War hero an ‘immense New Zealander’
than 15 who risked their lives to give injured New Zealanders blankets, milk and food.
The 70th anniversary trip to Crete in 2011 forced a U-turn from a Government that had initially been unwilling to pay for Thomas’ travel. Not one to back down from a fight, not even with a government, he offered descriptions of sacrifices made by the people of Crete that must have been persuas- ive: ‘‘A lot of our chaps were left on the beach on Crete. The Gestapo executed hundreds of Cretan civilians for helping our chaps.’’
Thomas had reached the northern Italian port city of Trieste when victory was finally declared in Europe in 1945 but his war did not officially end until 1946, after postings in England and Japan. Returning to his quiet pre-war bank job in New Zealand did not appeal so he joined the British Army.
Further military life must have seemed inevitable. ‘‘Adventure to me had always been linked to soldiering, which may well have been in my blood,’’ as he told readers of Pathways to Adventure.
After the war, he married Iredale Lauchlan, the ‘‘widowed sister of an old Nelson chum’’. His distinguished military career took them and their daughters Gabriella, Celia and Joanna all over the world as Thomas went on to serve in Austria, Kenya, Malaya, Aden, West Germany, Northern Ireland and Singapore.
His time in Kenya in the 1950s coincided with the suppression of the Mau Mau uprising, a violent guerrilla outbreak that inspired the writing of another book, Mask of Evil and the Black Trees, dramatically subtitled ‘‘tales of Mau Mau and Mystery from the Dark Continent’’. His last act during his post-war and Cold War military career was to oversee the withdrawal of British forces from Singapore in 1971, a highly symbolic moment in the slow dismantling of British and Commonwealth power and influence around the globe. In that year, he was awarded the Order of the Bath.
Iredale’s health meant that the couple retired in Australia – first to Darwin, then Queensland – rather than New Zealand. Thomas’ son-in-law Peter Brown remembers that in Queensland ‘‘he set to work with his usual enthusiasm to single-handedly plant and nurture thousands of trees and create a truly beautiful property, where he lived surrounded by friends and family until his death’’. He died peacefully at 98.
The image of Major-General Thomas the war hero never left him. On one of his many trips back to New Zealand, he remembered the welcome when he first returned to Motueka after World War II. Like his stories about the generosity of the people of Crete, these memories were steeped in gratitude and an abiding sense of his relative good fortune.
‘‘I don’t think I could ever express how I felt,’’ he said in 2013. ‘‘Every hand was out to shake mine, and a lot of the people who came out had lost a leg in the war. Men don’t cry, I know, but there was many a tear shed.’’
He is survived by three daughters, four grandchildren and five great grandchildren. The funeral will be held in Beaudesert, Queensland, on November 10 with another service in Motueka.