In the Forest Rangers.

That experience was all to the good a little later on, when the Waikato War began, and the settlers on the Papakura and Hunua forest-edge had to stand to the defence of their homesteads. One of the first skirmishes began near the Clare homestead, where some bush-workers were fired on, and it developed into a fight that extended into the Kirikiri bush, near the present Papakura-Wairoa road.

Very soon it became necessary to form a bush-roving corps which would scout the forests on the flanks of General Cameron's Army, and deal with the Maori war-parties which now and again laid ambuscades on the Great South Road and attacked convoys on the Drury-Pokeno section, where the road was cut through dense bush. Captain William Jackson, a young settler who was one of Roberts’ neighbours, raised a company of Forest Rangers for this adventurous duty, and presently a second company was formed, under Captain Gustavus F. Von Tempsky, that daring and skilful guerilla soldier who was to figure so brilliantly and at last tragically in our fighting story. Roberts was the second man to enlist in Von Tempsky's Company, and so began a comradeship which lasted till that fatal day in the Taranaki forest five years later, when Von Tempsky fell to a Hauhau bullet.