Jim's Last Farewell

We gave Jim a send off at the Blockhouse Bay Community Centre at 1 pm. Tuesday 12th Feb. There were about 130 people there and most agreed that Jim was a rebel with many good causes.

I have a feeling that some were there to make sure he was, indeed, on his way so that they could begin to have things their way. Some of the smarter ones said that, although they argued on many occasions, Jim proved to be correct most of the time.

We had so many people to talk to that it was ages before we could get a cuppa. Thank you to all who turned out or sent their apologies.

Here are the Eulogies from myself (John) and Trevor.

Celebrate a life well lived

Jim was the sort of person who wanted to make life better for himself and others. So he threw himself into everything he did. This often put him at odds with those who wanted things to stay the same.

Some of the orginisations that he was associated over the years include

Scouts
Ellerslie Harriers
Auckland Boy’s Grammar
St Johns Ambulance
NZ Territorial Army Artillery Battery
4th Field Regiment, 2nd NZEF (active in Italy)
NZ Customs Department
Public Service Association
Independent Order of Oddfellows
NZ Society of Customs Agents
Auckland Customs Broker’s Association
Blockhouse Bay Community Center
Amanesco House Restoration Society
Candidate Auckland local body elections
Pasadena School Hall project
Blockhouse Bay Bowling Club

I’ll leave others to talk about those. I only really knew him as a father.
He was a demi-god to a small boy. After Mum got polio, I remember discovering his human-ness. Sitting close and seeing the pores of his skin, the shape of his nose, his eyes and his eyebrows and feeling that it was almost too personal but feeling privileged to be let so close.

He also let me steer the car as we drove home down a country road.

Later on I was difficult for him and I am surprised that he kept as much hair as he did. Even last year, after my son had brought up some issue with me, I rang Dad to opologise for the way I had been.

When visiting him last year, he would remark to visitors, ‘I am surprised how well John and I are getting on”. It was a great time to get as close as we were when I was a small boy sitting on his lap steering the V8.

The legacy he left me with is this. It changed my life and I will share it with you now.

Often, there is what you feel like doing and there is the correct thing to do.
Doing the correct thing is far more powerful and leads to a simple life.

I asked him last week if he had any regrets. He had none.
I asked him what he considered to be his triumphs. He said, ’My marriage and my business’.

Today is about celebrating Jim’s life.


If I was asked to sum up Jim in a short sentence it would be

“Intelligent, Independent but obstinate and with an aversion for those in authority”

Not a good mixture, but understandable when you consider his upbringing.

Jim’s story, not unlike many others of his generation, is one that can never be duplicated in another age.

He was the unplanned last son of a family whose forebears had worked in the gold mines at Gabriel’s Gully, cleared farmland on the isolated West Coast and logged native timber in the camps of the South island, the King Country and the Hokianga. A true pioneer family.

Unlike his older brothers, Dad was born in the relative comfort of semi-rural Milford. It allowed him to receive better school opportunities.

However this was in the depths of the Great Depression. The family struggled to survive, and were often disappointed by circumstances that seemed designed to ensure their ongoing financial hardship.

Wartime service brought comradeship, excitement and a continual series of promotions and demotions that kept Dad busy sewing on and removing strips from his uniform.

His best mate. Trevor Valentine died in a car accident shortly after the war.


The ongoing illnesses of Mom and Allan, and their early passing were naturally hard felt by Dad, as it was by the rest of the family.

You could therefore be excused for thinking that perhaps those traits I talked about earlier were learnt by life’s experiences.

I think more likely he was born with them because throughout his early school years, throughout his youth, service in the army and his professional career Dad had continual run in’s with authority.

Never anything too serious, but enough to reinforce the habit.

This seemed to be his natural element. It could be that he enjoyed the combat. I suspect he was more comfortable being on the “other side”.

For all of his life he maintained a lively interest in many clubs and organizations. Some of those organizations are represented here today and I am sure that they will recognize this portrait of Jim in their dealings with him.

Some with fond affection, some with gritted teeth.

And so it was, right to the end.

In the middle of last year, after one of his blackouts, his doctor organised some hospital time in the hope of arranging tests to confirm the true extent of his illness.

Dad contrived to frustrate their plans on the basis that they knew very little about his condition and all he needed was some medication to fix his appetite.


He harassed the hospital staff regardless of rank or intent and finally discharged himself so as not to miss out on his planned trip to Australia. It came as no surprise when he told us with some satisfaction that he had been listed as a “difficult patient”.


Later when he finally conceded to the hospital tests, I arranged for him to be discharged at 3pm because it suited my working day. Dad found out and promptly organized his own transport home and didn’t bother to tell me.

When I protested to him that he had wasted my time, he told me not to boss him around and he would do what he needed to do.


Up until the middle of December he maintained all he needed to do was regain his strength and he would be OK.

Even with the certain knowledge of his illness and its inevitable conclusion, he was still not going to be dictated too, especially by anything as mundane as doctors, cancers or human mortality.

One morning, a couple of weeks after New Year, he phoned to say “I don’t think I have long to go – I felt something turn last night”.

I was a bit shocked by the admission because he had seemed fairly positive up to that point.

I asked him if I should come over straightaway.

He said “yes”, so I quickly finished my breakfast and went over, expecting to see him on his last legs.


Instead when I got there he was up, dressed, had finished his breakfast and was just polishing off the cryptic crossword in the Herald. I thought “what!!! What the hell was that all about”?”

However, I think this was the point where he finally accepted his fate.

Jim insisted that he should die at home around the things that he knew and we are grateful for the hospice nurses for their help in allowing this to happen with some comfort and dignity.


Also, this could not have happened without the assistance from his grand-daughter, Amber who really took up the challenge to be with Dad, day and night, to act as his nurse.


The hospice kindly left a note explaining what might happen towards the end.


They also explained that most patients passed away around 4 in the morning, this being the darkest and quietest time of the day.


True to form, Jim finally passed away, not at 4 in the morning, but just after 4……in the afternoon. A final finger to those in authority who might try to organize his day.

They say that there are no degrees of death.

However, Dad lived a life of many degrees.

Thank you all for being part of that.

Blockhouse Bay Bowling Club

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Pasadena School Hall project

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Amanesco House Restoration Society

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Blockhouse Bay Community Center

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Independent Order of Oddfellows

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Being a Customs Agent - J.J. Craigs

After trying to sell insurance for a while - he wasn't prepared to change his personality to be good at it - Jim got a job managing J.J. Craigs Shipping Department at 100 Queen St. I don't remember all the people who worked there but one stood out as he had the same birthday as me. That was Barry Watt. I also remember that Craigs has an operator switchboard, You know. With the plugs and cords.
Dad's boss was Charlie Pierce who was a wise man and forgave me my youthful exuberance when driving the Company car.
After a while Craigs decided that they did not want to hold on to the Shipping Dept and Dad got to buy it with a silent partner. He shifted the office to Wyndham Building and he was in business for himself. Now he only had himself to impress.
He used all his knowledge and contacts to make a valuable business and smooth the way for his many large clients. He was the first to offer a mobile service from a Commer Van at Auckland Airport. Joe Saunders ran the van but got lonely and scrounged some space in an office so he could work with others.
Over the years myself (John), Sue and Trevor worked in the business, though I think he was glad when I got an apprenticeship and worked elsewhere.
I recently asked him what things he was proud of in his life and one of those was his business.

New Zealand Customs Service

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Wartime Days - To Europe

However war was not all girl friends and letter writing and we had a tiresome sea voyage ahead of us. The first stop was Hobart where we had no shore leave as I guess they didn’t want three and a half thousand troops descending on such a quiet backwater. I spent my twenty second birthday there leaning over the rail on a grey summer day with nothing at all to do. We crossed the Great Australian Bight and headed for India. It was rough in the Bight and many were sea sick. We were in hammocks which we had to sling each night and were so tightly packed that the rows of hammocks were staggered so as to fit them closed together. It meant that you could touch eight other hammocks while lying in bed. The smell of sick was awful and we took to sleeping on deck preferring the cold night air to the fetid air down below.
At length we reached Fremantle and were given two day’s  shore leave. Prostitution was legal in Perth and many of the troops went to Rose St (I think this was the name) largely to be able to say that they had visited a brothel. I understand that the prostitutes were not very inviting sorts. I was the third member of the family to pass through on the way to war. My eldest brother Bill had  been in one of the echelons and had been befriended by a family in Fremantle. He was very rough and ready and we wondered what they were like. Peter went away with the 5th Reinforcements and he looked them up so I was urged to do the same. They were very homely folk and made us very welcome.
We returned to the ship each night and on the second day Trevor and I went out on the town. Trevor could drink like a fish and I often got ill trying to keep up with him. He had developed a boil on his wrist and they had cut it out requiring several stitches. For some reason as he got drunker Trevor got very angry I think that he was thinking of the woman who had jilted him. He tried to start a fight with some Australians and the Military Police were called. They handcuffed him and I went with them in the paddy wagon. They kept him in the cells until it was time to go back to the ship and by that time the handcuffs had  broken the stitches making him very sore and angry.
They took him to the foot of the gangway and were about to release him thinking that he would go up it and they would be rid of him. Instead he dived into the harbour beside the ship with the handcuffs still on. He could well have drowned and I began to abuse the police telling them that if he drowned I would hold them responsible. I don’t think that any of them could swim and it was left to a Kiwi soldier to dive in and pull him over one of the stringers just above water level. They handed him the keys to the cuffs and he was released. He climbed up to the wharf and cursing everyone including me disappeared up the gangway. It was the only time I ever saw him like that and the next day he was back to normal.
We set sail and the next port of call was Bombay. We anchored in the roadstead and only officers were given leave. The water was a muddy brown and the city was covered in haze. We next called at Aden to refuel and then up the Gulf of Suez to Port Tewfik. There we disembarked and were put into rail wagons labelled Hommes 40 Chevaux 8. There were no seats and we spent an uncomfortable six hours or so on our way to Cairo.

There we dismounted and were taken in trucks to Maadi Camp just outside the city. We were tired and hungry and a meal was waiting. As we lined up with our dixies I was waiting to be served when instead of a helping of food a hand was thrust at me and my brother Peter said welcome to Egypt. It seems that he had been invalided out of the Division after being taken prisoner of war at Bardia. He had been released when the Eighth Army advanced but had been quite ill. After spending time in hospital and then in the rest area near the Suez Canal he had missed the move of his unit the 14th Light Ack Ack Regiment to Italy. He had a job in Maadi in charge of the mess orderlies and as a special favour had come on duty to welcome me. We settled in at Maadi and Peter, Trevor and I went on leave into Cairo. We only went once and it was quite an experience. Egypt had been overrun with troops and the locals did very well out of them.
There was the N.Z. Club run by Lady Freyberg the wife of the General but there was no entertainment there. We went out on the town and finished up getting very drunk. The most preferred beer was Stella but this always ran out during the evening and then you could get what the called Onion Piss which actually didn’t taste all that bad. In the end this also ran out and you had to drink Wog brandy which was strong and tasted shocking.
Peter was friendly with Jack Manchester who had been Captain of the 1935 All Blacks. He was a quiet chap who only drank Wog brandy and never seemed to get drunk at all no matter how much he drank. Peter and I finished up incapable and I remember about eight of us making our way down to the Qasr Nil Barracks where the leave trucks were waiting to take troops back to camp. I of course had no idea where we were and neither did many of the others. We were quite drunk and had to hold onto each other to keep standing. We staggered down narrow winding streets until we reached the barracks.
Once we got there Peter and I were unable to climb up onto the trucks which had high sides and had to be hoisted up and then we collapsed in a heap on the tray of the truck. They trod all over us all the way back to camp and somehow we got to bed. The next morning I woke up as bright as a button but it was the only leave I got into Cairo. Peter took me on a train trip some caves at Helwan I think it was. He could speak enough Arabic to get by and liked to talk to the locals. He found out that the man he was talking to had a wife in Cairo and one in Helwan and found it difficult to support them both as well as his need for hashish.


Peter decided that he would rejoin his regiment the 14th Light A.A. and would claim me as his younger brother which was an established right in the Division. He reckoned that Field Artillery was too dangerous and now that our side had air superiority it would be a safer place. The reinforcement which included the members of the Ruapehu furlough draft that had been given home leave to N.Z. set off for Alexandria where we would embark for Italy. We were once again herded into rail wagons labeled Hommes 20 Chevaux 8 and suffered our first casualty. A soldier from Auckland was sitting in the side entrance to a wagon when it gave a lurch going round a steep curve. He was thrown onto the track and somehow one foot went under a wheel and was cut off.  His war didn’t last very long at all.
We were camped in a desolate area outside the town and went into Alexandria only once. It was there that I had my first meeting with Sikhs. I went to have a shower and there were several of them doing the same. They were quite tall and I noticed that they didn’t strip off to shower but kept their underpants on apparently their religion forced this unusual modesty even in the army. 
We were loaded onto a Polish vessel named the Batory  that had been commandeered while trading in the Mediterranean at the outbreak of war. Peter set out to show me the skills he had acquired in two years overseas in escaping unpleasant duties. We were told that it was no use trying to dodge and that we would all get something to do on the voyage. Peter, Trevor and I stood at the rail looking out to sea while slowly sidling away from where they were choosing people for jobs. The first to be chosen were those to man the air defenses which were largely Oerlikans which were heavy machine guns mounted high above the decks. Then followed other defensive duties and so it went until there were only a few minor tasks.
I eventually was appointed to be in charge of three soldiers whose job it was to clean out the sleeping quarters. The weather was cold crossing the Mediterranean and I was grateful not to be spending two hour watches half way up a mast. We reached Taranto safely having detoured close to Malta to keep within the protection of RAF antisubmarine patrols.
We disembarked and travelled to the Base Camp near Bari. Here Peter was struck down with the flu and that was the end of his scheme to claim me to his regiment as he never rejoined it. He remained at Bari until he went home on furlough and had an easy if adventurous life as a despised ‘base wallah’. He soon learned the ropes and got onto a good thing. Each soldier overseas was entitled to a cigarette issue of fifty per week. In addition Sergeants and above got a spirit issue of a bottle a month. In a transit camp there would seldom be more than twenty at any one time as they moved from their units to hospital or on transfer however in any week there would be up to fifty inmates and it became the practice to apply for an issue for every person who had spent even one day in camp. This left a sizeable surplus which could be disposed on the black market and Peter soon made contact with willing Italian buyers.
At one stage the army S.I.B. were on his trail but hey never caught him. He also got jobs delivering new army trucks up to the front line units particularly to the Canadians. At Xmas he found out where our unit was when we were out of the line at Matelica. Being Peter he had no qualms about parking the truck in front of the Colonel’s casa and spending the night with us. It was a bit embarrassing at times for me because he knew a lot of the people in my Battery better than I did having come overseas with them and been in the Desert actions.

I joined the Division at Caserta and as an ex officer I had first to interview the legendary Steve Weir who was in charge of Artillery. It was just a formal occasion prompted I think by some complaints from N.Z. that ex officers were not being treated fairly on joining the Division. I was posted to the 36th Survey Battery and became a Sound Ranger. They had developed a system of placing microphones at surveyed spots and measuring the time difference in the sound of an enemy gun firing as it reached each microphone. From this they could plot it’s position and bring down fire on it. I had received no training in this and the unit  was in reserve at the time.
It was just before the final battle for Cassino and the Fifth and Eighth Armies were obviously waiting for the weather to improve. I was not exactly welcome into the battery particularly as a newcomer holding the rank of Lance Sergeant. They were a close knit outfit and undoubtedly viewed me as a threat to the promotion of long serving people there. They had not suffered many casualties so promotion was slower than in the Field Artillery.  
I was put on a truck with the motor mechanic and another man who did something quite unimportant. Our main interest during his period was training for the divisional athletic games. The Survey battery had several good runners and I trained with them. First were the Artillery elimination races. I ran in the half mile and was carefully coached by a wily Dunedinite who was our three miler. He knew that I had done very little training and advised me to go for third place which was enough to qualify. Sure enough the two hot shots in the field raced to the front, I hung back until the final straight and sneaked into third place. From then on I was jocularly referred to as the ‘fleet footed sergeant’. However the war was resumed and we never did hold the games.
The Yanks had bombed the area around Cassino so heavily during the last battle and there had been a lot of rain so that the shell holes were filled with water and even the tanks could not get through let alone trucks. When the attack began it was accompanied by a heavy artillery barrage so that there was no scope for sound ranging. We were in reserve and after the break through followed on behind the rest of the Division taking up a position in the Liri Valley when the advance was halted by some very intense artillery shelling from the heights above the valley.
I was suddenly transferred to the 4th Field Regiment and was placed in 26 Battery Headquarters as a technical assistant in the Command Post. The work was quite familiar to me except that they did things in slightly different ways to what we had been taught in New Zealand. The result was the same but on one or two occasions I found myself at odds with some of the older hands. I soon fitted in however and by the time we had advanced towards Florence I was part of the team.
At about that time they decided that all of us who had not been recommended for recommissioning would revert to the ranks so I became Gunner Gilbert yet again which suited me fine. The advance continued at a slow pace until at length Florence fell and we anticipated some time in a rest area. However it was not to be and we then crossed to the Adriatic Coast and engaged in the time honoured charade of covering all the markings on our vehicles and guns as well as taking off our New Zealand epaulette flashes and our hat badges.
It must have deceived no enemy spies as we still had black diamond patches on our berets and at each stop left behind lots of tell tale evidence such as copies of the N.Z.E.F.Times. We were to take over from a Canadian Division that had taken a bad mauling in trying to break though into the Lombardy Plains at Rimini. We supported them with a barrage and I think that the Infantry relieved them however the Germans withdrew without much further resistance.
We were worried about a railway mounted gun that they were using from a position just north of the town. It was a big one and as was usual for them fired at regular intervals on a set line of four target points. One of them we later found was the house in which we had our headquarters. We had dug slit trenches and pitched pup tents over them which was rather unusual for us. The Observation Post ack who had a reputation for attracting enemy fire had come to visit and sure enough during the night we were subjected to harassing fire from the big gun. The shells passed just over the house and exploded in the fields  close to our tents but far enough away to be harmless. The last one however landed quite close to our visitor’s tent and tore it to shreds. We later found that another had landed even closer but had been a dud and didn’t explode.
We were pleased to be withdrawn from the line and went up into the mountains near a town called Iesi. The village was I think called Matelica and was very restful. The locals were friendly and we had many parties. All too quickly we were sent back up again. The advance had been slowed at Forli and we were needed to dislodge a very stubborn enemy. The Italian campaign was, I believe, designed to draw off as many seasoned German troops as possible in the lead up to the Normandy landings.
The N.Z. Division and the 56th London Division was used to stiffen up a collection of troops including a Greek Brigade, a Jewish Brigade, some Poles and some fairly green American and Canadian outfits. Opposing them were paratroopers supported by Tiger tanks, Nebelwerfers and 88mm guns. The latter had slightly diminishing bores and the shells had soft metal outer layers which became molten with the friction and hard cores. When they struck an enemy tank the soft exterior would be still molten and would stick to the metal allowing the hard core to penetrate the armour.  Once inside the shell would ricochet around destroying the interior and killing the crew. 
The weather was atrocious and even a small river required an artillery barrage to force a crossing. There are dozens of them and the enemy put up a fierce resistance at each. Eventually we reached Faenza and it was decided to wait for better weather. We returned to our rest areas in the mountains much to our delight. It was there that I obtained a cushy job. I became the barman in the Regimental Officers Mess. Many I knew having served with them in New Zealand so it was a very informal atmosphere. The Assistant Quartermaster was a member of the Turnbull family that endowed the well known library of that name in Wellington. He was an atheist and took Shakespeare as his Bible. He would quote Falstaff on sack as his excuse for getting drunk.
We  went to Ancona to buy some decent grog for the mess and had a great day. We had to gain permission to buy anything from the Town Major. Once the towns had been liberated they appointed a Town Major and a representative of the organisation known as AMGOT. (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories). He was very good at convincing them of our need for alcohol and we soon had all the liquor we could afford. He was a pleasant unassuming chap and the driver and I had no trouble in talking him into taking down all his insignia of rank so that he could come into a NAAFI with us for a meal. There would have been a big stink if the Poms in charge saw an Officer hobnobbing with Other Ranks. We made our way home in fine condition and were congratulated on the quality of the new stocks.
At about that time we had received further reinforcements including officers who had served in the Pacific. Some of them were not very popular and one who was a regular soldier was particularly hated and despised. He had a nasty mouth and I was given the job of ‘sewing him up’. He was partial to free drinks and one night they took turns at shouting him while I mixed his drinks. He finished up in a bad way but I didn’t have to worry as next day we got orders to move and he wasn’t in my battery anyway. 
We returned to Faenza where it was still damp and cold. It was a funny situation as the Germans still occupied part of the town yet we went there for showers. We were in the brickworks to the South with the guns deployed in an open paddock to the front. The RHQ was in the brickworks and I was amused one day when I was sent to get some maps of the areas we would have to advance through to find the RSM another regular soldier marching around the parking area with his leather Swagger Stick tucked under his arm as though he was on parade. I had no hat or tunic and he roared at me that I was not properly dressed. Luckily I was on my way back so I just waved to him and departed. It was not a good spot for the drivers who had to bring up the rations and ammunition. There was a straight stretch of road that was under enemy observation. Most things were brought up at night but even then they could suffer a bit of shelling.            
As the weather improved it was clear that we would soon attack. As a diversion two of us were sent up into the hills a little way into the lines occupied by the Jewish Brigade. There we sent dummy messages by radio intended to make the Germans think that the Division would attack from there. We had a pleasant time and our hosts treated us very well. Each night we played Bridge and were very comfortable. When we got back we found that it had been a waste of time. When we went to town for showers the Maori Battalion boys told us that Ted (the Italian name for Germans is Tedeschi) knows we are here. We play him ‘In the mood’ on the machine guns when we do night firing across ‘no man’s land’.  

Wartime Days - Leaving New Zealand

It was of course war time and I now took up my military career. After my disastrous experiences in the 21st Battery I had become a member of the 1st Field Regiment which had been formed out of the various territorial batteries. We had five months intensive training starting with an N.C.O. course at Hopuhopu camp at Ngaurawahia. The officers trained with us and apart from the weather it was very interesting. We slept in Bell tents on floorboards to set us above ground level. It was bitterly cold and wet which together with the fog from the nearby Waikato River made it very miserable. Reveille was at six and we spent half an hour doing squad drill on the often frosty ground. The squads of about twenty would march backwards and forwards over open ground and at times in the fog would be completely out of sight of the sergeant. It became common for them to become less and less as cunning soldiers kept marching when the order came to ‘about turn’ and sneaked back to their tents.
I became what was known as a Technical Assistant or an “Ack’.   Our job was to survey the guns into position plot targets and pass on fire orders to the gunners. After this training we went home and the regiment was mobilised for day training at Avondale racecourse. We were given tram passes and left home each morning to travel to Avondale. We had to be there by nine o’clock. I learned a lot in this time as we had a very intelligent officer. He had taught my brothers at Takapuna Grammar and knew how to teach technical subjects by stripping away the jargon and talk in every day language that we all understood. I had been quite good at using logarithms which we used a lot in gunnery without having any idea of the principle behind them but he explained exactly how they worked and why and I now felt much surer of myself.
Despite this I was not getting on any better especially when older men were brought in from local businesses and promoted over the rest of us. However they had to admit that I knew more about gunnery than most of them and when they had been given commissions I was eventually promoted and became a sergeant in charge of the battery command post.
On my transfer to Wellington I was posted to the 2nd Field Regiment and paraded at Buckle St. The war in the Pacific was imminent and even before Pearl Harbour we were mobilized and quartered in the Boys High School at Palmerston North. They were building a camp at Linton just out of town and we soon moved there at first sleeping in tents. Later they built small huts but it was all quite primitive.
My Battery Commander had taken a violent dislike to me,  I was an Aucklander and there was another sergeant who coveted my position in charge of the Command Post. It was not a happy state of affairs and at length the O.C. hit on a solution. They were calling for recommendations for O.C.T.U. (Officer Cadet Training Unit) He told me that I lacked ‘tactical appreciation’ and that I would be better suited for the new Anti Aircraft forces being formed. I went off to Trentham Military camp to become an officer. I would like to be able to say that this was the end of my clashes with my superiors but it was not.
All went well for a start as I was chosen to be a mathematics instructor. My having passed Stage 1 maths at University plus my gunnery experience made me well suited for this and I enjoyed it immensely. Many of the cadets were older men chosen for their leadership potential but sadly lacking in technical skills. Most had not gone beyond simple arithmetic at school and were now required to become familiar with logarithms and trigonometry.
In those days calculations were done on paper and there were no hand held calculators. Using the techniques my officer at Avondale had taught me I guess I showed off a bit and taught them a fair bit more than they needed to know although this relieved the boredom for the one or two in the class whose education was equal to mine.  
Things, however, came unstuck when I aroused the enmity of a permanent staff instructor who found me disrespectful. He knew very little about gunnery and my attitude towards him obviously rankled. At the end of the course we sat an exam which was extremely simple and I had no trouble in answering the questions. I was surprised to be called in to see the Camp Commandant who told me that although I had failed the exam he was going to pass me because of the good work I had done during the course. I couldn’t believe it and asked to see my paper. Apparently there was a lot of unhappiness over the marking and when I got to see my paper I found that out of four parts to the exam I had been given marks for only two. Instead of a mark of 49% I had in fact got 99% and guess who added up the marks?
I found that I was not to be posted to Anti Aircraft but was sent to Greytown in the Wairarapa to join the 12th Field Regiment. Although I liked the place and got on well with most of the troops trouble soon occurred. The Battery Commander was a martinet who was henpecked at home and took it out on all of us officers. He was too old for overseas service and knew very little about Artillery but insisted on all the I s being dotted and the t s being crossed.
We would be sitting in the Mess eating our meal when he would bark out ‘I saw Gunner ……… strolling across the Gun Park at 3 o’clock. What was he supposed to be doing?’ He was very strict about our giving the correct orders exactly as per the manual. One of the officers was heard  to omit one word from the order to deploy the guns and was not allowed to do his job again, having to stand by while his Troop Commander did his job instead.
The Colonel was no better also being only fit for home service and was aspiring to higher rank in N.Z. I went to the local dance on Saturday nights and met a local girl with whom I had quite a romance. I also got to know the Matron at the hospital who was an older woman and treated me like a son. I would call in after the dance and she would have a meal ready for me. First I would have a bath which was a real luxury and then we would sit and chat over the meal. I would then walk the mile or so back to camp.
Being an officer I didn’t need a leave pass and didn’t have to be back by twelve thirty like the Other Ranks. In fact the Guard would salute me as I went through the gate. I was still only twenty and often got abused by older men at the dance who didn’t realise that I had already been a soldier for three years and much longer than they had.
My downfall came when I got week end leave to home Auckland. There were about eight of us and as the only officer I was made Railway Transport Officer and responsible to see that they got there and back. I thought that I had done everything right but I forgot to check that the train was leaving Auckland on time. As a result I got to the station at 1 a.m. only to find that the train had been rescheduled and had left at 10 p.m. Two others were in the same boat and I wrote a note to their units saying what had happened as being absent without leave was a serious offence.
I eventually arrived back in Greytown to find that I was in serious trouble. I was held to blame for the whole affair and was called before the Colonel. He cited another occasion when I had dozed off one morning and had been late for parade and suggested that I was not fit to be an officer. By now I was inclined to agree with him and felt that if that was what it entailed I didn’t want to be one. I said that I would be happy to resign my commission on condition that I could revert to the rank of sergeant and be transferred back to Auckland. He agreed to this and I signed my resignation.
We went to Waiouru for live shooting and while there I was called before the Colonel again. He informed me that my resignation had been accepted and that I would revert to the rank of Gunner immediately and transfer to a Medium Battery in Palmerston North. I reminded him of his undertakings but he merely said that it couldn’t be arranged. I went to Palmerston and joined a battery of 6 inch howitzers as a gun number. It was rather humorous if a little embarrassing. I was glad that this battery never went into action as it was hopeless. The guns were large and cumbersome and of World War One vintage.
The Gun Sergeants were quite able but the officers and their assistants knew nothing. We would practice going into action luckily without ammunition to hump around. To load the guns we would have placed the shells on a thing like a stretcher and four men would raise it to the right height. It would then be thrust into the breech using a large ram rod and the charge of cordite rammed in behind it.
What did cause the trouble was that the Acks could not understand how to use the Director which passed on to the guns the line of fire. They kept reading it back to front. This would have meant that had we fired the guns they would have been pointing away from the enemy. The sergeants however were not going to turn the guns around and would query the orders.
The officers did not understand what was wrong either and soon the cry would go up for Gunner Gilbert to come and sort things out. This made them look ridiculous and so I was moved on.
My next posting was very pleasant. A Japanese midget submarine had got into Sydney Harbour and although it had not done much damage had caused some red faces. It was decided that Wellington Harbour needed protection and a Beach Battery was formed. It was sited at Scorching Bay right under Fort Balance which guarded to inner reaches of the harbour. Two old 18 pounder guns were procured and placed on a rocky shelf  looking out across the harbour towards Eastbourne.
The troops were housed in the cabaret which was empty and disused and was a couple of hundred yards from the gun position which was just out of sight around the cliff face. The officers and sergeants lived in the staff quarters on the top floor while the O.R.s slept on the floor in the Dining Room area. That is except for the two ‘Gun Sergeants’. I was surprised to find that I was one of them, the other was a two striper.
My crew consisted of the Battery Sergeant Major a cook the Quartermaster who was a captain and two Gunners. The two of us slept in a hut beside the guns and our main task was to grease the lands that ran along the barrel and slid within grooves to hold the recoil steady when the gun was fired. The sea air was very corrosive and this was an important task. I never saw any ammunition and the dial sights were locked away. We never did any gun drill and I understand that shortly after the battery was formed they had a live shoot. I imagine the results were kept very secret. Eighteen pounders are known as ‘flatfire’ guns with a relatively high muzzle velocity as compared with howitzers that lob shells with a high trajectory. When the guns were fired they being so near to the water level the shells ricocheted off the water and clearing the hills opposite finished up killing some sheep in the Orongorongo Valley.
Apart from the greasing of the lands the main activity was manning the command post which was situated within the protected area of Fort Balance.  We had to take turns at manning the telephones in case of enemy attack and subsequent fire orders. We did two hours on and four hours off during the night. It would be a good question to ask what would have happened in the case of attack with the man in charge of a gun up the cliff in the fort quite apart from his not knowing where the ammunition was stored and not having a trained gun crew.
The officers meanwhile kept open house with a party every night. I found out that I had been selected to join their merry band but disaster struck again A chap and I had become friendly with a married woman who lived a few hundred yards away along to road. She was no better than she ought to be and in fact fell in love with my friend. Anyway I was detained there one night and quite forgot that I was supposed to be manning the phones. I failed to report for duty and was put on a charge. In that I had left the Capital City completely unguarded my punishment was very light a ten shilling fine and the loss of two days pay. However with a conviction against me I was ineligible for promotion, standards had to be met after all.
I had my twenty first birthday there and was now eligible for overseas service. Next I was posted to Papakura to join the 37th Field Regiment which was being mustered along with the 38th Field for service in the Pacific. Once again I was placed in an embarrassing position because of my wide experience of Artillery work. I was made an Ack and the Command Post Sergeant was from a coastal battery and knew nothing of field artillery procedures.
Each morning when we broke off from the Regimental parade the sergeant would march us off to where we were to be instructed and fall us out. Then Gunner Gilbert would proceed to instruct all including the sergeant. The Battery Commander was from an Auckland manufacturing and importing firm and I knew him quite well. He had been in the course I attended in 1940 when the 1st Field Regiment was formed. One day Routine Orders announced that I had been promoted to Lance Bombardier. I was deeply insulted and went to him. I told him how I felt and said that if that was all that I was worth he should leave me as a Gunner. He was a very plausible chap and turned every argument around until I gave up and thanking him left the room. It became a standing joke among the Acks and from then on I was known as Jim Gilbert the little ‘shit striper’.

It was there that I met the closest male friend I ever had in my life. It is probably no coincidence that he had a somewhat similar experience to mine although for a different reason. He was part Maori although only about a sixteenth and his uncle was a cabinet Minister. He was in fact Minister of Maori Affairs. Trevor had joined the Air Force and earned his pilots wings. While on leave he had met an older woman and a divorcee. He had fallen for her quite heavily much to the dismay of is family. On being appealed to his uncle decided that the best thing to do was to post him overseas immediately.
This was done only to find that, realising what was happening, Trevor went absent without leave. The family didn’t know what to do. It was wartime and he faced a stiff penalty with suggestions of cowardice and the uncle was in an embarrassing position having improperly interfered  in a military matter. In the end he was transferred to the Army and he insisted on wearing his wings on his uniform as was his right. The foolishness of the family action was highlighted when his lady love fell for a Yank and dropped Trevor completely.
He came to us when we were on manoeuvres and we hit it off immediately. We were inseparable on leave and became close buddies even when we finished up in different units. In fact on the day the war ended he crouched beside me behind a rocky outcrop above Trieste as a German fanatic fought to the bitter end firing anti tank shells down the road we had been travelling on.
With the African campaign finished there was a need to relieve the troops who had fought for so long in the Middle East and it was obvious that we could not man a complete division in the Pacific as well. It was decided to disband our regiment and send us as reinforcements to Italy.  We then went to Trentham and later to Plimmerton where they had formed a camp on the Kapi Mana Domain at the entrance to the Porirua Harbour.
There Trevor and I among others were taught to become army surveyors. We had leave in Wellington and it was a most pleasant time. We went to one of the clubs where we met some lovely girls and Trevor once again became involved as did I. It was an interesting course and there were several who had worked in Lands and Survey Department on the course. For the first time I had some real competition and had to work hard. We became very fit lugging theodolites and banderoles over the hills at the back of Porirua. They never gave out any final results but I think that I did at least as well as the others.
Just before Xmas the course ended and we went back to Trentham. We were given Final Leave and knew that we  would soon be going overseas. Sure enough early in January we were taken to the wharves and boarded the Mooltan an old P. & O. passenger and cargo liner that had been on the run between England and India. I was looking over the rail at the hundreds of family and friends who had gone down to farewell their loved ones when I saw my sweetheart from my time in Greytown. I thought she had lost interest in me when I lost my commission as I hadn’t heard from her. She was there to see her brother off and we soon made contact albeit from a distance of about twenty feet from the deck of the ship down to the wharf. She was always a resourceful girl and wrote a note, wrapped it in a half crown coin and threw it up to me. She was very accurate and it landed right in my hands. I was most impressed and we wrote to each other all the time I was away. She even went to Auckland and visited my mother who was also impressed with her.
I don’t know what went wrong but I never heard much from her after I got home. Perhaps she expected me to go to Greytown and sweep her off her feet but I had no plans to marry and settle down and didn’t even know what I wanted to do for a living. In fact it wasn’t until I became engaged about a year and a half later that she suddenly turned up in Auckland and told me that there had never been anyone else in her life.
I lost track of her completely after that but a few years later she came to my aid when Joan was in hospital with polio. I was stuck for someone to look after John during the school holidays and on a sudden inspiration rang her. She had married and was living in Greytown. She hesitated and said that she would ring me back. She did ring and agreed to do it. I realised when I got to Greytown that I was not popular with her father who felt that I had treated his daughter very badly. I lost track of her again and only recently when there was a death notice in the local paper for one of her brothers I found that she has passed away, how long ago I have no idea. 
Trevor and I had been going steady with a couple of girls from one of the clubs set up to entertain servicemen in Wellington. I think it was called Webby’s and three or four couples would meet on Sunday’s often at one of the beaches. I was quite taken with the girl who was part French. As usual I was a bit offhand and far from assiduous in my courting. Just when we were due to go overseas she informed me that she had been writing to a soldier in Egypt for some time. He had been badly wounded and was due home on a Hospital ship. Although she was not in love with him she had agreed to marry him and look after him. I was really shattered and I must confess that I didn’t behave very well. Luckily there was little time to brood and in no time I was on the high seas heading for the war which had now shifted to Italy.
There was a curious sequel to my broken romance. The other girls felt sorry for me and asked a friend to write to me thinking that I would have nobody to correspond with. As a result I acquired a pen pal who it turned out was a very proper young lady. She had the impression that I was a Roman Catholic because the girl who asked her to write to me was one as was her soldier boy friend. I never enquired whether the other girl was a Catholic and although with her French ancestry she may well have been. In addition I had been admiring a girl in Customs in Auckland who was very much a Roman Catholic hence the casualness of my admiration. We went out a few times when she decided to learn ballroom dancing. I had decided to learn as well and I enjoyed her company a lot. She was very intelligent but quite a dedicated R.C. and I could imagine my mother’s reaction if I wanted to marry one. So there I was with three pen pals and a lot of letter writing to do.

Early Manhood - NZ Customs Service

I had now left school and needed work. My lack of discipline was a worry and my father suggested that I should join the Public Service where it was quite difficult to get the sack. He reckoned that I wouldn’t last very long in private employment. I got the forms and set about deciding which Government Department  I wanted to join. I put down Railways and Post Office which I later realised were not in what was known as the Public Service and included the only ones I had ever heard of such as Public Trust, Health and Education.
One of my brothers came in and said that one of the officers in the 21st Battery was in Customs and that they got plenty of free booze there. I didn’t drink at all but put it down anyway. In the end that was what I got. Import Licensing had just been introduced and Customs needed a lot of extra staff. It also seemed that Public Trust got the highest achievers particularly those with good marks in English while Customs got the next best.
With a University Bursary I was among the more preferred applicants. On 28th March 1939 I presented myself at the Customhouse in Customs St with my lunch tucked under my arm. The Chief Clerk who interviewed me and helped me to complete the formalities of joining the service had a thing about signatures. He was in charge of what was known as the Long Room named after the similar room in the Customs in London. It was where duty was paid and the cashiers were required to sign hundreds of Customs Entries each day. He had me write my signature which I had seldom used before. He was horrified and told me that I should condense it. This I did, soon nobody could decipher it and so it has remained to this day.
I was posted to the Wharf Office in Shed 15 Queens Wharf where the Examining Officers were stationed. My first job was to ‘write off’ ships papers. When an overseas ship arrived the master produced a manifest setting out all of the cargo. This was sent to Shed 15 and given a Rotation Number. The importers or mostly their Customs Agents would first attend at the Long Room and lodge their Customs Entries. They would pay the Customs Duty they had calculated and then take them to Shed 15 where the Examining Officers sat at desks behind counters with screens around them for privacy.
The E.O.s as they were called would examine the entries and if they were satisfied sign a release for the goods. They kept the top copy known as the E.O.’s copy and the following morning the Assistant Sub Collector in charge of the Wharf Office would sit with each E.O. and compare all the entries he had handled with other copies that had been sent down from the Long Room. This was to prevent tampering by the importer or agent. The top copies were then handed to the Writing Off staff who entered the entry numbers against the items on the manifest. If there were queries the E.O. would hold on to the entries sometimes for weeks and I soon learned which E.O.s were likely to hold ones that I needed to finish writing off a manifest. I would sneak into their offices during lunch hour, find the entries, write them off and return them before they came back from lunch.
My next job was known as ‘blue ticking’.  After a manifest was written off and a list of items not accounted for was made out another officer would repeat the process using a blue pencil. This had been introduced many years before when it was found that an officer had deliberately entered false numbers to enable an importer to evade Customs Duty. The work was very simple and I was soon promoted to man the telephone exchange. It was an old fashioned system with holding keys  and I became good at it. To fill in the time when I was not answering the phone I had a job seeing that all the proper documents were attached to each manifest and that the blue ticker had done his job properly. I was known as the ‘Clerical Jerquer’ which was an old fashioned term handed down for the British Customs.  
 
I was then transferred to the Enquiry Office in the Customhouse. There the public could seek help with Customs matters and disputes with importers and agents were handled and often referred to Wellington for a decision. I attended at the counter and had some filing jobs to fill in my spare time. The second in command was a rather gruff man with whom I had dealt at Shed 15 and who’s desk I had often searched for missing entries. He was hard to understand and most of the clerks were scared of him. I soon fixed him however as when he barked a request at me I would pick up the nearest file and take it to him. He would then have to repeat his request so that I could understand it. We actually got on quite well after that and I think he liked my style.
I had enrolled at University before I found that I was not selected for Training College.
As I thought that I would be assured of time off to attend classes I took three subjects, French, my best subject, Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics all at stage 1 level. Once I started full time work things became much more difficult. I was studying for Bachelor of Arts whereas Customs was more interested in students studying for Bachelor of Commerce or more usually Accounts Professional which was carried out at Seddon Tech. Both of these courses recognized that students worked and the timetables were arranged to suit. I found myself attending five nights a week and on Saturday morning. After my leisurely study habits at Grammar this was a shock to my system. It was hard enough attending the lectures but I also had little time for study and never got to the library to read the books recommended by the Lecturers. My Saturday morning lecture was in French Pronunciation. We had to speak only French during the lecture and I found it boring and time wasting so I dropped it. Unfortunately the Assistant Professor, a woman considered it an essential part of our education.
Towards the end of the year I stopped attending Applied Maths which I found interesting but couldn’t devote the time to it. I decided to sit only French and Pure Maths and when the marks came out for the Term or internal exams I found that I had been failed in French because I had not attended enough pronunciation classes. As you had to pass in two subjects I was not allowed to sit any degree examinations. Further than that as a failed student I had to pay enrollment fees for the next year. I enrolled for only two subjects in 1940 but the outbreak of war and my army commitments soon put an end to my University aspirations.
It was established practice for junior staff to spend time in Wellington generally in Head Office. This was dreary work compiling what was known as the Blue Book. In those days trade statistics were prepared manually and many hours were spent transcribing details from import and export documents to forms for collating into reports. With so many young men boarding away from their home towns they got into a mischief. Lots of overtime was worked for which after making up the two and a half hours to forty hours they were paid the equivalent of 15 cents an hour. As beer was 5 cents a glass and they sometimes got access to duty free spirits a certain amount of drinking went on.
In 1941 I was sent to Wellington but due to a shortage of local staff I was posted to the Port Office. It was a different set up to Auckland as instead of the agents having favourite E.O.s they lodged their papers at a desk and the E.O.s picked entries up at random. I was one of two clerks receiving and recording the documents and putting them into folders. The work was dull but I quickly got to know many of the staff and of the public as well. I will never forget my arrival in Wellington and my introduction to boarding houses.
A shy young guy who had been transferred a few months earlier offered to find me a place to stay. We were allowed two nights in a hotel and the day after I arrived he took me to Berhampore just past Athletic Park after work. His old landlady had agreed to take me in for a couple of weeks until I found somewhere permanent. It was cold and windy as we waited for a tram in Lambton Quay. An Island Bay tram came along but he said that we should take the next one. When it came it was a double decker one open at the top. He led me up the stairs and we sat a few feet under the power lines. It was the coldest tram ride I ever had and I was glad when we reached our stop. It was a very clean comfortable house and I was warned to be on my best behaviour. Mrs Yeats was getting old and was giving up taking in lodgers so she was only doing me a favour.
I soon found a permanent place through family friends. A fellow in the Ellerslie Athletic club who worked for Adams Bruce the cake and chocolate firm had been transferred to Wellington and needed a room mate. The boarding house was in Hawker St above Oriental Bay. It was off Marjoribanks St and only a few houses down from St Gerards the large Catholic church overlooking the harbour. It was quite rough and ready and lacked privacy. Our room was the largest and slept three of us so all the other boarders used it as a sitting room. My room mate brought home from work some sort of malted milk drink which tasted pretty ordinary but in our financial state was more than welcome at supper time.
My board was thirty two and six a week while my salary was about four pounds ten paid twice monthly. This meant that in months were there were five week ends my board came to more than my pay. In the three months I was there I struck one of these months. I had taken five pounds with me and at the end of the time I was just about broke. To save money instead of buying lunch I would run from the office in Customhouse Quay around the waterfront to Oriental Bay and then up the several hundred steps to Hawker St. where my landlady reluctantly gave me a spartan lunch. My athletic training stood me in good stead on this occasion.

Trouble In Uniform 2

Because I was a bit undisciplined my brothers decided that I needed some army training. They were keen members of the local territorial unit in Onehunga the 21st Field Battery NZA. They were both qualified gun layers who were the ones to sight the guns and were considered to be the cream of the crop. I was still only 16 when I joined up and had to put my age up to 18 to get in. I of course also wanted to be a gun layer and having learned what you had to do which wasn’t all that difficult decided when the next tests came around to sit the test.
The regular army soldier in charge of training had taken an instant dislike to me and made sure that I failed. We went into camp for a couple of weeks each year for intensive training ending with a live shoot. The guns were World War One 18 pounders that had been converted to pneumatic tyres from the cart wheels used in the war so that they could be towed on the roads. Our uniforms were also World War 1 type jackets and riding breeches which were relics of the days when the guns were towed by horses. The tunics had brass buttons that we polished with Brasso. They were not only down the front but also on the pockets the shoulder epaulettes and at the back of the wrists. There were also two brass belt clips at the waist on either side designed to hold up a web belt which we didn’t wear. We understood that the buttons on the sleeves were handed down from Peter the Great the German Emperor and were originally designed to discourage his troops from wiping their snotty noses on the backs of their sleeves. 
We had to make metal holders with slots in which to slide the buttons to protect the rough serge material from the Brasso when we polished them They had the Artillery insignia  of an old fashioned cannon unlike the infantrymen whose buttons had the four stars of the Southern Cross. We wore a leather bandolier sloping crosswise from one shoulder with a row of leather pouches across the chest designed to holds clips of .303 ammunition. We had no ammunition and stuffed them with paper. They also had to be highly polished but with Nugget shoe polish except for the studs that held them shut which together with the ring that held a loop of leather probably for attaching a bayonet scabbard requiring Brasso.
We wore ‘lemon sqeezer’ felt hats stiffened with sugar to make the brims lie perfectly flat and with Artillery puggarees being hat bands of blue and red. There was an Artillery hat badge that included the gun on the buttons a crown and a scroll bearing the Artillery motto ‘Quo fas et Gloria ducunt’ which I understand means ‘wherever honour and glory lead’  and it had to be polished as well. We had clumsy army boots with spurs that had to be polished and our calves were clad in gaiters that were long strips of close knitted material about four imches wide that we wrapped around our legs in overlapping spirals. They were designed to protect us from scratches when travelling through rough and thorny country.
We had a distinction that also stemmed from earlier times. The Infantry started wrapping theirs from the ankles finishing up just below the knees. They were held in place by long tapes that were wound round the legs several times before being tucked firmly under  the earlier windings. Because a soldier on horseback would continually find the tapes coming loose from rubbing against the saddle we started ours from below the knees and fixed the tapes at our ankles.

In early 1939 we went to Waiouru camp that had just been opened. We slept in tents and the cookhouse was an old farm shed. One of the exercises was a night occupation. We took up a position after dark and laid the guns using aiming posts set out in line behind each gun with lights hanging from them to show the numbers up. The layers had to line up two of the same numbers on each. This enabled them to allow for the gun moving sideways when it fired. We then left the guns and went back to camp.
Early next morning we went out and fired them to test how accurately we had lined them up. At the end my sergeant who was a fiery individual ordered me to fetch the aiming posts that were over fifty yards behind the gun. I set off and heard him roar at me DOUBLE GUNNER GILBERT! The thought of doubling over the tussocks at Waiouru in my stiff army boots was too much and I told him to get ******! I spent the rest of the camp on cookhouse fatigue peeling spuds and washing dixies. It was not until I got home that I realised what a bad week it had been for me. Waiting there was a letter summoning me to a second interview for Training College during the week I was in camp.

Youth And Childhood Days

Although I always knew that I was not a wanted baby it never bothered me. Having got me my parents accepted the fact. It was a family joke that at about the time I was born my mother worried about the size of the family went to Town and visited every chemist shop in Queen St. in search of knowledge of how to prevent getting pregnant. Unfortunately every shop she went to had a male assistant. She was too shy to ask a man and came home with an assortment of toothpastes and cosmetics but no knowledge at all.
My earliest memories are of living in Egremont St in Belmont. I would have been about two years old and used to play with the little girl next door. Our only plaything was a pram axle and wheels which we used to take turns at pushing up the path into our place. She used to wet her pants quite a lot so that she mostly went bare bottomed and I can still picture her bent over pushing the wheels with her rear end on display. It is surprising that with such an early familiarity with female anatomy I was so shy with girls later on. I was still only two when we moved to Milford and we lived on a farm of about 45 acres stretching from the foot of Crown Hill to opposite the Pupuke Golf Links and running down into the gully of the Wairau Creek part of which rose on our property.
My father Alf had led a varied life since being born in Ballarat Victoria in 1880. The family had come to N.Z while he was still a youth. They had lived first in Wellington in Oriental Bay and had then split as the boys grew up. Alf lived in Greymouth as a young man and helped his brother Albert in Gilbert Bros Watchmakers and Jewellers,  where he was the salesman. This would have been around the turn of the century. At some stage Bert sold the shop which carried on the name for many years under new owners. He went to Stoke in Nelson and owned an orchard while Alf went to Karamea where he went into business with his brother Tom as Gilbert Bros Sawmillers. Alf was the tally clerk handling the orders while Tom managed the sawmill.
It was there that he met Evelyn and they were married in January 1912. In December Alfred Willie was born and soon after that the mill changed hands. Tom went to Timaru as manager of John Chambers Ltd and soon after that to Invercargill to open a branch there and his brother Dick worked for him as a car salesman. In August 1914 Evelyn produced Peter Wynne in the King Country at Mangapehi while on Christmas Day 1915 she produced Noel Glendower at Kohukohu on the Hokianga. Alf was then a tally clerk for a mill producing kauri timber for export to Australia. This did not seem to last long as the next reports have them growing strawberries a Glenfield and then Evelyn teaching school at New Lynn. While there she helped to persuade the family of the later Professor Eddie Blakelock to let him have another try at University Entrance after having failed at his first attempt. His father wanted to put him in the brickworks to earn his keep.
Alf next tried his hand at building houses and the house in Egremont St was one of them. He built it and financed it only to find that the owner couldn’t raise the money. He signed the whole property over to Alf and the family moved in and lived there. Next he built the house on the farm at Crown Hill and the same thing happened. Times were tough following World War 1 and Alf would have been better keeping his money intact. He moved to the farm and rented the Belmont house. Unfortunately the tenant lost his job and couldn’t pay the rent. Alf with three growing lads decided to become a dairy farmer and start a milk supply business for the increasing population of Milford and Castor Bay. The land was not good and much work was required clearing it of ti tree gorse and blackberry. As the depression deepened Alf with accumulated debts from Egremont St. was forced off the land.
I had quite a happy time at Crown Hill. I was six years younger than Noel and although my older brothers sometimes gave me a hard time I spent many hours on my own and learned to enjoy my solitude. I had a vivid imagination and invented a private world full of interesting and honourable people. I had my first romance when I was eight. A pretty little girl in Standard 1 took my fancy. I was too shy to speak to her so I wrote her a letter. I had seen the postman delivering letters to our letterbox and assumed that he would also take letters from it and deliver them so I put the letter into our box. The family read it when the mail was cleared and I had to put up with a lot of good natured chaff. I got it back and handed it to her at school but she couldn’t read it and had an older girl read it for her while I stood by watching. It was very embarrassing and the romance came to nothing in the end. She later married a fellow I knew in the Artillery and died two or three years ago.
I learned to read very young and could understand the news of the world. I got into serious trouble with the headmaster at Milford school when I was in Standard 2 by questioning his version of the War when he spoke to us one Armistice Day. He was so incensed that he found an excuse to fail me at the end of the year. It may or may not have been a good thing that my parents took my part. Perhaps I should have learned a bit of humility but my mother particularly saw something in me that should be encouraged. Later she was to revise this opinion when I began to disagree with her on other matters.
Her sister Venus and her husband Les Hill had a small town milk supply farm in Mangere and it was arranged that I should live with them for a year. The headmaster at Mangere Bridge School was approached and he agreed to put me up into Standard 3 on trial. I was fully vindicated by coming second in the class at the end of the year. By now it was the depths of the Depression and both families were feeling the pinch. It was decided that they should pool their resources and they rented a farm on what is now the Auckland International Airport. The Auckland Aero Club had an airfield and flying was very popular not only for those who could afford to fly but also for those who could watch. The Chief Instructor was wartime pilot and he was an expert at aerobatics. At weekends they would have an air pageant. Passenger flights were available and hundreds would come to watch the biplanes take off and land. The farming enterprise did not pay off but Auntie Venus first became the cook at the Aero Club clubhouse and then the Manageress. By now the older boys had left home for poorly paid work on farms and Alf, Evelyn and I went first to a fruit shop in Ponsonby which only lasted a short time and then we rented a house in Edinburgh St which is now in the industrial area of Te Papapa.
Alf still had the old Chevrolet car that he had bought to use on the town milk supply round at Milford. He now started a fruit round hawking fruit door to door and on Saturdays I had to help him. I really hated it especially as I had to carry a wooden case filled with bags of fruit already weighed out. It was very heavy and we would go to the wealthier areas of Auckland such as Remuera and Herne Bay. I had to knock on doors and say my patter about choice apples peaches etc and put up with the refusals that were not always very polite. Edinburgh St was close to the Manukau harbour and the salt laden air was rusting the car so we shifted to Waitangi Rd where in those days we had a choice of about four empty houses.
In the end the car was repossessed and Alf went onto Relief Work at 27 shillings a week. Gangs of men were laying concrete footpaths around the area and some of them had once been in responsible jobs. The Government retrenched even further and after a while Alf was paid 14 shillings a week to stay home. He had reached rock bottom at last and was on the Dole. He busied himself that Summer thrashing grass that he cut on the side of the road and selling the seed to a grain merchant. Our rent was supposed to be fifteen shillings a week and many weeks when the landlord called for the rent he could not be paid. Alf always claimed that over the period we paid around ten shillings a week on average. As the alternative was to have an empty house the landlord accepted the position.
I went to Te Papapa School and in 1934 had reached Standard 6 and gained my Proficiency Certificate. The other boys had been allowed two years secondary education and in spite of our financial position my mother was determined that I should have the same. She had been school teacher before she married and for some time after they moved to Auckland she took it up again. However early in the Depression the Government as an economy measure had raised the school starting age from 5 to 6. At the same time it decided that all married women teachers should be dismissed so she lost her job.
However she kept up her contacts and early in the 1930s as she had always been interested in writing she joined a writers club to which many prominent woman writers belonged. She was an efficient secretary and became indispensable as the rest of them although able to write stories were hopeless at organising. Many of the members were affluent and it was common knowledge that their very efficient secretary was extremely poor. When it was found that her youngest son needed a school uniform to be able to go to Auckland Grammar one of them paid for it.
At the same time I landed a job at the Triangle Service Station at the Harp of Erin during the school holidays filling radiators and cleaning windscreens as a service to customers. This paid for my books with a little over as a present for my parents. I felt awkward at Grammar among so many boys from well to do families especially as my good marks at Te Papapa put me in the second highest class.  I was a careless scholar relying on a good memory rather than hard work and swot. My homework must have been atrocious and this was not helped by my having underestimated the cost of my books and I had to go to a friend’s place and copy out the French lessons each time. During 1935 Alf got work as of all things a sawmill manager. From being on the dole at 14 shillings a week he was to be paid 5 pounds a week.
Unfortunately business was slack and the mill was only working three days a week so he only got 3 pounds. He had to live near what is now Kawarau close to Mount Tarawera. He wanted Mum to join him but after the years she had spent at sawmills in the King Country and on the Hokianga she flatly refused. On top of that there was my welfare to be considered. There was a period of tension and I believe that he tried to starve her into submission. However she herself managed to get a job so the problem was solved. The new Labour Government  lowered the school starting age to 5 and there was a great demand for teachers. She became a relieving teacher and for the next few years had a marvelous time living in country areas for several months at a time before moving on when a permanent teacher was appointed.
Our finances rapidly improved, Alf was soon driving a near new car and he and Evelyn spent many week ends at holiday resorts. It did not however do much either for my discipline or my work habits. They bought the house for about seven hundred pounds and it remained in the family until Mum died in 1970. We had married couples looking after me and two of my brothers who had come home and were working at Westfield. I continued to gloss over my school work only doing enough to get by. I did some of my homework in the train going to school and really wasted what was a golden opportunity to prepare for a career. At the same time I did rather better than I deserved. After being told by the form master that I would probably have to spend two years in the thirds I just missed going up to the A form at the end of the first term and also at the end of the year.  I also won the form certificate for first place in both Latin and French.
In Form 4, I won the certificate in French and was put up to form 5A the next year. I had only been promised two years at Grammar but with this good result and the improved family fortunes I was given another year. In 5A the form master was quite convinced that my promotion was a mistake and predicted that I would fail University Entrance. I was quite unimpressed and rather than knuckling down and working hard to prove him wrong I even joined in some advanced maths study that wasn’t needed for UE. I learned about differential calculus and analytical geometry which are no longer important having been absorbed into the electronic world along with logarithms and trigonometry. However at the time the knowledge made me feel quite superior.
Half way through the year I was knocked over by a car in Newmarket suffering a broken leg and lost some school time. The family was now reconciled to my not passing UE and I was promised a further year. My mother had her heart set on my becoming a school teacher. I would need an extra year as I couldn’t enter Training College until I was seventeen so this suited her plans. In the event I passed quite easily and so got a year in the 6th form in which I had no outside exam to pass. I was granted a Higher Leaving Certificate which entitled me to a Bursary giving me free enrolment at University. It was a very enjoyable year and  I probably learned more in a relaxed atmosphere than I had in the lower classes. I had taken part in Track Athletics and of course at Grammar we were all part of the Cadet Battalion.
War seemed inevitable and for a couple of hours each week we engaged in military training. It mostly consisted of  ceremonial parades culminating in an impressive march past in review order. Most of the masters were territorial officers and looked grand in their tailored khaki uniforms and Sam Browne belts with swords attached. We had a rifle range and did some shooting with .303 rifles that had the bores cut down to shoot .22 bullets which were much cheaper.
When I broke my leg I was excused parades and decided to become a Laboratory Assistant to overcome the boredom. This led to my failing to become a school teacher. In my last term in the 6th form the Head Lab Assistant gave the job up to concentrate on swotting for a University scholarship. I became the chief although I had too little experience and often when I set up equipment for the experiments for the science masters they didn’t work.
To be selected for Training College we had to be interviewed by a panel at the Education Dept building in Town. On the day of the interview I had to set up the experiment that demonstrated that hydrochloric acid consisted of one part hydrogen and one part chlorine gas. As I remember it the gases were fed into a narrow tube and an electric current ignited the hydrogen resulting in fusion and the production of the acid. It was prepared in the gas cupboard which was designed to carry the fumes out of the lab but the tube was too long for me to shut the door to the cupboard and I got a good whiff of chlorine.
We were expected to go to the interview in mufti  and I had already made a mistake by dressing quite casually in an open necked shirt and slacks whereas the others were in their best clothes. In my gassed condition I walked to town and when interviewed showed little interest in the matter. To make matters worse the chairman had taught in Nelson as a young man and knew my mother. I hated the thought of using family influence to achieve my ends and declined to admit the connection even though he knew that I had a relation who had been a teacher. I of course missed selection. My mother was furious and rang the chairman who apologised and undertook to give me a second chance.    
It is obvious that I was not meant to be a teacher and my subsequent career bears this out.

Trouble In Uniform

My brothers had decided that I needed straightening out and I joined the local territorial Artillery Battery. It wasn’t long before the Sergeants were asking help from them. I spent most of my first annual camp at Waiouru on cookhouse fatigue. The Sergeant ordered me to double across the tussocks in my big army boots just to show me who was boss. I told him where to go and that was my punishment.
It was while I was at Waiouru that the letter came summoning me to a further interview and I was not able to be there. I had already enrolled at University for three subjects. French, my best subject, Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. They would have fitted in well with attendance at Training College but when I was not accepted I had to get a job. My Father reckoned that I should go for the Public Service as that would be the only place where I wouldn’t get the sack due to my attitude. I got the forms and had to write down which departments I was interested in. I wrote down several including Public Works, Health and even Railways and Post and Telegraph which were not part of the Public Service proper. I was still scratching my head when one of my brothers came in a said that one of the men in the Battery worked in Customs and was always talking about the amount of booze they got hold of. At my age I didn’t drink at all especially being a track athlete and a fitness fanatic but I put that down as well. In the end that was where I was sent.
With a Higher Leaving Certificate or Bursary I would have been one of the most highly qualified applicants and in those days the Public Trust and Customs had the pick of the crop. The Labour Government had recently imposed Import Licensing and Customs needed large numbers of cadets. That year Customs took on at least twenty and with the system of seniority we were graded in the order that we started work right down to the day. It meant that I was at least ten places below one who became a good friend but who joined in February whereas I joined on 28th March. This order determined promotion and resulted in much heart burning later on. In the meantime I was faced with a problem in fitting the University schedule into my week. I found myself at University four nights a week and on Saturday mornings.
After several months I had had enough and decided that I would have to cut down to two subjects. I then made a bad decision. French was my best subject so I decided that I would drop Applied Mathematics. In order to be able to sit the exams you had to ‘keep terms’ by attending enough lectures and doing the assignments. I had been skipping the Saturday morning lecture which was French Conversation and although I started to attend them again it was too late and I was debarred from sitting the exam in French. I sat Pure Mathematics and passed but you had to pass in a minimum of two subjects so it didn’t count. However the war was now on and it all seemed rather academic to say the least. That was the end of my University career except for a brief effort while I was overseas.

After the problems of the annual camp the C.O. decided that with my educational qualifications I would be better employed surveying in the guns so I had a better time after that. The war started and at nineteen I was called up for local service. I was still having trouble however and despite having reached the rank of sergeant I couldn’t get on with officers. Part of the trouble was that I had been sent on several courses and now knew more than they did.
Eventually when I was in a Wellington regiment I was sent to OCTU to become an officer to get rid of me as much as anything else. Alas I got into trouble there as well. I was chosen to become a mathematics instructor to teach my fellow officer cadets the basics of logarithms and trigonometry. Somehow I fell foul of the permanent army officer who was in charge of the course. When we had the final exam he doctored the marks so that instead of getting 99% I got only 49% and failed. The Commandant was not fooled however and he passed me anyway.

I was sent to a Regiment in Greytown where the Colonel was as mad as a hatter as was my Battery Commander. After several nasty encounters I told them to stick their commission and reverted to the ranks. They had agreed to allow me to revert to Sergeant and to have me posted back closer to home but they welshed on that and I finished up as a Gunner in a shockingly inefficient Medium Artillery Battery in Palmerston North.
I was now back to where I had been when I first joined up, I was a gun number responsible only for preparing the shells for loading into the gun. When we went on manoeuvres the surveyors invariably got it wrong and would have had the guns pointing away from the enemy by 180 degrees. It was only a dummy practice but the guns were big and heavy and the crews were not prepared to accept fire orders that involved them pulling the guns right around and then having to pull them back again. The Officers didn’t know what to do so the Sergeants would call for me to show them where they had gone wrong. The Officers were not prepared to be shown up like this so I received another transfer this time to a Beach Battery at Scorching Bay on Wellington Harbour.
A Japanese midget submarine had penetrated Sydney Harbour and caused some damage and there was a big panic in Wellington. Two World War One 18 pounder guns were stationed at Scorching Bay on a rocky shelf about ten feet above high water mark. They would have been quite useless as they were not meant for this sort of job. They had a very flat trajectory and the only time they were fired they ricocheted off the water cleared the hills behind Days Bay on the other side of the harbour and killed several sheep in the Orongorongo Valley beyond. However they looked impressive and as they were never needed I suppose they did the job. A Bombardier (Corporal) was the Gun Sergeant of one gun and I a Gunner was Gun Sergeant of the other. My crew included the Battery Sergeant Major, the Quartermaster Sergeant the Cook and a Driver. We had a lovely time swimming and sunbathing and some of the local ladies entertained the troops as if they were their husbands. The Officers who were all over the age for overseas service were Wellington business people. Their quarters were on the top floor of the Scorching Bay Cabaret. There was a party every night and they seemed to have access to unlimited supplies of booze. It was probably a good thing for me when I turned twenty one and was called up for overseas service.
I was posted to a Regiment in training for the Pacific War. We were stationed in Papakura so I was close to home at last. I was still a bit of an oddity being a lowly Gunner. I had to train the surveyors or Specialists as they were called and after morning parade we would march off under the control of our Sergeant who had been in Coastal Artillery and knew nothing about Field gunnery. He would fall us out and I would then take over and do the instructing. At the end he would fall us in again and we would march us back to the parade ground. It was a standing joke among us all and worse was to come. I was gazetted as a Lance Bombardier with one stripe, the lowest form of N.C.O. I went to the Battery Commander and told him albeit politely to stick his stripe where it would hurt the most. However he was a very affable and persuasive commercial traveller by trade and no matter what I felt he left me with little choice but to accept this insulting rank. My mates had a great time at my expense, they gave me no mercy from then on and I was always referred to as a ‘little shit striper’.
It was about then that I met a guy who became the closest friend I ever had. He was a fellow rebel and right from the start we hit it off. He was posted to us from the Air Force and stood out because he had gained his wings and was entitled to wear them on his army uniform. We were as different as chalk and cheese in other ways. He was a great ladies man and women seemed uinable to resist his charms. He was only a sixteenth Maori but was from an aristocratic family. His Uncle was a Member of the War Cabinet and held the Southern Maori Seat. His name was Trevor Valentine and after his mother died and his father also a great ladies man had been killed in a car accident he was brought up by two aunts.
He had joined the Air Force and graduated as a pilot but had become involved with a woman ten years older than himself. The family were horrified and appealed to Uncle Jim Tirikatene the Cabinet Minister. It was decided that the best thing to do would be to post him overseas earlier than intended which they did. It backfired when he went absent without leave (AWOL) and missed his draft. This of course was a serious offence punishable by imprisonment and in earlier times death. However they didn’t dare do anything drastic in case it came out that his uncle had improperly interfered in a military matter.
As a result he was posted to the Army and the irony was that his girl friend had by now taken up with a Yank and dropped him. We went everwhere together and knew all about each other. He could drink a lot more than I could and in trying to keep up with him I often became the worse for wear. I was more cautious than he was and except in one case managed to keep him out of trouble.
While not approving of the way we carried on our families welcomed each of us and it was after all war time and we were due to go overseas at any time. In the end we didn’t go to the Pacific but went away in the first draft of the Eleventh Reinforcements to the Middle East.
We trained in Trentham and in Plimmerton and I had a pleasant experience in Trentham in contrast to the problems I had in OCTU. They had a diabolical habit of taking us up to the top of the Rimutakas in trucks and leaving us to march back to camp. Marching downhill in army boots tends to push your toenails against the toecaps of the boots and your feet can get quite sore if you have let the nails grow too long. There had been some press publicity over the plight of home service officers who had reverted to the ranks on being drafted for overseas service.
We were paraded for our route march when all ex officers were told to fall out and report to the Camp Commandants Office. I knew that they did not have me in mind since I had resigned my commission but it was a good excuse to escape the route march so I fell out as well. When I went in to see the Colonel I laughed and said that I hoped that he didn’t mind my using the excuse and that I wasn ‘t really one of those involved. To my surprise he also laughed and said that he had read my file and reckoned that I had received a raw deal. He promoted me to Temporary Sergeant along with the rest. This meant a rise in pay and when I went overseas I also received a bottle of spirits free each month.
Eventually we entrained at Trentham and were taken to Pipitea Wharf where the Mooltan an old ship from the P. & O. Line was waiting for us. If there was supposed to be anything hush hush about our leaving it didn’t happen. Hundreds of friends and relatives were on the wharf and there were streamers thrown from the wharf as a last contact with loved ones. I was at the rail looking down not expecting to se anyone I knew when I saw my old girl friend from my days in Greytown who apparently was seeing a brother off. We had been corresponding off and on but after months in Auckland things had cooled off a bit. She seemed delighted to see me and we attempted a conversation amid the shouting and laughing of hundreds of soldiers and families. In the end she took out a notebook and tearing a page out of it wrote me a note. Then she wrapped the note in a half crown coin and threw it up to me. I would have been at least ten feet above her and about the same distance apart but it landed right in my hands which impressed me very much.
The note was to tell me that she was missing me and to write to her as soon as I got into camp and so the romance was on again. I wrote to her right through my time overseas but nothing ever came of it and we probably wouldn’t have got on well enough to marry. She visited my mother once but when I got home neither of us followed it up and it eventually petered out. I was however very grateful to her years later when Joan was in hospital with Polio. John had started school and when the term holidays were due I had nobody to look after him. Norma was by now married to a local boy and on an impulse I rang her and asked her if she would look after John for the holidays. She was taken aback at hearing from me after so long but after thinking it over rang me back to say that she would be happy to help me out. That was the last time I saw her as we shifted to Auckland when Joan got out of hospital and once again lost ouch. I found out recently that she died about ten years ago but how and when I couldn’t discover.

School Days

I was born on 17th January 1922 in St Anne’s Maternity Home in Takapuna to Constance Evelyn Gilbert (nee Jones) the wife of Alfred Ernest Gilbert. The family lived in Egremont St. Belmont.
I was the youngest child having three older living brothers and I believe one who died quite young.
My father was the youngest son of a family of six and was born in Ballarat Victoria on 1/12/1880. His family moved to New Zealand somewhere around the turn of the century, living first in Wellington and then moving to the South Island. He worked for his Brother Bert in a watchmakers shop in Greymouth before going to work for another brother Tom in Karamea. They ran a sawmill and Alf was the tally clerk. It was there that he met my mother and they were married in January 1912. The Jones family had settled in Karamea following the gold rushes at Gabriel’s Gully and Charleston. Evelyn was born on 2nd April 1885 and was educated at Karamea and later at the convent school at Westport where she learnt singing and piano as well as painting. She became a teacher and taught in Nelson.
Shortly after their marriage the sawmill closed with the cutting out of the bush. Tom moved to Timaru and then to Invercargill in the employ of John Chambers and Sons Ltd. My eldest brother Bill was born at Karamea in October, 1912. Alf and Evelyn moved to the King Country where Alf was employed as a mill manager and my brother Peter was born there in August 1914. By 1915 they were in Kohukohu on the Hokianga at another sawmill where on Xmas Day my brother Noel was born. The family then shifted to Auckland living in Glenfield where they grew strawberries and in Titirangi where Evelyn taught in the New Lynn School.

Next Alf took on house building but the depression after the end of World War 1 was a bad time for building. He built a house in Egremont St Belmont but the owner couldn’t pay on completion and having borrowed the money to finance it Alf took over the house and lived in it. He then built a house on 45 acres of land at Crown Hill just north of Milford and the same thing happened. He also assumed ownership of that property. He then let the Belmont house and set out to farm the land at Milford. For a time he could make ends meet. The boys were growing up and could help and he started a milk supply round in Milford and Castor Bay. As the depression bit deeper he had to walk off the farm and as the rent of the Belmont house was being collected by the mortgagee a struck off solicitor the family fortunes had almost reached zero. Alf and Evelyn joined with her sister Venus and her husband and rented a farm on what is now the Auckland International Airport. This was not successful and they had to walk off that as well. Venus got a job managing the clubhouse of the Auckland Aero Club while Alf and Evelyn took on a fruit shop in Herne Bay. This only lasted a very short time and soon they were renting a house in Penrose and Alf was trying to earn a living hawking fruit door to door. They moved to no 5 Waitangi Rd Te Papapa which became the family home for nearly forty years. After a long struggle trying to survive selling fruit Alf’s car was repossessed and he had no option but to go onto Relief Work. He spent several months helping to lay concrete footpaths in the area with other unemployed men. One of them was a chartered accountant who later went straight from Relief Work to being Town Clerk of Onehunga. The Government decided that Relief Work was costing too much and instead of getting 27 shillings a week Alf was paid fourteen shillings a week to stay home and do nothing. The rent was fifteen shillings a week and Dad was very proud of the fact that over the period we in fact paid an average of ten shillings a week. Alf earned extra money by cutting grass that grew on the road verges during late summer and thrashing it by hand for the seed. At length the depression lifted and Alf got a job as a sawmill manager near Te Teko in the Bay of Plenty. The wages were five pounds for a full week’s work but there were only orders for enough for three days work at the most. He had to keep the home in Auckland and pay board at the mill so he was not a great deal better off. By now the older boys were off his hands. They had been working on farms for miserly wages often not much more than their keep and on occasions would be home with no job. The middle two spent several miserable months at the single men’s camp near Wellsford working on the improvements to the main North Road. By 1935 the depression was receding and the two boys got jobs at Westfield and in 1936 Evelyn became a relieving school teacher when the new government lowered the starting age for schools to five. It had been lifted to six during the depression as an economy measure. Suddenly the family fortunes were buoyant again, Alf had a second hand car and we employed a housekeeper to look after the three boys who were living at home while Evelyn lived a life of luxury moving around the province filling in by teaching at schools while permanent appointments were being made.
In all of this I was the baby of the family and took little part in the struggles. The only thing I had to do was to help in the fruit round which I hated. On Saturdays I had to carry a box filled with paper bags of fruit and knock on doors trying to sell them.
However I was an acute observer and out of it all I developed a distrust of authority and the establishment in general which was to shape my life and become part of my character.
My first brush with authority came when was eight. I was in Standard 2 at Milford School. It was Armistice Day and the Headmaster lined the school up outside in the sun and gave us a talk on World War 1. It was the custom for the whole country to come to a halt for a minute’s silence at 11 o’clock on the 11th of November and together with Anzac Day was a very important occasion so soon after the end of the war. I was a precocious child, I had learned to read at about four and used to read the headlines in the Herald. I would butt in on my parents conversations so when the Headmaster said something with which I didn’t agree I told him so. He was incensed, so much so, that a few weeks later I found that he had failed me and that I would have to spend another year in Standard 2. Perhaps my parents should have let me take my medicine and learn to keep my mouth shut, but they saw the injustice of it and sent me to stay with Auntie Venus where I could attend another school. I was put up on trial and the shock must have done me good because I did very well at my new school. I never did manage to get along with school teachers however and having found that I could speak out of turn and get away with it I ran into trouble with others as well.
I joined the Scouts and despite being made a Second in my Patrol, passing most of the tests for my Second Class Badge and even some for my First Class one I never managed to get my Tenderfoot badge. The Scoutmaster told me that he would withhold it until I showed some respect for authority and I left before that happened.

I joined the St John Ambulance with a similar result. Despite my team winning the Auckland Challenge Cup for stretcher drill and my gaining a Grand Prior’s Badge I never became Sergeant because of the enmity of the Cadet Superintendent. As my brothers had been given two years Secondary education I was allowed to go to Auckland Grammar School. I was lucky and got a holiday job at the Triangle Service Station at the Harp of Erin which paid for most of my uniform and books and I think that we got some help from a well to do lady in Herne Bay who belonged to the Writer’s Club of which Mum was Secretary. I got into the B form and stayed there without having to work very hard. Near the end of the first term the Form master took me aside and told me that I would probably have to spend two years in the Third Form as my work was not up to scratch. We then had the term exams and to his surprise I just missed out on being promoted to the A form. This continued until the fourth form when we had a Form Master who terrified us all and at the end of the year I finally made it to A level.
My parents were now much better off so they gave me another year and a chance to matriculate so as to gain University Entrance. Half way through my Five A year I broke my leg through dashing across the road at Newmarket and being run over by a car. My parents then decided that I could have a further year as there would be little chance of my passing with over a month being taken out of my school year. To everyone’s surprise including the Form Master I passed and as promised had a further year not in the Fifth Form but in the Sixth and a chance to get a Universary Bursary. I had a lovely year with no pressure on me to pass exams and although I didn’t work anywhere near hard enough I absorbed a more knowledge in that year than I had in the previous three.
My Mother wanted me to become a teacher and I applied to go to Training College. At the interview which was conducted by a man who had taught in Nelson with Mum I performed quite badly. I had unexpectedly become Head Laboratory Assistant for the school for a brief period and that morning had to prepare an experiment involving chlorine gas. I was a bit careless and got a good whiff of the gas so I wasn’t feeling the best. In addition I hadn’t bothered to dress up and wore an open necked shirt and slacks. The other applicants were dressed in their finest clothes and to cap it off I not only appeared disinterested but deliberately concealed who my mother was.
My birthday being in January, I was technically too young but if they had wanted me it wouldn’t have mattered. When I got the letter declining my application Mum was furious and rang her old colleague who told her how badly I had come across but undertook to see what could be done. It is obvious that it was not meant to be since although there were several drop outs and a further set of interviews was arranged fate intervened.