WWII veteran looks back on Anzac Day
Ron Bingham wears support stockings on both legs from below the knee.
And it’s not because he is 102. Bingham was in the New Zealand Army during World War II. He was part of a group who were planning an assault on Venice, in Italy.
They had to go through barbed wire entanglements, he said. His legs got cut up.
Bingham is one of Taranaki’s last World War II veterans. The youngest WWII veterans, who turned 18 in 1945, will be 97 this year. On Anzac Day, Bingham will be commemorating those who didn’t return as he does every year.
On the wall of his room at the retirement village where he lives Bingham has a frame containing a wartime photo of himself along with other mementos including the brass buttons from his territorial uniform he had to polish every day.
He joined the territorials before the war and stayed in after war broke out in 1939, he said, because he was under age.
When he turned 21 he was transferred from the territorial forces to the overseas forces and shipped out to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
“We landed firstly from the larger transporter onto barges and their front portion dropped down and we either swam off or ran off on dry land and dispersed into the jungle. Some of that was pretty hair-raising because we were landing in occupied territory.“
They gradually “kicked the Japanese off”, he said.
“But during our occupation there were hundreds of Japanese still on the island in the midst of the jungle. We relied on the natives who knew their own land to pin down where the Japanese were. It wasn’t safe to be wondering about.“
After more than two years in the Solomon Islands, getting up as far as Bougainville, he returned to New Zealand and went on leave, he said.
“We immediately became reinforcements to the 2nd Division, which was the New Zealand Division in Egypt. I went to Egypt, to Maadi – the New Zealand base – and after we became acclimatised we became reinforcements in Italy.”
Arriving in an Italian winter was a bit of shock to the system after being up in the Pacific, he said.
His war ended in Trieste and he came back to New Zealand in time for Christmas 1945. He’s got a lot of stories, he said. “But they’re not printable.”
Bingham was born in Waitara and moved to Stratford when he was 11, then moved to New Plymouth, where he worked at Carryes menswear, the job he returned to after the war.
He was then offered a job in a country store in Pungarehu, which he managed for five years.
“Then an opportunity came, a business was for sale in Rahotu and I bought into that and I had 48 years in Rahotu. It was a mixed shop – menswear and certain items of womenswear. I enjoyed it out there.”
During Bingham’s time in Rahotu a fire broke out in the Four Square next door.
“My side was smoke. His side was fire. We weren’t burnt out, we were smoked out. The smoke penetrated throughout the whole building.”
He had to have a fire sale down at the Rahotu Hall, he said.
Bingham was a member of the Opunake RSA for more than 40 years and was awarded a national badge, gold star and a bar for his work with the RSA, he said.
“That’s a double award. I think I was number 15 in New Zealand to be awarded a gold star.”
He is now a member of the New Plymouth RSA and regularly attends the meetings, and will definitely be there on Anzac Day.
Bingham married Gwynneth Jury in 1947. She died in 2002. They had five children, and now have grandchildren and great-grandchildren.