Bishop was in favour
About 300 underage recruits from New Zealand are believed to have served in the Great War, the youngest of whom was just 14 when he landed into a raging battle at Gallipoli. Chris Tobin reports.
Mark Belton (Letters, April 20), responding to my letter regarding Sir Miles Warren’s proposal for the Christ Church Cathedral (April 17), states that Bishop Victoria Matthews declined Sir Miles’ plan. That is quite incorrect.
As reported in the Anglican Taonga News, on March 18, 2015: “Bishop Victoria Matthews has encouraged her diocese to consider a scheme by Sir Miles Warren to rebuild the cathedral in the square, as a way of breaking the deadlock over the future of the ruined cathedral”.
She went on to mention positive aspects, such as improved sight-lines, and noted that by using different materials, the rebuilt cathedral would weigh less than a tenth of the original. I am surprised that Mr Belton, co-chair of the Restore Christ Church Cathedral Group, seemed unaware of the bishop’s positive view of the Miles Warren plan.
And his assertion that Sir Miles’ plan would have “destroyed” the cathedral I see as simple scaremongering.
To be clear, Bishop Matthews never declined Miles Warren’s proposal
- threats of more legal action and resistance from the Great Christchurch Buildings Trust saw the church unable to proceed with any of the viable alternatives to full restoration.
I stand by my original comments! Craig Minehan, Lyttelton
Pool problem
I rang the Christchurch City Council yesterday morning. I wanted to find out if I had left my glasses at the Linwood Pool. It is not possible to get directly through to the swimming pools.
However, I was informed that I would have to go to the pool and ask this question at the pool itself. So, I wondered, is this really consistent with the climate
Media Council
The Press is subject to the NZ Media Council. Complaints must be directed to letters@press.co.nz. If the complainant is unsatisfied with the response, the complaint may be referred to the Media Council via its website mediacouncil.org.nz resilience policy which the CCC professes to be committed to? (I could walk the 3.1km but I am off to the doctor about my limp this afternoon).
Pat Brooker, Christchurch Central
Naive comments
Federated Farmers says proposed changes announced by the Government on April 23 to the Resource Management Act mark the end of the “war on farming”.
Freshwater spokesperson Colin Hurst stated, in relation to news that the Government intends to repeal rules covering intensive winter grazing, amend stock exclusion regulations and remove some resource consent obligations, among others: “These impractical rules have been a complete nightmare since the day they were introduced and farmers will be pleased to see the back of them.”
I am surprised by the naivety of that statement given the improbability of New Zealand’s public and trading partners overlooking the environmental and animal welfare issues associated with cattle wading waist-deep in mud and waterways, while contributing greatly to the degradation of freshwater and rivers.
If Mr Hurst and his cronies truly believe to the contrary, I would suggest they make use of the Greenpeace free nitrate testing of drinking water programme, because there is clearly something in their water.
Greg Byrnes, Waltham
I’ll keep talking
I do not agree with Jim Trathen’s statement (Letters, April 24) that the coalition Government has the electorate’s mandate for the sweeping and regressive changes currently under way.
The majority of these are the demands of two parties which each got less than 10% of the vote. As such they reflect the exorbitant social cost of the coalition agreement. In the meantime, I’m still trying to work out what the National part of the Government actually believes in.
I wonder if Jim agrees with the repeal of the smokefree legislation (ironic given that the UK is currently introducing legislation based on NZ’s law, which was hailed around the world), the ability of three ministers to make decisions with potentially damaging environmental outcomes and undermining the democratic process. Add cuts in provisions to the disabled community, the scrapping of Fair Pay agreements – oh look, there’s a word limit on letters, so I won’t go on…
Sorry Jim, but I won’t be keeping my trap shut. These and other changes are beyond my worst nightmare.
Ursula Ryan, Huntsbury
Easy targets
We all dislike bureaucrats, don’t we? That is until we need a form processed or something done about a problem or wonder why some activity is unregulated.
Bureaucrats, back office staff are easy targets, because they work in the back office and we don’t see what they do. This is precisely why they are an easy target for a populist Government looking for easy wins.
But you don’t miss the water until the well runs dry. In other words when processing documents takes forever and activities go unregulated those who filled those roles won’t be there.
In any process of mass redundancy one also loses expertise as long-serving people lose their jobs. There are then the costs associated with redundancies and unemployment benefits.
Compounding this comedy of errors is the economic fact that thousands of unemployed workers and others living with insecurity will not be spending money and so the impact will be felt across the economy. And why are we confronting this manufactured austerity, for which of course the previous government was to blame, to generate tax cuts?
Roy Myers, Amberley
When Gordon Albert Baker died at Waimate aged 78 in April 1977, he was hailed a hero. The Timaru Herald said in an obituary that he had been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for capturing 18 Germans single-handed at the Battle of the Somme during World War I when he was only 17.
The story, based no doubt on what Baker had said before his death, claimed he had come from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia, and was working on a cattle station in northwestern Queensland when, at age 15, he enlisted in the backyard of a Cloncurry pub.
Baker said he had lied about his age to join up and celebrated his 16th birthday, arriving in Cairo with the Australian Light Horse in December 1914.
The obituary, which stated his age incorrectly as 79, said Baker had claimed he served at Gallipoli and then with the Australian infantry on the Western Front, where he captured 18 Germans, for which he received a DCM.
After the war he came to New Zealand as a shearer, went back to Australia and then returned to marry and settle in Waimate, it said.
It’s a remarkable story. Unfortunately, most of it is untrue.
Baker did not serve with the Australians, he was not awarded the DCM, he never worked on a cattle station, and there is no evidence he worked as a shearer or served in the Australian Light Horse or Australian infantry.
He was born not in Chiswick, New South Wales, as he stated on his marriage certificate, but in Brentford, Middesex, England.
What is factually accurate is that in 1912, at the tender age of 14 years, he enlisted in the British Royal Artillery and served through to 1919, with a period on the Western Front.
Timaru genealogy researcher Liz Shea has uncovered material to reveal Baker received campaign medals for 1915.
But Baker made it known around Waimate that he had served with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), reminiscing along those lines on one occasion at a Waimate RSA function in 1945.
“I was a member of the Australian forces in the Great War,” Baker said.
Shea says it is a myth. “His RSA plaque tells the true story, lists his regimental number 7/1544, and that he was in the Royal Artillery, so someone knew his war service.
“And, of course, he may have still been getting a pension.”
Why then did Baker – who married but had no children – concoct this elaborate yarn of serving with the Australians and being awarded the DCM?
Shea thinks the cause of Baker’s fancies could be his war service.
“Like a lot of soldiers, he may have suffered from what we now call PTS [posttraumatic stress] and felt ... the AIF and the DCM made for a good story over a few beers at the RSA.”
Having been too young to go to war could, therefore, have been a reason for his flights of fantasy.
Adventure-seeking recruits
The age of 14, when most boys are not even shaving, is young to be joining the military, although Britain and other nations had a long tradition through the centuries of boy drummers and buglers in military units and the navy.
In Zealand, Bendigo-born Walter Delaney, aged 11, served with the British military as a bugler during the New Zealand Wars, first seeing action at the Waioeka redoubt, Ōpōtiki, in 1868.
Prior to World War I, most schools had military cadets for boys, which smoothed the path to full military service.
When war erupted, like elsewhere, the country had age restrictions for those who volunteered and later for those who were conscripted for service overseas.
At first, to serve overseas, recruits had to be aged between 20 and 35. They also had to be single, weigh under 12 stone (76.2kg) and be taller than 5ft 4in (1.62m), later reduced.
As war deepened and the casualty rate worsened to alarming levels, followed by the beginning of conscription, the age limit was pushed out to 45 for single men. The minimum age was dropped to 19, with parents’ permission required.
Yet from the outset in New Zealand, “boy soldiers” as they were known – probably fuelled by a desire for adventure and, in the early stages, a belief that the war could be over within months – lied about their age, went to war and died.
The same happened in Britain, where large numbers of underage “boy soldiers” joined the army.
Several of these young soldiers would be found guilty of desertion and executed by firing squads comprised of their fellow soldiers.
In some, if not most, of these cases, the commanders would have been aware they were underage and probably suffering from shell shock.
Sad tale of ‘youngest digger’
The identity of the youngest “boy soldier” New Zealander to die while on active service is difficult to establish.
The youngest Australian known to die serving in the Gallipoli campaign was 14-year-old James Martin, known as Jim.
Martin was also believed to be the youngest Anzac soldier at Gallipoli and in the entire war until Napier-born Leslie Raymond Shaw, two months younger than Martin, was found to have enlisted at age 13 with the New Zealand Engineers in London.
On his enlistment papers, Shaw gave his age as 16. Under “occupation”, an official wrote “just left school”.
When he landed at Gallipoli, into the midst of a raging battle, on April 25, 1915, Shaw was 14. Martin landed at Gallipoli four months later and died of disease there.
After Gallipoli, Shaw served on the Western Front until his mother alerted authorities and he was sent home.
Undeterred, he re-enlisted while still underage and joined the Royal Flying Corps, becoming a fighter pilot with the rank of captain.
Once peace came, Shaw shifted to Australia where, in the mid-1930s, he became known as “the youngest digger in the war”, although there were a number of claimants.
The nearest to him perhaps was Frank Mulready, a trumpeter with the Light Horse in Egypt and Palestine who was several months older than Shaw was when enlisting.
Coming on hard times during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Shaw advertised in newspapers for work before finding employment at a radio station.
In 1937 he was arrested for running a scam, then for being drunk and disorderly. A Perth court heard he had no means of support and called him “a rogue and vagabond”. It was a sad comedown for New Zealand and Australia’s youngest Anzac of World War I. Shaw died in obscurity in Perth in March 1947.
Glimpse of the numbers
Just how many New Zealand “boy soldiers” served in World War I will possibly never be accurately known. Some sources quote a figure of about 300.
Stan Stanfield, originally from Masterton, and Len Coley are probably the best-known.
Stanfield was 15 when he sailed from New Zealand to the Western Front; Coley was 16. Both survived and came home at an age when their friends were just finishing school.
Stanfield felt like “gun fodder” and stated in an interview that he had not expected to survive the war.
“I can remember feeling at times that I’d be quite happy to engage in any sort of slavery at all if I could be taken away from this, what, misery. Misery.”
Scarred mentally by his experiences, Stanfield sought solace in alcohol after the war before finally pulling his life together. Coley suffered from the effects of gas for the rest of his life; on returning to New Zealand, he burnt his uniform.
The South Canterbury Museum has compiled an extensive record of those from the region who served during World War I.
The list gives a glimpse of the possible “boy soldier” numbers that can be extrapolated out for the rest of the country. Gordon Baker is the youngest on the list, and there are nine others: three of them were aged 17 when enlisting, and the remainder were aged 18.
Two of them never returned from the war: Henry Myer was killed at Passchendaele in 1917, one of about 16,500 New Zealanders who died serving in the war, and Joseph Watt, aged 17 when he enlisted, died at Gallipoli serving with the Australians.
Also on this list is Eric Scrimshaw, of Temuka, a cabinetmaker who enlisted while wearing short pants in 1914. He had just turned 18 years old.
Scrimshaw was given a non-combat role, like Leslie Shaw, as a sapper in the NZ Engineers and served in the same company as Shaw.
Six months after joining up, he was among the first New Zealanders to be honoured for bravery in the war.
On four separate occasions under extremely heavy fire at the famous Gallipoli landing on April 25, 1915, Scrimshaw went out to rescue wounded men and bring them to safety after other rescue attempts had failed.
Unlike the unfortunate George Baker, Scrimshaw’s story was true, and, unlike Baker, he did indeed receive the DCM.
‘No bloody wars’
The number of the country’s underage service personnel in World War II is, as with World War I, difficult to gauge.
In 1942, Hingangaroa Smith (Te Aitangaā-Hauiti, Ngāti Porou and Ngāi Tahu), a 16-year-old from Tolaga Bay, lied about his age and joined the army in Gisborne. In February 1944, he left New Zealand and served with the Māori Battalion In Italy.
“I wish to Christ there were no bloody wars,” he later said. “It achieves nothing.” Smith died in 2016, aged 91. During the Vietnam War, New Zealand soldiers reluctantly assisted United States instructors during a 12-week course training 500 raw Cambodian recruits, among them about 100 boys aged between 9 and 11.
Once the New Zealand government learnt of it, the New Zealanders were immediately pulled out.
Today, international laws forbid children under 15 from being recruited or deployed while allowing recruitment under age 18 but only with strict criteria. New Zealand is one of 46 countries around the world recruiting 17-year-olds into the military forces after lifting the age from 16½ in 1997.
In spite of the under-15 age restriction, through this century tens of thousands of children have served in conflicts.
In 2022, the United Nations said nine state forces were using children, boys and girls, in hostilities, mainly in Africa and also in Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Syria and Palestine.