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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 7 (October 1, 1938)

[section]

[All Rights Reserved.]

Colonel J. M. Roberts, N.Z.C., the last officer of the N.Z. Armed Constabulary. (Died at Rotorua, 1928.)

Colonel J. M. Roberts, N.Z.C., the last officer of the N.Z. Armed Constabulary. (Died at Rotorua, 1928.)

Redoubts and blockhouses, garrisoned by detachments of New Zealand Armed Constabulary, stood sentry on strategic sites, often a commanding hill or a round mound above a river bend, along our borders of settlement until the early ‘Eighties. There were chains of these posts, guarding communications and protecting outlying settlements. A redoubt was built at Kawhia as late as 1883, long after the Maori wars had ended, for there were inter-racial disagreements and the Kingite national feeling was strong. But there cannot be many survivors of the active-service period, when hundreds of blue uniformed A.C's., though officially styled constables, served through hard-fought campaigns, and performed all the duties of regular soldiers.

An association of old comrades of the Permanent Force, the lineal descendants of the N.Z.A.C., was formed in Wellington about two years ago, but its oldest members' services did not extend back to the founding of the corps in 1867–68. In Auckland and Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty enquiries no doubt can still bring forward some with war service, although sixty-six years have passed since the last shots were fired. Old campaigners sometimes keep the last enemy at bay for a century. There will be Maoris among the long-lived few, for many lads of the Arawa and other tribes enlisted as Constabulary in 1869–70.

It was not until 1884–85 that the Armed Constabulary were finally demobilised as a corps, and most of the members who did not go into the civil police became artillerymen for the new forts constructed at the chief ports of the colony.