Bringing brother home from foreign field
Trooper Adrian Thomas will return to New Zealand from Malaysia in August, 62 years after he died there while fighting with his SAS unit.
Thomas is one of 27 New Zealand soldiers whose remains will be repatriated, at public expense, from cemeteries in Malaysia and Singapore.
That Thomas is at long last returning to home soil is largely thanks to the efforts of his younger brother, Paul, who in 1976 promised their mother he would get Adrian’s remains returned to New Zealand.
New Zealand dead from both world wars are interred in cemeteries managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which are highly protected and tended with care.
But casualties of the Malaysian Crisis and Vietnam War were not so well cared for at their resting places in Malaysia and Singapore.
Before 1967, New Zealand’s policy was to bury fallen soldiers near where they fell.
Paul Thomas did not think Cheras Road Christian Cemetery in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was a suitable resting place for his brother. He and several other families campaigned to have the remains of their fallen relatives brought home from Malaysia and Singapore.
In April 2017 the New Zealand Defence Force announced the soldiers would be brought home if that was what their next of kin wanted.
Adrian Thomas will be buried at Te Pa¯tu¯nga urupa¯, near Kaeo, where members of their mother’s family are buried.
Paul Thomas features in the documentary In Foreign Fields, which airs on Ma¯ori Television on Anzac Day.
Fronted by author Witi Ihimaera, the documentary looks at the foreign burial of New Zealand’s fallen soldiers from a Ma¯ori perspective.