From B1 // Defended with their lives overseas, in peril at home
Their theft and burial can only have been instigated by the same false logic as was responsible for the pulling down of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad in 2003, or the Taliban’s destruction of statues of The Buddha in Afghanistan in 2021. They were icons of another, unacceptable, culture so their destruction was seen as a gift to humanity.
Few of us link those actions with similar events here. In these early years of New Zealand’s 21st century we have also seen an explosion of politically ignited artefact defacing and destruction.
In 1991, the statues of the Egyptian gods Horus and Sobek, in Hamilton Gardens, were savagely attacked with a hammer when certain Christian church leaders determined that they were sacrilegious and had the potential to become the focus of pagan worship.
More recently, in Hamilton city, the statue of Captain Hamilton, the nominal founder of the city, was attacked and damaged. As a result, our city council determined that the statue should be stored out of public sight and the space used to display the statue of a more appropriately influential figure. They chose Dame Hilda Ross.
Such acts, here or internationally, elicited cries of despair about the absence of civilised respect for artefacts which define our past and illuminate our present. Invariably, they are seen as acts by “the enemy”, however that enemy might be defined.
But were these simple acts of vandalism, or were they calculated indicators of disrespect, intentionally belittling the realities of history and denigrating the culture from which the artrfacts came? In fact, none these acts were mischievous vandalism. They were deliberate, and intentional.
The loss of the 16th Regiment Colours, however, becomes even more significant when one realises that these colours were not later tributes, copies of originals or artworks to commemorate events. They were of the very events themselves.
They are from the front lines of our history, a history in which wars have a significant place and artefacts from those wars become opened windows on our history. We cannot remember accurately without them.
The 16th Waikato Regiment timeline began with a Hamilton hill. In a time before recorded time, Māori climbed Pukerangiora to meditate and pray, to meet in peace and to kōrero. The practice went on for four or five centuries. Time, if it needed to be measured, was measured in generations rather than years.
Then, Rewi Maniapoto led the terminal defence of Ōrākau in the battle of 1864, at the end of the Waikato war. Called on by the British to surrender, his immortal response was ‘E hoa, ka whawhai tonu mātou, Āke! Āke! Āke!’ – ‘Friend, we will fight on forever, forever, and forever!’ In a significant tribute, 47 years later, it was adopted by the 16th and can be seen clearly as the motto on the 16th’s Colours, minus the “E hoa …” and is repeated on the unit badge.
After their victory at Ōrākau, two companies of the 1st Waikato Regiment were ordered to take possession of Puke Rangiora under the land-confiscation policies of the British, and felled local timber to build a redoubt for a signals unit, an HQ for the regiment, barracks for the men, and cottages further down the hill for married men and their wives.
Earthworks made for the redoubt are still preserved under the cathedral. Within a few short years the military had moved off the summit, the Anglican Church had been given possession of Pukerangiora, plus a large block of the land between the hill and the river.
The church and the army followed parallel histories during which time the 16th was founded with the Anglican church as its cathedral in 1911. The cathedral itself was built in 1915.
The cathedral is now listed by Heritage New Zealand as a building with an extraordinary history, not limited just to the military connections. On Anzac Day each year, however, that military past becomes the more personal because the 16th Waikato Regiment was commissioned just before
World War I, and participated as a unit of the New Zealand forces in a number of famous battles. That its soldiers saw action at the very beginning of the Gallipoli campaign, as a regiment within the Auckland Infantry Battalion, is an unforgettable, personal, reiteration of the Anzac Day phrase “Lest We Forget”.
Hamilton Gallipoli historian Richard Stowers writes:
“On (April 25, 1915) the day of the first landings, a date later known as Anzac Day, New Zealand lost 153 killed, and many more wounded. Exactly 100 of the dead were from the Auckland Infantry Battalion, with the largest portion from the 16th Waikato’s, hailing from Hamilton and the surrounding districts. Most of them died on the slopes of Baby 700.”
Ten years ago we were at Gallipoli in the quiet season. My wife remembers the occasion in a note she made at the time:
“The Allies’ (Aust/nz) landing was planned where the terrain was level with the beach, and would have given easy access inland.
“However, a combination of strong currents, tides, & miscalculation by those in command meant that the troops were put ashore 4 miles further along the coast where the terrain was steep, rough, largely impenetrable, & had high cliffs from which the Turkish soldiers could shoot them down.
“At Beach cemetery we found the grave of Jack Simpson, a Kiwi brought up in Australia. He was in the medical corps, and heroically carried wounded back to the beach on his donkey, through enemy fire. The Allied command hadn’t put in place any evacuation strategy, as they anticipated an easy victory, because the Turks wouldn’t resist the attack.
“Simpson only lasted 23 days before his donkey & he were killed by enemy fire. He was only 21 yrs old. He’s up for a VC in Australia.
“In the Anzac Cove cemetery we gathered round the memorial, put poppies on it, and Peter said the Ode to the Fallen. We had a few minutes’ silence. We all cried: it’s an incredibly moving, sad place.
“Because of all the remaining bodies and bits of bodies which got trampled in the mud etc during the war action, the gravel road along the coast will never be sealed. It was so sad thinking of all those poor young men wasting their lives in a mis-planned effort – and we were walking on their graves.”
At least some of them may have been Hamiltonians, even Anglicans. All of them, and their Colours, are our history.
We will remember them.