The threat of war was in the air, in Europe, in Great Britain, on the other side of the world, but it was bound to affect New Zealand. What would become of New Zealand if Britain went to war against Germany and her powerful allies, if Britain were defeated, if the Royal Navy no longer ruled the seas? New Zealand a German territory? It was unthinkable. The colonies and dominions of the British Empire would be expected to back Britain with manpower, to send troops, to make sacrifices. Then there was the trade with Britain, the guaranteed market and shipping routes for New Zealand’s produce and prosperity.
But uppermost in Kelly’s mind was the possibility of his son Charles having to go to war. Charles was still of an age that made him liable for conscription. He had just one child, Isaac, still just a boy. Miriam hadn’t conceived for years and they had all but given up hope, when she became pregnant. It was a difficult birth and her doctor said she was unlikely ever to conceive again. Thankfully, Wiremu’s sons were still too young for military service.
When Britain declared war on Germany, New Zealand followed Mother England into the Great War in Europe, as it had done in the South African War. The call went out to fight for king and country, and many young men in New Zealand rushed to volunteer. In the second year of the war, the New Zealand Expeditionary Force sailed from Wellington to France, via Australia. It was initially a white man’s war but when Indian troops joined the alliance, Māori were also included in the New Zealand contribution, and a Native contingent was sent to Malta and on to Gallipoli.
The war demanded ever more replacements for the killed and maimed. The flow of volunteers dwindled, leaving a pool of ‘shirkers’, fit young men who, as the recruiters said, were too cowardly or unpatriotic to enlist. The press agreed, the public agreed, the shirkers were unfairly leaving it to others to do the fighting. The Government compiled a register of men eligible for military service. The Government knew who they were. Those exempted from military service were given arm badges to wear. The public knew who the shirkers were. Charles had been handed a white feather by a young woman in the street as a token of his cowardice for not volunteering. Recruiters went door to door, to get more volunteers.
In the third year of the war, the government introduced conscription for single men who had not volunteered, but that pool would soon be exhausted and conscription would be extended to include married men up to the age of forty-five. It was only a matter of time before Charles was called up, according to the recruiter who came to Charles’ door, so he may as well enlist now, the recruiter said. Charles was not refusing to serve; he was not one of the conscientious objectors. He had just been leaving it to the younger men, the single men. He was not claiming to be an essential worker but he did have important construction contracts he would like to see completed. He could volunteer to join the engineers division, the recruiter suggested. Miriam was loath to let Charles go into the army and her father agreed that he had a responsibility to his family but also a responsibility to his country. Miriam’s father was serving in the navy as an officer of a ship carrying troops and horses to France. Charles had resolved not to volunteer, but neither to resist if he was balloted for conscription.
And so it was that in the third year of the war Charles Kelly was drafted into the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He reported to the drill hall to fill out an attestation form and make the oath of allegiance. He then stripped off his clothes for a medical examination and was deemed medically fit for active service beyond the seas. At Trentham Camp, he was enlisted for General Service, not Engineers, as there was a shortage of men for the infantry. At the completion of training, Charles’ cohort was shipped to France to join the British Expeditionary Force at the Western Front.
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Māori volunteered in good numbers at the beginning of the war and the Māori Battalion within the New Zealand Expeditionary Force gained a reputation as courageous and fierce warriors in battle. When conscription for military service was also extended to include Māori, in the third year of the war, at the behest of Māori members of Parliament, it was applied only to Tainui-Waikato and Maniopoto-King Country, as these sectors of the Māori population had contributed very few volunteers.
Among those called up in the first draft of Māori conscripts was Rāwiri’s eldest son, Tāne. Tāne had moved to Mangātawhiri, in the Waikato, where he was working as a sharemilker on a dairy farm on land purchased back from the government by the Hērangi whānau. It was originally land of their hapū, near Mercer and Huntly, and it was in the heartland of the resistance to Māori conscription. Tāne chose to refuse to be conscripted for military service and in this decision, he had the full support of his parents and of the young Waikato rangatira, Te Puea Hērangi, who had risen to prominence as a leader of the resistance movement. Te Puea was the granddaughter of the second Māori King Tāwhiao and niece of the third king, Mahuta. Rāwiri had married into the royal whānau of Hērangi, though Maraea was some distance from the throne.
A Native Contingent Committee, including the Minister of Defence James Allen and Māori MPs Māui Pōmare and Apirana Ngata met with Te Puea and those opposing conscription, at Waahi Pā at Huntly to try to persuade them to join other Māori throughout the country who had answered the call to fight for king and country. Ngata appealed to the Māori tradition of utu and sense of shame and honour. Māori blood had been spilled in the battlefields overseas and it was a matter of honour to avenge the deaths of Māori soldiers and restore the balance. He said he had received letters from Māori soldiers at the front crying out for reinforcements. Pōmare claimed also that it was a way to earn equal citizenship status with Pākehā, which would gain benefits for the advancement of Māori.
“Why should we fight for the British king,” Te Puea replied. “We have our own king. My grandfather, King Tāwhiao, made peace with the Crown and swore not to take up arms again.” Then she came to the crux of the matter. “Why should we fight for the British? It was the British who confiscated our land. Give us back our land and we might reconsider our position.”
Minister Allen warned that if the conscripted men ignored the ballot and Te Puea continued to support the objectors, they could all be arrested for sedition. By not supporting their country they were traitors supporting their enemy. He suggested that Te Puea was in fact a German sympathiser. “Is it not true, Miss Hērangi, that your surname is a transliteration of the name Searancke and that your grandfather William Searancke is of German origin?”
“I do have a grandfather on my father’s side by the name of William Searancke,” Te Puea replied. “Searancke is not a German name. It is British. And what of King George and the British royal family? Are they not German?”
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Warrants were issued for the arrest of Tāne Quinn and the other men who had ignored the ballot that selected them for military service. Te Puea gathered the fugitives together in Te Paina Pā, at Mangatāwhiri. The police arrived at the pā with a list of men liable for arrest and were escorted into the meeting house. They read out the names on their list and waited for the men to come forward. There was no response and Te Puea refused to identify them. The police officers waded into the crowd and seized seven suspects. They trampled on the Kīngitanga flag, the personal flag of King Te Rata, to seize his sixteen-year-old brother, Te Rauangaanga. Another sixteen-year-old, Rāwiri Katipa was mistaken for his elder brother and arrested, and a sixty-year-old was also arrested. Tāne was one of the few correctly identified. Te Puea blessed the arrested men as the police carried them out of the meeting house. The conscripts were taken to the army training camp at Narrow Neck in Auckland and forcibly inducted. Tāne refused to wear the army uniform he was given and, for his insubordination, he was punished with harsh conditions: a diet of bread and water and just a blanket for a bed.
Rāwiri tried to visit Tāne at the camp but he was denied access. Kelly sympathised with Rāwiri and the plight of his son. “I can understand why Waikato Māori are refusing to go to war for the British,” he said, “after what the British did to them, after what the colonial government has done,” he added, trying to distance himself from the injustice.
Rāwiri, for his part, commiserated with Kelly, for his son, in the battlefields of the Western Front. The dangers were in the news daily. Thankfully Charles had not been involved in the Gallipoli fiasco. But in France and Belgium, in bloody trench warfare, the New Zealand troops in the British Expeditionary Force were facing heavy artillery, tanks, gas, being sent ‘over the top’ into enemy fire, and suffering heavy losses, in the Battle of the Somme, Longueval, Arras, Messines, and Ypres (which the Americans reported as Wipers). And for what? The stalemate dragged on.
Tāne continued to refuse to put on the army uniform and comply with the demands of his jailers at Narrow Neck. With a group of other recalcitrants he was court-marshalled and given a two-year sentence with hard labour at Mount Eden Prison. The sentence was read out in a muster parade of all the recruits to shame them and frighten other resisters. The colonel said the convicted men were taurekareka, slaves, the lowest of the low, and their elders were seditious traitors.
Subsequent police raids on Te Paina marae resulted in more arrests and more resisters and absconders joined those already incarcerated in the prison. Rāwiri tried again to visit Tāne and was again denied permission. All he could do was go to the prison and bring food and hope that it would actually reach him. He met Te Puea at the prison, as she was also bringing food and keeping a vigil outside the gate, where she could be seen by the inmates, in passing, when they went to the toilet. Just seeing her there was an encouragement to the Waikato prisoners. Rāwiri waited with her to catch a glimpse of Tāne.
Maui Pomare visited Te Paina marae, with his ally Te Heu Heu, hoping to persuade Te Puea and the Kīngitanga to support conscription, for the war effort. It was midwinter, the Waikato River was in flood and most of the Mangatawhiri flats were under water. Pomare and Te Heu Heu sat on the one piece of dry land on the marae. Te Puea addressed her guests: “It seems we are rebels again, but who is the traitor here?” she said, glaring at Māui Pōmare. “Minister for Western Māori, Pōmare, elected to represent the Kīngitanga. Why are you conscripting Waikato and Ngāti Maniapoto and not your own iwi Taranaki? You already have some volunteers from Maniapoto. Are you seeking utu for Maniapoto-Waikato for defeating Taranaki?”
The men of the marae stood knee deep in the water, stripped to the waist and performed a haka, with a whakapohane, baring their buttocks to insult their visitors. A group of women performed a poi dance, and one of the women approached Pomare and Te Heu Heu, pulled back her piu piu and obscenely exposed herself. “What use are my private parts,” she said, “if you are going to take away my husband?” The VIPs were mortified and Pomare opened his umbrella to shield himself from the lewd spectacle.
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And still the work at home went on, essential work producing and exporting food for the war effort. The war was actually good for business, except for the occasional loss of shipping. A load of sheep carcasses was sent to the bottom of the sea when the refrigerated cargo ship was torpedoed by a German submarine. Another ship carrying a cargo of grain was sunk when it struck a mine laid by a German merchant raider, all in New Zealand territorial waters. And then industrial disputes on the wharves caused more disruptions to exports. There were few men left to work in the fields and Kelly put his hand to the plough, literally, albeit a mechanised tractor-drawn plough. Kelly and Rāwiri also tended to the horses in the stables, those that were left. Kelly donated a few surplus draught horses to the army, to be sent to Egypt where they would pull guns and wagons. Bert Grabham had left the stables, having volunteered for service early on and gone with his riding horse to join the Auckland Mounted Rifles, also in the Middle East. New Zealand bred horses were in great demand for the war effort, especially in the sandy deserts of the Sinai Peninsula. The British Yeomanry scoffed at Bert’s riding style, but the Kiwi horse and rider were inseparable and, for strength and endurance, they easily outperformed the elegant purebred British mounts and the smaller Walers from the Australian outback.
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Kelly and Annie paid frequent visits to Onehunga to be with Miriam and young Isaac. It had been a painful and tearful parting for Miriam when Charles boarded the troopship that took him away to an uncertain fate in France. She worked at the woollen mill while Isaac was at school, and they were at home together outside of school hours. Her days were filled with the unspoken fear that her husband may never return. Her in-laws were welcome adult company and Isaac always looked forward to visits from Grandma and Grandpa. Miriam and Isaac would also get on the train and visit them from time to time. Auntie Imogen painted pictures and Grandpa made wooden toys in his workshop. Isaac had a set of carved wooden soldiers at home, each with a different face. He set them up in a triangle, as ninepins, all standing to attention and rolled a ball at them to knock them down.
The letters Miriam received from Charles and shared with his parents were written with many loving endearments but also spoke of ghastly conditions at the Western Front: stuck in trenches, surrounded by death, deep in mud, wet, cold, dirty, sick, scared; but sustained by his faith and prayers that he would return home safely. Kelly and Annie were there with Miriam the day the telegram was delivered to her door. She laid the envelope on the table and stared at it as though it would not be true if she didn’t open it. In the eerie silence, Isaac looked into the frozen faces of his mother and his grandparents, looking for what had gone wrong. Miriam opened the envelope and read the words that said Charles Michael Kelly had been killed in action at the battle of Passchendaele in the service of his country for the cause of freedom.
Passchendaele. Kelly had heard the name before. Ᾱwhina had seen it. She had seen the slaughter of war, past and future.
“Dada’s gone,” Miriam said.
“Dada’s gone to war,” Isaac said.
“Now he’s gone to heaven. Dada’s not coming back.”
Miriam was the first to weep and the others followed.
*
The death of your own child is surely one of the heaviest blows life throws. It’s not right for a child to die before his parents. At home Kelly and Annie prayed together and talked through their grief, their sadness, their anger. Kelly was angry, not at God, but at war, the futility and madness of war. He clung to his faith. He prayed as Job did, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”
It did not seem right either to have a funeral without a body. Charles’ body still lay blasted and buried somewhere in the battlefield of Passchendaele. Reverend Haselden, Vicar of Saint Peter’s Anglican Church, Onehunga, conducted a memorial service for Charles and other local men who had not returned from the war. Their names were engraved on a plaque to commemorate all who had died in the Great War.
Some of the bereaved spoke at the service. For his part, Kelly paid tribute to all the soldiers who had sacrificed their lives in the war, and he said, “I grieve with all of you here who have lost a loved one in the war. I grieve the loss of my son and I grieve with his family, with Miriam and their son, Isaac, but I serve a God who sacrificed His only son for our salvation, and I take comfort knowing Charles had a strong faith and an assurance of resurrection to eternal life, and I hope to see him again in heaven.” It was a moving proclamation of faith that also brought solace to other believers at the service. But there were some among the mourners who found no solace in their grief. Grief is the price of love and some who had lost loved ones suffered the anguish of grief unrelieved by any such hope.
After his experience of wars in New Zealand, Kelly had become anti-war and anti-British. He had fought in an unjust war and more recently had been struggling with the concept of a just war and fighting for Britain. In the end, he said he was proud of Charles for having served his country, the country of his birth, and courageously facing an enemy who would ultimately have threatened our freedom. And finally he said that Charles’ son would carry on the Kelly name, but in the end, it was only a name. He had other children and other grandchildren and he hoped that he would have many descendants. Life goes on.
Ko te tāngata.