WWII stories told during rare catch-up
Eighty years ago they were on the other side of the world fighting for their country.
On Monday last week, a group of World War II veterans, three of them centenarians, were at the New Plymouth RSA each with a lifetime of stories to tell.
Because of health issues, they don’t always attend at the RSA at the same time, but last week Colin Kemp, 100, Colin Cochran, 104, Ron Bingham, 100, Jack Pringle, 97, June Yearbury, 97, and Vi Kennedy, 98, got together for a cuppa.
Bingham said whether the friends talked about the war when they got together depended on the occasion.
He served in the army in Italy and then up in the Pacific.
Pringle spent his war on the HMNZS Gambia in the Pacific and the ship was anchored ‘‘really close’’ to the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay where Japanese officials signed the surrender.
‘‘I watched the Japanese walk up the gangway.’’
He joined the ship in 1944 with six mates, and they all stayed friends afterwards, he said.
Pringle puts his longevity down to keeping fit and keeping occupied.
Cochran was with the army in Italy and then he went to Japan with J Force. He and Yearbury were there at the same time in Yamaguchi prefecture.
‘‘You were at Kiwa,’’ Cochran said, smiling at Yearbury.
Yearbury was a nurse with 2NZEF (Japan) and worked in 6 New Zealand General Hospital. She saw the effects of the atomic bombs first hand.
Kemp, the quietest of the group, was in England during officer training when he was attached to the Royal Navy training ship HMS Ganges.
And that is where he was on D-Day when the Allies landed at Normandy in France.
During World War II, Kennedy was based in Auckland and worked in the navy recruitment office with the HMNZS Philomel.
It was special not just for the RSA, but for the mana of the organisation, to be able to have ‘‘folk like these guys’’ at the club, president Graham Chard, a contemporary veteran, said.
‘‘I watched the Japanese walk up the gangway [of the USS Missouri to surrender].’’ Jack Pringle