Looking Back - 2012

What is Courage?

Our last article celebrating the 70^th Anniversary of the WAAFs and focussing on some who served at RNZAF Base Ohakea featured a typist, o photographer and a tailgunner. One of those three didn't survive the war.

Sergeant Aubrey (Dan) Dally and his brother Charles, chose the RNZAF when they signed up. They joked that is was "better to be shot out of the air with a bunch of feathers". They were duck-shooters, on the farm. They didn't fancy death by drowning in the navy or the brutality of the bayonet in the army.

Charles had a permanent disability – a smashed elbow that had mended very badly – so he was accepted "for home duties only". He became an instructor and an aerial surveyor in the photographic section at Ohakea.

Dan was different. Young, fit and strong from farm work, he was given initial training and then posted to Canada, to a specialist gunnery school.

After graduation, proudly wearing his new "Wing", Dan was then posted for operation duties with RAF Bomber Command. By now – 1942 – the war was three years old and the RAF had detailed records of tailgunner losses. The "boys" in the sergeants' mess knew how tailgunners died.

The Station Warrant Officer had a four-gallon paraffin can he kept for tailgunners. These "30-second men" knew their survival odds were slim – very slim – and they certainly knew what the four-gallon can was for.

The Luftwaffe ME 109 fighter was a killing machine, built to inflict maximum damage. It had two fearsome weapons: twin 30-calibre cannons. Each fired 650, high-velocity, explosive rounds per minute. Just one 30-calibre projectile can make a terrible mess: a twin-stream of them leaves little to clean up.

That's what the Warrant Officer used his four-gallon can for – tailgunners' remains.

So, knowing the record, knowing the talk in the mess of "30-second" men, some tailgunners must have thought, often, of the alternatives. A posting to another job? No. Too much had gone into their specialist training for them to be cooking in the mess, or driving base lorries. Simply run away? Be a coward to yourself, forever – if not caught – are face a firing squad if you were? Maybe an "accident" with a knife, slice off a finger, but survive the war? Some must have tried it (we still use the expression "shot himself in the foot").

Unfortunately the RAF Station Medical Officers had ben hardened by stories of "battle fatigue" or "combat stress", so while short breaks at the end of their bomber's "tour" were allowed, each crew counted the days until "duty called".

Comradeship helped their courage. Their personal philosophies or religious beliefs would have helped, too. Perhaps some believed they would "get lucky"; beat the odds and survive. Albeit missing an arm or a leg or an eye from just one "glancing cannon shot" before the ME109 ran out of ammo.

Dan was killed over Dusseldorf.

Courage. We know what it means, but to climb into that very cramped tailgunner's pit, day after day (or night after night), raid after raid, knowing the very slim odds of surviving and avoiding that four-gallon can. That must have been courage.

1912 - A lurch from Left to Right

1912 was a very big year for New Zealand, to historians, a turning point for our nation.

Two events stand out – the change of government, and the Public Service Act.

The change of Government was remarkable because it saw a "leftish" administration replaced by a "rightish" one, as farmer William Massey took over from liberal Joseph Ward after a vote of no confidence was carried.

Manawatu and Horowhenua, both having strong rural economies, had many angry farmers. They were angry at the expanding public service: taxes were funding bureaucracy, red tape was strangling society and central government was taking over – as they saw it. And they had a point.

The "leftish" Liberals had created 12 new Government departments as they set about handling the 'golden age' of farming.

Refrigeration now meant Manawatu and Horowhenua were exporting greater volumes of dairy products – butter and cheese – under the Guaranteed Price system.

Britain took almost 80 per cent of it, and their manpower shortages, because of looming World War I (1914-18), were to create an even greater demand. But this meant paperwork: legislation and regulations, reports and statistics, committees, inspectors, controllers and clerks.

On the left, Labour was gathering strength, particularly radical leftists like the "Red Feds", who talked (and produces) strike action. The newly formed Labour Party had grown out of the West Coast Miners Union; the Waihi Miners' Strike led to "mayhem and murder", some said.

Locally, farmers were worried. Strong action was needed if stability was to be ensured.

Ironically, it was the much-scorned Public Servants who were to provide it. Edward Tregear, our first Secretary of Labour – a "free thinking socialist" – was the sole employee when appointed in 1891.

By 1912, the Labour Department had a staff of over 100. But Tregear – later a member of the Labour Party – had helped design landmark legislation, defining (and controlling) the 'big three': Conditions, Employment and Relations.

Education, too, which had been a local matter, was now taken over by central government; so was health, as the Public Service grew. But they needed skilled workers, as even former Premier Richard 'King Dick' Seddon has learnt. When told that a man he had recommended for a Public Service job could not read or write properly, Seddon's answer was simple: "learn him".

The point was made: public servants were needed, even if they had to be trained. Because the expanding system needed to operate efficiently of the country was to harness the boom in farming exports.

As for the "Big Three" – conditions of work are taken for granted today, employment is constantly under the media microscope but sadly, industrial relations still features disharmony. Marton's meat works and the Auckland Waterfront are two examples.

However the policy positions of 1912 aet firm choices in place for voters; the Public Service Act gave us the machinery to manage the economy and as we look ahead to our next 100 years perhaps those two words still ring true for the 43 per cent of us with literacy and numeracy needs: learn him.

Watersiders march ans ANZUS

The year 1951 is marked in our nation's history by two very different events.

The ANZUS Treaty was signed that year in San Francisco.

In Auckland, 14 marchers were admitted to hospital with serious injuries after police set about them with batons.

ANZUS grew out of World War II and strangely enough so did "Bloody Friday".

The war had shown that Britain's defence of the Pacific vas very limited so we turned to the United States.

The war had meant shortages, but the peace had brought demand for our produce and prosperity — for some.

ANZUS ended for us with our nuclear-free policy, but it did last for more than 30 years and saw New Zealand troops in Korea and Vietnam On balance, public feelings about our involvement were, at best, mixed.

The 1951 Waterfront Dispute lasted 151 days, and saw New Zealand troops handling cargo on the wharves. Public feelings, on balance, were rather against the wharfles, especially amongst Manawatu and Horowhenua farmers, some of whom were starting to pay off debts incurred by restricted war-time sales.

As well as security, the ANZUS Treaty was seen as a way into the giant US marketplace for our produce. Firstly, though, it had to be Ioaded at our ports. Often by hand, this was hard, sometimes dangerous work.

While a 15per cent wage rise had been granted to some workers, the wharfies claimed their recent 9 per cent rise was "history": they wanted the 15 per cent as well. This brought them into conflict with the shipping owners and the Government led by Prime Minister Sidney Holland. A 6 per cent "top-up" was offered.

The wharfies response? Overtime bans, which led to lockouts, union de registration, protest marches and even prison for some.

Emergency Regulations were announced (under the Public Safety Conservation Act), and 'scabs' were hired. The whole mess eventually led to a landslide victory for the Holland Government after a snap election. History shows that eventually more 20,000 unionists were involved and more than 1-million work hours were lost.

The Watersiders' leader, Jock Barnes, never worked the wharves again.

ANZUS never did give full, open access to United States markets, but a common bond has lasted despite the nuclear-free Issue. And although American cars are not so common on our roads today (when did you last seen Chevrolet or Buick?), our TV and video programs are dominated by the United States. Our wine and kiwifruit sell well there too.

As for the waterfront. our news bulletins are once again featuring a dispute, and once again the core matter is worker incomes.

"Each time history repeats Itself, the price goes up". (author unknown)

Eglantyne: Dynamic and driven

"The only international language is a child's cry."

So said Eglantyne Jebb, a truly remarkable woman. Eccentric and eclectic, dynamic and driven, was a passionate pacifist who met the Pope and swayed a court prosecutor - and started Save the Children. Eglantyne and her sister Dorothy, appalled by the suffering of children in both World War 1 (1914-18) and the Russian Revolution (1917), twisted many famous arms to raise funds for the children. A number of today's common fundraising techniques were Eglantyne's creation — child sponsorship, "give tools and seeds", publicity, marketing, "feed a child" and "give a day's pay" — were all novel ideas. And they worked.

Disappointed in love, Eglantyne never married, never had children of her own, but devoted her life to helping the children of others. Armed with an honours degree from Oxford University, egalitarian Eglantyne set out to take her message to the world.

She was arrested in London's Trafalgar Square for publicly protesting children's needs in Austria (at that time, the enemy). At her trial, she so moved the court that the prosecutor gave her a donation. The Judge fined her £5. Eglantyne's audience with the Pope so moved him that he wrote two encyclicals in support of her work. He also declared December 28—Innocent's Day —a day for all Catholic churches to collect funds for her cause. Protestants and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, they all gave her support, too.

According to Eglantine, "All wars, just or unjust, disastrous or victorious, are waged against the child". What would she have made of the technology, which has given us such devices as land mines or cluster bombs, which kill or maim so many children?

Eglantine Jebb's Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1923) — now the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child — still features her five key points. Briefly, they are:

"The Child must be

• Given the means for normal development.

• Fed, nursed, helped, reclaimed, sheltered.

• Given relief in times of distress.

• Helped to earn a livelihood and protected against exploitation, and

• Taught that their talents must be devoted to service."

At the early age of just 52, ill and weary ("worn out', some said), Eglantyne's long battle with her thyroid turned to goitre, and three operations led to her fatal stroke on December 17, 1928.

Millions mourned. No doubt the recent closure of Levin's Save the Children shop would have saddened Eglantine, but Manawatu volunteers still carry on her cause with the Palmerston North STC shop, and the modern magic of 'on-line' shopping means we can all still do the same (www.wishlist.org) as they do in more than 130 countries.

Buy a card, make a donation, offer to help; its a worthy cause. Is there any cause more worthy than the need of a child? Recent news has shown us that the world still has much child poverty, even here in Godzone.

"We should unite to get rid of such evils as child slavery, premature marriage, child labour and the neglert and starvation of children." —Eglantine Jebb, 1928