Now comes the story of the men behind the scenes; those who kept the wheels turning, those who built the mess rooms, and those who fried the 'spam'; those who kept the flies at bay and those who ran the mail. The administration platoon of the battalion, often known as No. 4, lived a full life throughout the history of the unit-full in that, wet or fine, in action or in rest areas, on holidays or on work days, the personnel of the platoon rarely knew rest. At all time the cry of the unit for food and clothing from the Q and for stores from the canteen was insatiable. The wheels of twice the amount of unit transport could have been kept turning twice as long to supply the demand. Schemes for employing the pioneers on bigger, brighter and better bures were endless.

But alone midst the ceaseless activity around them stood two whom the remainder of the unit heartfully wished could have been extended more often—the butcher boys, Hank and Stan. These two stalwarts really felt for the unit as the piles of empty meat tins round the cookhouse grew, but when the ASC, in the fullness of its heart, sent fresh meat then Hank and Stan really earned their pay. But unfortunately the meat came not as often as we could have wished! Hank and Stan also carried No. 4's banner into the firing line and they are not likely to forget their experiences when their tiny force was ambushed by the Japs on Vella, and cut off from the battalion for a week.

Never far from the butchers, no matter where we were camped, was the boot repairing shop where Gordon Attwood and Jacko and the other shoemakers reigned. Here the boots came in and the boots page 107went out and the work seemed to go on for ever. Even so, the odd minute could always be snatched for Arts and Crafts or for obliging a fellow with a hair cut, at a price! From here, too, could be heard the cry of 'Veek', the call of the ration sergeant, Doug Watts, to his henchman, Vic Lovell. To these two and the team of cooks, the gratitude of the unit has never been fully expressed, for the difficulties of ration supplies and ration scales and the preparation and cooking in the kitchens are not always apparent nor appreciated by those 'not in the know'. High morale in a unit can be linked up to a large degree with the satisfaction of physical needs and in particular by the ample provision of good wholesome food. Our rations in quantity and quality were not, at times, all that could be desired and even now the dull monotony of the staple diet of Fiji days, corn cobs, dried peas, taro root, sago, and little else, can be vividly recalled. Although at first it was a real pleasure to go on to American rations, with their tins of fruit cocktail and grapefruit juice, we soon longed for real food into which we could dig our teeth. However, grimmer days were ahead; days when the thought of real meals was only a tantalising memory, and the very look of C and K rations had a revulsion and indigestibility about them that only experience can teach. And so to Sergeant Cook, Tom Coath, Corporal Snow Atkinson, and their band of cooks and kitchen hands who, under often poor and varying conditions did their best with the food for the boys, we now say 'Thanks'.

And thinking of cookhouses brings a picture to mind of incinerators and piles of burnt tins, of fly traps and grease traps; and from there we go straight on to our old friend with the pipe, Corporal Jim Ashby, head of the sanitation and hygiene detail. Jim was a conscientious and willing worker and really revelled in the job. Thanks to him and to 'Flash' Parminter conditions round our camps were truly hygienic. A daily visitor to the cookhouse, too, was the water duties man. A number of MT drivers were associated with the water-cart, and never were they so busy as on Nissan Island, where the total absence of fresh water meant long trips to the CB distillation plants and late hours on coral studded mud tracks.

Earlier we spoke of Hank Jesson, but of his love of firearms we left the telling till now. Hank was an acquisition to any armourer's shop, and Armourer-Sergeant Snow Bruns found him a willing and able help. Snow came to us shortly before our move from Necal to page 108the Solomons, staying with the unit throughout its remaining life, and the award of a mention in dispatches for his work during the Vella operations was a reflection of his conscientious efficiency. In January 1945 he was in hospital with his fourth bout of malaria and we hope he will not have any lasting effects. Snow was the first change of armourer since Fiji, when Bert Adamson, Bill Pearson, and Sid Withers all wore the hammer and pincers badge in succession. Armourer-Sergeant Bill Pearson was killed in action while attached to another battalion during the landing on the Treasuries, and though his stay with 35th at Namaka was not long, those who knew him well remember his pleasant personality. One of our lone workers was our one and only unit tailor, Bob Drummond. The work he did in Necal was so valuable in patching clothing and mending bedcot canvasses that we often wondered how we would have got on without him at that stage, when new clothing and equipment were so difficult to come by. When the battalion moved north Bob was transferred to Base and when last seen was a happy member of the tailor's shop at BOD.

Corporal Ben Bennett will need no re-introduction. The battalion post office was the source of those comforting and long awaited letters from home, and who in their turn has not clustered round the Post Office tent and asked, 'When's the next mail due, Ben?' Sorting of inward mail was the one task within the unit for which fatigues did not require to be detailed—there were always volunteers in plenty to speed up the job. Ben is now wearing civilian clothes with distinction and we only hope that his re-acquaintance with 'Gorgeous' on arrival back in New Zealand came up to expectations. Bulk canteen work was another responsibility covered within the platoon and Pat Cameron had many cares with the provision of the creature comforts of beer and cigarettes, and the hundred and one other items that were obtainable from the American PXs. and which made all the difference to our Spartan standard of living.

One section of the platoon which really knew the meaning of the Divisional motto, 'Improvise', were the Pioneers. Many were the bures and huts that went up and were held together by wire and old nails salvaged from ration cases; and will they ever forget crate building out of the odd pieces of timber gathered as flotsam along the foreshore at Népoui? And think of the magnificent sets of black-smith's and artificer's tools sent so regularly to the unit by ordnance page 109despite the total absence of any utility for the tools! Yes, from building concert stages to repairing Coleman lamps; from target frames to officers-mess arm-chairs, Sergeant Morton and Sergeant De Latour and their band of merry men were ever on call. Most of the gang are now plying their civilian trade but we only hope that they are not now faced with some of the difficulties they knew when 'On Active Service!'

The boys of the Q store received much good-natured abuse and yet, with all, in few other units within the limit of outside supply, were troops better provided with clothing and equipment. Those who reigned on and off in the battalion store, Bert Bull, Ralph Potter, Ken Spiller, knew that work and responsibility was their lot, but the room for initiative and interest of the work more than compensated. The Q sign indicated many stores over the years—from outbuildings on McNicholl's farm at Te Aroha to the copra sheds at Joro Plantation on Vella Lavella, and from a cabin on the ill-fated President Coolidge to dugout and outrigger canoes during the action at Timbala Bay.

Few of the battalion realised the nature and extent of the work done on paper by the Q office. The difficulty of the detailed accounting procedure with an inadequate war accounting staff, and more often than not office conditions, necessitated many extra hours of work night after night. It was a continual fight to get on top of the returns demanded by DADOS, but there was always the hope that 'some day' the work would be up-to-date and that never a file would be found sitting on a desktop, marked 'for action' or 'pending'. Unfortunately the millenium was never reached! But Ron Barker, Curley Power, Harry Rowe, Hugh Murray, and Joe Johansen all qualified the hard way, through the lessons of experience, as first class Q M clerks.

Now comes the saga of the MT boys, the largest group within the platoon. Only those who have sweated the length of a coral-strewn track behind the wheel of a six-by-four; or eased it over the wreckage of the jungle following in the path of the tanks; or driven axle deep in the sea from LST to shore, can truly appreciate the task to be credited to these boys. Yes, the MT boys have memories! Who among them will forget the joyful homebound convoy, Namaka to Suva, and the wagers laid as to which trucks would make it, of the thrill of excitement of receiving jeeps of our own at Paerata and their page 110tryout at the Kaimais; of the corrugations and red dust of Necal and Percy the Pig and Fanny the Fawn; or the seaside camp at Maravari the envy of all troops on Vella Lavella; or the hard slogging from. Green 2 to South Point at the fair time of a mile an hour! And who has not heard of the time when the MT forsook their trucks and, with barge and canoe and captured Jap punt and the Queen Mary, kept the supplies moving forward in Vella. A word must be said here of the platoon's only battle casualty, Private R. J. Fitzgerald, of the MT drivers who was killed in action on Vella. Fits volunteered at the start of the operations to join the guerilla platoon and was with it as a rifleman when it was cut off by the Japs. The story of his endurance and example during those desperate days makes stirring reading, and it is an irony of fate that he should have swum out to the comparative safety of the evacuation barge only to receive a sniper's bullet while manning a bren gun and giving covering fire to the remainder of the platoon.

We used to wonder where the unit would have been if there had not been the efficient group of mechanics and fitters to work on, among many other things, the portable cookers which seemed to give endless trouble. Sergeant Scott and his mechanics performed wonders with few tools and inadequate stocks of spares, and to this group lies the credit for 'keeping the wheels turning' when the abused vehicles had just about 'had it!'

Now our story comes to an end and the thanks of the officers responsible for the various sections at different stages of the platoon's history go out to the personnel for a good job well done. The Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant, WO II Bob Buckland, was awarded the MBE for his services in the last honours list for the force, and the citation which reads in part, 'During the whole length of his service he has never spared himself and has shown great dilligence and devotion to duty thus contributing very materially towards the successful organisation of his unit', may be taken to cover all the personnel of the administrative platoon. Major Moses, Captain Johnnie Rose, quartermasters; Lieutenants Bill Small, Allan Hill and Mont-gomery (Monty) of the transport; and Lieutenants Len Harvey and Colin Becroft of the pioneers; all know that without the cooperation and loyal support and the disregard for personal comfort and long hours of the men of the platoon the story of the 35th Battalion in the Pacific might not be making such happy reading.

No doubt, whenever two or three of No. 4 gather in freezing works or in Italy, in the city or on farms, there will be many a toast, silent or otherwise, to the days on Bure Hill, Te Aroha, the grave-yard camp on the 'Canal', and South Point on the 'gem of the Pacific', Nissan, and to those lifelong friends we made during those hectic days.

Vella Days

Written by the Medical Officer

It has often been stated that this is a medical war. How true that is of jungle warfare!

September, 1943, found the 35th Battalion in the jungle of Vella Lavella, matched against crack Japanese marines. The mental strain of the first encounter against the enemy proved no less than the physical hardships. Besides enemy bombs and bullets, the troops had to contend with heat and tropical diseases—no mean adversaries. Maiaria, skin rashes of all kinds, accidental injuries, tropical sores, hook-worm and dysentry—these were the things to be feared even more than the wily Jap.

The battalion medical services were organised, therefore, to treat not only battle casualties, but also sickness. All supplies were carried in portable haversacks, usually on the back, but in the trek up the coast, the main battalion medical supplies were able to be transported in native canoes. As soon as battalion headquarters moved forward, the battalion aid-post packed its equipment and reached its new site as soon as possible. There, a tarpaulin for protection against torrential rains was erected, and under it medical equipment such as blood plasma, splints, drugs, dressings and instruments was set out in preparation for casualties. It usually took eight men to get one wounded stretcher case back to the RAP, and the stretcher bearers found their work difficult in the extreme. However, the long months of training in New Zealand and Necal enabled them to carry out their tasks creditably and well. When a man was wounded, first-aid was given on the spot by the company medical orderlies, and evacuation was carried out as rapidly as possible, first to the aid post where additional treatment was given, and thence by barge to the advanced dressing station.

Even the transport of sick and wounded has its lighter side. On one occasion, a party of bearers conveyed a suspected case of acute appendicitis up hill and down dale, through swamp and jungle for a page 112distance of nearly two miles back to the medical officer, to find their patient was suffering merely from the common 'belly ache', due to an unaccustomed diet of C and K ration. The perspiring stretcher bearers were not at all pleased when they later sighted their victim strolling about unconcernedly, and expressed themselves in no uncertain manner. Among other things it was suggested that the diet be persevered with!

When the battle was over, the work of the Medical Section carried on. The continual stream of sick required to be treated, while the unit anti-malarial squad was kept busily engaged in spraying swamps with oil to prevent the breeding of the malarial mosquito. Yes, it was a testing time for both men and equipment; a time when the men of the 35th Battalion came to realise to the full the consequence of 'war in the raw'. Vella Lavella—an island paradise! Perhaps!

The Story of a Stag

It so happened that one of the local dogs (four legged) ran a deer into the river at a point close to Battalion Headquarters. This was in the days of Nepoui. The stag found temporary safety in deep water until the RSM appeared, complete with Tommy gun which he discharged without any apparent inconvenience to the deer. Now it chanced that the adjutant, Captain D. George, strolling to breakfast, came on the scene to investigate. Summing up the situation at a glance the adjutant flung himself, fully dressed, into the turgid flood, put a headlock on the stag and hollered lustily to RSM Ivers for a piece of rope. The RSM, equally clad, also flung himself into the tide, and before you could say Houailou they had the stag well and truly hogtied and safe on the bank. In spite of all the things they say about RSM's and their marksmanship, it was discovered that the Tommy gun had done its dastardly work only too well. Result—venison for supper, a new 14 point stag hat rack for the Sergeant's Mess—and ask Captain George sometime just where that fine deerskin rug came from.

Transport on Vella Lavella

One heavy dug-out canoe, one light canoe, two outriggers, and two Jap collapsible boats plied a useful trade. This weird assortment of mixed native and military craft was operated by the transport page 113platoon which called itself the Umomo General Freight and Passenger (No Deadheads) Transport Corporation (Unlicensed). The corporation was to be found in the waters round about Umomo Island after the Japs had flown. It performed full time duty fetching and carrying water, food and munitiions between companies on the coast. There was no cash fare for passengers or goods, but anyone wanting a ride from one bay to another worked his passage at the end of a punting pole or a broken down paddle. Fastest of the fleet was the Cutty Sark, an outrigger. This outrigger carried eight passengers and several hundred pounds of cargo. The Queen Mary, the big dug-out boat propelled by four oars, took a load of three quarters of a ton, but moved terribly slowly.

Disbanding The Unit

It was our fervent hope, as we slammed the lids on the crates and painted the shipping numbers on the cases in Necal in August 1944 that never again would we sight the unit equipment; that the gear which had accompanied us to Fiji and a dosen other islands, and on a dozen ships, would be but a memory. It was an empty hope! Late in September Colonel Moffat detailed a small group from the unit to take over the equipment and to prepare to clear the unit's ledger by handing it over to an ordnance depot in New Zealand.

For this job he detailed the quartermaster, Captain Johnnie Rose, who assembled around him, as furloughs expired, Sergeant Cam Gillespie, Lance-Corporals Hugh Murray and Vic Lovell, Alan Barnhill and Joe Johansen. The equipment and vehicles of the entire division, as ships brought them to Auckland, had been dumped in a former American camp, Camp Ewart, later known as Mangere Crossing Camp, near Otahuhu. It was an impressive sight to see the 3,000 vehicles row on row on row, and to wander through warehouse after ware-house each stacked roof high with the equipment of the 90 odd accounting units of the force.

Camp Ewart became the base of the Third (New Zealand) Division and in time an Army Ordnance Depot moved up from Trentham to prepare to receive the equipment of the units. It was a slow task. All the equipment so carefully and tenderly packed in Necal had to be uncrated and checked and sorted and cleaned and polished. But in time the kitchen gear shone with a brilliance never known before; web equipment had been scrubbed, and the 'Tacks, Brass, 3/4 inch, Shoemakers for the use of', had been counted and the ordnance was satisfied.

But then came the paper war and weeks went by while a busy hum rose from the office as checks were made in the ledger to find out where truck No. 123 was which we had had in Fiji and didn't have now, and where were the emergency rations which once we had but now could not find.

In time the ledger was nicely ruled off. Then the auditor checked it, and for weeks he listed his queries on pages. Then on trial we were to satisfy him that the No. 48 wireless set shown as 'Lost as the result of enemy action in Vella' had actually been lost and page break

Lieutenant-Colonel C. F. Seaward, DSO, MC, the first commander of the battalion during its first action in Vella Lavella

Lieutenant-Colonel W. Murphy. CBE, MC. who formed the battalion in New Zealand and was the first commander in Fiji

Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. Moffat, ED, who was in command of the battalion on Nissan Island and until when is was disbanded in 1944

page break

Hundreds of tons of coral from this pit on Nissan went to the making of roads in the divisional area. Some indication of the depth of the mud can be gauged from the ruts in the foreground.

Below: The remains of a mission station on Nissan Island which afterwards became the headquarters of the Third Division

page 115was not in our kitbags as a trophy of war. After much questioning he pronounced himself satisfied and set his seal of approval on the stores ledger and the regimental funds accounts.

And thus with the stroke of the pen the 35th (New Zealand) Battalion went out of existence, for on 24 January 1945 the following obituary notice appeared through the 3 NZ Division Base routine orders:

'A certificate of clearance by audit of the stores, equipment and vehicle ledgers, and the Regimental and Canteen Funds Accounts has been granted to the 35 NZ Battalion.'