Soldier's letters home recalled in Paperspast
Private Ron Thorsen shares war stories through online archive
Retired long-serving Te Awamutu Courier sports editor Colin Thorsen didn’t hear much from his father Ron about his service in World War II. “Like a lot of returned services, Dad didn’t talk much about the war,” says Colin.
“That’s why when editions of the Te Awamutu Courier up to 1950 became available on Paperspast earlier this year, it was amazing to find a printed letter home from Dad.”
Private W.R. Thorsen was in the 29th Battalion with the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Pacific, undertaking two tours — the first to Fiji and then to Solomon Islands where they came across resistance from the Japanese.
On December 15, 1943, when Ron had been in the Pacific for about a year, the Te Awamutu Courier ran excerpts from a letter home under the headlines:
IN THE PACIFIC INTERESTING SIDE-LIGHTS PVT. THORSEN WRITES HOME
I will never forget the morning of the landing as long as I live. After a hasty breakfast, at a given signal, we swarmed down the sides of the destroyer into the landing barges below.
The sea was rather choppy, but we all got down safely, while salvo after salvo from the destroyers went screaming overhead. It was uncanny in the half-light of dawn to see the greenish-yellow of the shells as they passed over us and pounded the beach where we were to land. Believe me, it takes “guts” to make an opposed landing when it is only possible to see three or four yards into the dense jungle as you charge up the beach.
However, to us it was just another job that had to be done, and we had all been waiting for an opportunity to come to grips with Tojo’s so-called “invincible army”. Our commanding officer was an inspiration to us all in his calm disregard of danger under fire. I was in the barge behind him, and I will never forget the way he stood up, amid a hail of bullets, and personally directed the landing. He had a very narrow escape from being wounded when an enemy bullet went through his haversack, which he was wearing on his side. The only thing he was worried about was that “the blighter had ruined his perfectly good towel”, which had eight bullet holes in it.
A Jap pill-box, mounting a heavy calibre gun, was causing quite a lot of trouble and holding up the landing in one place. Our boys were unable to dislodge the Japs with grenades. However, our engineers were equal to the occasion. One of them jumped on a bulldozer which had just been landed, started up the engine, raised the blade, charged the pill-box, overturning it, silencing the gun, and burying the Japs.
Such was the spirit right throughout the campaign. l am pleased to have had the privilege of being in the first all-New Zealand action.
Last night I had the best sleep 1 have had on the Island. In fact, I slept in badly this morning, so the Adjutant and I nearly missed with breakfast. Yesterday we shifted into I.T. tents after living in little two-man “pup” tents for nearly three weeks. We now have our bed cots and blankets too, and last night is the first time I have slept in pyjamas since we landed here.
The jungle is full of surprises. One day, when I went down to the river for a dip, I saw two brown leghorn roosters and a speckled hen. I think they must have belonged to the natives before the Japs drove them out. The joke of the B.H.Q. batmen is on a well-known noncombatant officer of this Battalion. The first night we were on the island we were all on the alert and slept in our clothes and even had out boots on.
This officer calmly stripped off, put on a pair of silk pyjamas and went to bed in his muddy foxhole. You can imagine what they were like next morning, and I will not repeat what his batman said when he had to wash them.
Our greatest danger now is from the air — not from the Japanese bombers but from falling coconuts. They are falling all the time from anything up to 40 feet, and if anyone is unlucky enough to stop one, well it is just too bad for him.
There is no twilight here and except when it is moonlight it is pitch dark after 6.30.
After dark the air is full of fireflies with bright greenishyellow lights, and they are quite uncanny until one gets used to seeing them.
This story, and many others, came online in January this year after Te Awamutu Museum gave historical copies of the Te Awamutu Courier a second life by digitising the newspaper publications produced between 1936 and 1950.
The programme started in
December 2020 after Te Awamutu Museum successfully applied to the Collaborative Digitisation Programme for 2020-21 that is run by the National Library of New Zealand-Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa and NZ Microfilm Services.
The Te Awamutu Courier publications from 1936 to 1950 join the 1911-1936 editions of the Waipa Post that are already available online on Paperspast.
Te Awamutu Courier editor Dean Taylor, who is also chairman of the Te Awamutu Museum trust, says it is fantastic to have four decades of Te Awamutu’s longest-running newspaper online.
“We take it for granted that we can go online and find anything we want, but the process of getting the valuable information from early newspapers onto Paperspast is time-consuming and expensive,” Dean says.
“It was fantastic to be contacted by my former colleague Colin and to hear the family had discovered a treasured piece of family history.”