The months passed and the road from Auckland grew longer, pushing on and on toward the Waikato River, the Great South Road, now also known as the road to the Devil’s Nest. Kelly and McCann marched side by side in a file of hundreds along the hot, dusty road, bearing packs, shouldered muskets and canteens slung from their shoulders and jostling off their thighs. The army camped at Drury, then finally at Pōkeno, where they built the Queen’s Redoubt close to the Mangātawhiri River and the Waikato River into which it flowed. Alongside the road a telegraphic line was strung from Auckland to Pōkeno.
The days grew colder and an ominous war machine rolled along the road: legions of soldiers, horses, heavy artillery, supplies to the burgeoning chaos of the military headquarters at Pōkeno. Even boats were conveyed overland to the Mangātawhiri River. The Mangatāwhiri was the great demarcation between Auckland province and the Waikato. All natives who had not sworn an oath of allegiance and surrendered their arms had been forced by decree out and beyond this Rubicon. Kelly had seen groups of Māori leaving their ancestral homes, trudging miserably southward along the road. Some remained unseen to ambush the supply line from the forested margins of the road.
The officers and men of the 18th Royal Irish Regiment had landed in Auckland aboard the Elizabeth Ann Bright and marched from Ōtāhuhu to Pōkeno. Kelly and McCann welcomed their countrymen to the camp and shared a sly rum with a few of the new arrivals and went about getting what news they brought from home. The poor tenant farmers in the counties were still doing it hard with ever smaller plots of land. The landlords had been dividing up small holdings since the famine, as a way of collecting more rent. Families were increasing but the land was not. But things were looking more hopeful of late with the Fenians demanding political reforms and a fairer distribution of land.
More rum appeared mysteriously in the camp with inevitably ensuing drunkenness and ill-discipline. An officer of the 18th confronted an obviously intoxicated foot soldier who responded rather foolishly by confronting the officer back and the unfortunate reprobate was singled out for exemplary punishment. He was stripped to the waist in a chilly July breeze and lashed to a wooden frame in a position that afforded his fellow soldiers a good view while a leather scourge flayed the skin from his back in bloody stripes.
And still more troops arrived at the camp. “I’ve never seen such a massive army in one place,” McCann said.
“Or such massive piles of shite,” Kelly added, leaning on his shovel. “I think I preferred working on the road.” They had been drafted with a score of others to dig more latrines.
“Would you look at all the men coming in,” McCann continued. There can’t be this many Māoris in all the Waikato.”
“More of us here than anywhere else in the world,” said Kelly. “I wonder if there are any troops left in England to protect the mother country.”
“Why do you suppose our good Queen has given Grey so many troops?” McCann wondered.
“To protect the colony,” Kelly said. “I heard it from the Quartermaster that Grey put the rumour about that the Waikato Māoris were planning to attack Auckland and reported it as intelligence to the Home Office.”
“But the Māoris are coming and going in and out of Auckland in their canoes and ships, and trading goods, like Quinn said. Why would they want to attack Auckland? They’d be cutting their own throats. It doesn’t make sense.”
“No it doesn’t,” Kelly agreed.
*
There could be no doubt that an invasion was imminent and indeed the soldiers did not long have to endure the boredom and the mud and squalor of the Queen’s Redoubt camp before the army advanced into the Waikato. General Cameron marched 550 eager men of the 65th regiment across the Mangatāwhiri to attack the first line of Māori defence at Koheroa.
A band of musket wielding warriors emerged from the bush and fired off a volley of lead shot. A ball whizzed past Kelly’s head, followed by bits of shattered skull and splattered brain of the soldier in front. The primitive savages could handle a musket all right. Kelly returned fire and felled one of the warriors who stood their ground in a wedge formation. He began reloading frantically while he remained exposed. Powder down the muzzle, powder in the pan, cartridge of ball and wadding down the muzzle and rammed home, ram rod replaced. With trembling hands, he was losing the race to reload to the warrior at the apex of the wedge and he could not have covered the ground with his bayonet in time. His bowels were suggesting that he could run faster if he lightened his load. The warrior shouldered his rifle and took aim at Kelly. Kelly could only pray for a miss or a misfire from the deadly but unreliable old smooth bore Enfield musket. The shot came not from the enemy in front but from McCann at his side and the warrior was blown off his feet by a lead ball smashed into his chest. The British attackers were joined by the 2nd Battalion 14th and the Māori fled the overwhelming force across the Maramarua River, leaving several dead on open ground. British soldiers also lay dead on the battle field but General Cameron declared it was a gallant and decisive victory to start the Waikato campaign.
Meanwhile the supply line was harassed and attacked from out of the bush fringes of the Great South Road and Cameron would not advance till sufficient reinforcements arrived to secure the road and build more redoubts. The troops advanced no further than Bluff Stockade still to the north of the Waikato River and they were stalled in the mire again for another three months.
The Kingites had constructed a heavily fortified pā upriver at Meremere and in the spring Cameron was preparing an assault overland and by river. The colonial steamer Avon, freshly armoured in iron plating, had been slugging its way up the river and was joined by the naval steamer HMS Pioneer, wielding two large gun turrets. Grey and Cameron were taking control of the waterway with a small flotilla of gunboats. They shelled the pā from the river and brought cannon ashore to fire on the fortifications. Kelly and McCann joined a combined force with the Royal Irish regiment and landed upriver of the pā to attack the fortification from the rear. They advanced warily past the rifle pits up to the stockades only to find the pā deserted. The enemy had fled.
Again a great victory, according to Cameron, but not the decisive blow they’d been hoping for. The troops erected tents on the site and raised the Union Jack, but with a mood of sour disappointment. Was this the Kingite strategy? They had succeeded in delaying the army for three and a half months. How long would this war drag on? Where would they make a stand?
Reconnaissance further upriver revealed another fortification of earthworks, trenches and parapets running eastward from the river at Rangiriri. It was seen to be vulnerable to enfilade from the river and Cameron expected Rangiriri to fall as Meremere had, opening the way to the King’s capital at Ngāruawāhia.
The steamers proved too cumbersome to attack from the river and the Avon ran aground and blocked the Pioneer from firing on the garrison. But the steamers did manage to land 300 troops to the south of the pā, joined by a force of 900 attacking overland from the north. The 65th attacked the central fortification and came under heavy fire. Kelly and McCann took cover amongst a stand of manuka to reload, as did many of their fellow soldiers.
“Look at this,” Kelly said, clutching a branch of manuka. “The seed capsules. Five pointed stars. I’d never noticed it before.”
McCann glanced at the capsules and glared at Kelly, “This isn’t a feckin’ picnic, man. Keep your eyes on the fight.” He raised a hand to give him a slap. There was a sudden barrage of fire to their right and they watched as several of their countrymen of the 14th went down. Urged on by their enraged commander, Lieutenant Hill, they advanced again toward the fortification. The Imperial troops retreated, regrouped, attacked again and were repulsed again. Kelly and McCann stayed close together and alternated their firing and reloading. Kelly thankfully had his mind on the job again. The barrels of their muskets grew hotter and hotter. Many of the Māori warriors, they noted, were quickly swapping muskets with women reloading them in the trenches.
General Cameron had the battle he wanted but it wasn’t going his way. He was furiously determined to take the pā despite the heavy losses suffered in the attempts. At Cameron’s command Captain Mercer led an assault of the Royal Artillery and he and his men were all killed or wounded as they made their way through a narrow opening in the earthworks. The Royal Navy fared no better when Cameron drove ninety sailors over a front rampart into a trench late in the day. Those that survived the gunfire cowered in the trench all night. The rest of the troops also spent a miserable night, sleeping on the cold, damp ground.
“What was going on with you back there?” McCann asked Kelly. “Were you trying to block out the fight?”
“I just got distracted.”
“Are you going to be all right? We need to depend on each other to get through these battles.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right, and I’ll have your back,” Kelly assured McCann.
At first light in the morning, they were again in a labour force digging a sap to break through the defences of the pā but everything halted just after dawn when the defenders hoisted a white flag. The diggers climbed out of the sap and followed the group of soldiers who entered the pā, carrying a white flag, ahead of General Cameron and an interpreter. As they mingled and shook hands with the defenders, Cameron commended the natives for their bravery, accepted their surrender and ordered them to give up their arms. Their chief protested that their flag signalled a truce to talk terms for peace, as they had done at Taranaki, and not to surrender. In the event the defenders remaining in the pā were taken prisoner.
“Is this a misunderstanding,” Kelly wondered aloud, “or British treachery?”
“I think the latter,” McCann muttered.
General Cameron claimed the Māoris had surrendered unconditionally because the pā was completely surrounded but there were no wounded among the prisoners, no King Tāwhiao, no Tāmihana nor other high ranking chiefs. They had evacuated the pā during the night and left a rear guard. One of the chiefs of the rear guard claimed he had seen a white flag first on one of the British boats on the river.
Kelly and McCann found themselves again with shovels in hand, this time burying the dead, roughly equal numbers of dead on both sides, from their reckoning. A grave for each of the soldiers and a mass burial pit for the Māori dead. The glazed eyes of warriors glared accusingly at Kelly as he dragged their bloodied bodies to the pit and threw them on the heap of lifeless flesh. The pile of bodies grew till it looked like they were in the pit of Hades. Kelly was relieved but still nauseous when the garish sight was finally covered over. He tried to rid the image from his mind by turning his thoughts to home, to the village, to the girl he’d left behind. That evening he wrote a letter to Annie, which he hoped he’d be able to post. He began with the usual endearments and told of yesterday’s battle. He’d earned his meagre pay in the Queen’s service that day, he said, and owed his life to his good friend, Michael McCann. He quoted the Governor and the General who were saying they’d “broken the back of this unhappy rebellion.” He spoke also of his increasing respect for the enemy they were fighting and his diminishing respect for the British Army, especially for some of the officers, the toffs he was sure had bought their commissions.
The troops occupied a deserted Ngāruawāhia and removed the King’s flag from the flagstaff and hoisted the Queen’s flag in its place. During the occupation of Ngāruawāhia a commander of the militia broke into the tomb of the first Māori king, Te Wherowhero, searching for greenstone treasures reputed to be buried within. But he came away with nothing; in fact, less than he’d entered with as he came away cursing the loss of his sheath knife.
The Waikatos and even the Maniapotos requested peace and had retreated from the King’s capital to await the Governor’s terms. Grey’s terms were unconditional surrender and all Māori would sign an oath of allegiance. All of the land would be confiscated by the Crown and some set aside for the natives to live on. Those who agreed would not be made prisoners, except those who had committed murder. The colonists of Auckland considered these reasonable terms and a satisfactory outcome which had taken far too long to achieve.
For his part, Kelly considered it a problematic proposition. “Is it murder when you kill in warfare?” he wondered. “And are we not also murderers then? And are we not more culpable as invaders than those who are defending their homes? Are they not fighting in self-defence?”
“We’re soldiers, Finbar,” said McCann. “That’s our lot. It’s kill or be killed. That’s the way it is here. Don’t be wringing your hands about it. Just thank God you’re still alive.”
“What of the families killed in their own homes?” McCann continued. “Women and children hacked to death.”
They’d all heard the reports of Māori attacking farmers in their homes. Settlers on disputed land. Casualties of war. But killing women and children, killing innocent non-combatants in their own homes. Yes, Kelly agreed. That was murder.
“You know the Māoris attack the farms to draw troops away to try to protect them. Military tactics,” McCann explained. “There’s always civilian casualties of war. And what of the nine soldiers killed at Oakura. It was an ambush. It wasn’t a proper fight. It wasn’t self-defence.”
“True,” Kelly agreed. “But we’re still at war in the Taranaki. There’s no peace declared. It’s still soldier against soldier in a war zone. And yet Grey is calling it murder.”
“Another pretext for the invasion.” McCann could not see the point of such philosophical questions but saw the war as the natural order of things, of struggle and conquest. A superior race conquering one less civilised. Survival of the strongest. Might is right.
“And what of the Treaty?” Kelly persisted. “Might it not be more honourable to just declare a war of conquest, as you say, rather than make a treaty and break it?”
“The Treaty means nothing,” McCann said dismissively.
“Apparently so,” Kelly agreed.