporals were missing, Isireli promoted himself.
Shortly afterwards another stripe came his way. In the First Battalion he became in turn a sergeant, company sergeant-major, second lieutenant and lieutenant in the Solomons.
It was in the Solomons that Isireli won the Military Cross in a self-sacrificing, but hopeless attempt to bring back an American airman after he and Isireli had crashed in the jungle deep in enemy territory. Few who knew Isireli doubted that somehow or other he would turn up, but when he eventually crawled into a village and collapsed he was a wreck of a once powerful man.
“He was a bag of bones when I saw him,” said a Fijian captain, “and I cried”.
Isireli served in Malaya, returning with the rank of major. He was then an overseer at the Suva Gaol with officer rank. It was a coincidence that George Mate, a Lauan, followed Isireli at the Tourist
Bureau became a major.
The Bureau probably had the distinction of being the only office at Suva to have had two Fijian office boys who subsequently became majors. Another old territorial who subsequently did well was Isikeli Cawa, in his day one of Fiji’s best centre three quarters.
He joined the territorials in 1936 and became a sergeant at the same time as Isireli. Isikeli went to the Solomons as a company sergeant-major. He was sent back to do an officer’s course at Bilo and was subsequently a lieutenant in the Solomons.
Ratu George Cakobau, Ratu Edward Cakobau, formerly Roko Tui Tailevu were old territorial lieutenants and both Ratu George and Ratu Edward saw active service. Ratu Edward went to the Solomons and was promoted to the rank of major. In Malaya he commanded the battalion and was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire). He had been awarded the Military Cross in the Solomons. He commanded the Second Battalion (territorial) until he reached the age of retirement.
Ratu George was a captain in the Solomons and when he was demobilised he went back to the Fijian Administration.