Chapter Twenty-One
Works Services Units

The Works Services engineering unit was formed for the specific purpose of constructing and servicing base installations in New Caledonia which, at that time, was the main allied base in the South Pacific drive against the Japanese. Field company engineers already in New Caledonia were compelled to spend most of their time making roads into camps, erecting accommodation for other units and generally doing work that would normally fall to an army troop company. The fact that New Caledonia was not prepared for the accommodation of so many troops, combined with the undeveloped nature of the country, made the construction of base installation a priority job number one. But the exigencies of the war situation made it essential for the field companies to devote full time to the specialised combat training in island warfare. Lieutenant-Colonel A. Murray, OBE, CRE Third Divisional Engineers, NZEF IP, recommended to the GOC that a special construction company be formed to relieve the divisional engineers of base installation work in New Caledonia. This was agreed upon.

The war establishment of Works Services Engineers was drawn up by Lieutenant-Colonel C. J. W. Parsons, Assistant Director Fortifications and Works, Army HQ, Wellington. The New Zealand army was immediately combed for tradesmen and artisans. Carpenters like Jimmy Fleming were plucked from tank units, and plumbers such as Ollie Nairn were grabbed from mounted rifles. Great were the lamentations as men from all parts of New Zealand assembled at Waiouru in April 1943. The task of organising the unit was in the capable hands of Captain W. P. Boyd who acted as OC of the unit during the formative and training period in Waiouru. Rigorous combat training was page 189carried out so that the unit could be changed over to a field company if required. The appointment of a social committee to organise unit dances and other entertainments, and the full use made of all the AEWS facilities very soon established cordial relations between officers, NCOs and men. The unit was organised in conformity with the special work before it and the specialised training of personnel. There was: HQ Works Service of which Lieutenant-Colonel H. A. Jones had been appointed CRE Works, with Major S. E. West as staff officer; Lieutenant D. Brooker, engineer stores officer; Lieutenant S. R. Mann, works officer; Lieutenant J. K. Scott, electrical and maintenance officer; administrative staff, cooks and general duties staff. The function of HQ Works was to be the organisation and direction of engineer tasks which came within the programme of Works Services Engineers, and the administration of engineer stores.

The construction company was to have been under the command of Major W. L. Mynott who had the misfortune to meet with an accident which prevented his taking over; his place was taken by Captain W. P. Boyd until the unit reached New Caledonia. The company was divided into three sections. HQ section was made up of administrative personnel, surveyors, chainmen, draughtsmen, cooks and general duty men. Captain F. J. Clark was adjutant. The building section was composed chiefly of carpenters and allied trades of the building industry. This section was under command of Lieutenants S. T. Tremain and W. F. Wise. The services section included such groups as mechanics, welders, bulldozer, grader and dragline operatives, road and drainage workers, under command of Lieutenants R. Gilmour and R. R. Torrie. Works service wharf operating unit, the first of its kind ever to leave New Zealand, had a total complement of 79 men and two officers. While in New Zealand the unit was under command of Captain E. Blacker and Lieutenant L. B. Wright. Personnel of this unit consisted of men who had had experience as tally clerks, winchmen and hatchmen. The unit was a self contained one with administrative staff, cooks and general duty men.

On the worthy ship Tryon on 22 May 1943, at the close of a New Caledonian winter afternoon, works services personnel anchored in the Nouméa harbour. The poetic charms of the tropics predisposed all aboard to look upon the island with sup-page 190pressed delight; such charms, like the first smile of a beautiful girl, were thought but the prelude to still further revelations. These musings were somewhat stifled as the ship lay overnight in the harbour, and were further dampened the following day as the convoy of trucks carried the party over a highway which indicated that New Caledonia possessed fewer road and river boards than New Zealand. The spot chosen for works services headquarters, Le Clere's Farm, lay some hundred odd miles north from Nouméa. The absence of cultivated farms, green fields, root crops, sheep and cattle such as one finds in New Zealand all served to emphasise the transfer to a country with a simpler way of living. Before the journey was completed observant members of the party concluded that the small tented areas that could be seen among the niaoulis were replicas of what they themselves would be occupying. As a camp area the site chosen on Le Clere's Farm was almost ideal. Relatively dry, free from floods and one of the least mosquito infested spots on the island, with a stream a few yards distant, this was to be the 'home' for works personnel for the next 17 months, and divisional engineer area on their return from the forward area. On the arrival of the party they found a skeleton camp erected by an advanced party which had arrived a month earlier under the command of Major S. E. West and Lieutenants R. R. Torrie, D. Brooker and W. F. Wise, and a party of NCOs and other ranks. Although this party had been on the island only a month, a road into the camp had been formed and other work undertaken for Base HO NZEF IP.

Very often the term 'homesick' covers a multitude of moods. Applied to soldiers who have just arrived in a strange, isolated and little developed country, it means the difficulty of readjusting themselves to a new way of living and thinking. Such was the position of works service personnel. Like other New Zealanders they had been transferred from a community in which local and national politics, set forms of amusements and entertainment, communications and transport were all part of their lives: but here they were cut off not only from their social background, but also from their wives, families and friends. Camped in the bush among the hills, these 280 men who had known each other only for a few weeks were to eat together, work together and sleep six to a tent until their return to New Zealand. It is not surprising that the first few weeks found them adjusting themselves to page 191the new life with some difficulty. Had they been able to step into a programme of heavy work at once, time would have passed more pleasantly. This, unfortunately, they were not able to do: the tools and equipment which were supposed to have accompanied them did not arrive until some weeks later. By dint of borrowing and begging a few shovels, picks and other equipment, the services section was able to start work on the road formation in the Téné Valley. Another party erected a tank and water point on the road to base training depot. Under Lieutenant S. R. Mann, works officer, a party was transferred to a New Zealand transit camp, Nouméa, to effect repairs and installations. Sergeant 'Skip' Bark was appointed liaison NCO to work in co-operation with Lieutenant Mann, and he had the job of scrounging stores for Lieutenant D. Brooker's growing establishment. A party of Carpenters under Sergeant Fred Watt and Corporal George King began work at the temporary 4th NZ General Hospital, Boguen Valley. Back in base camp services and building sections combined to clear the site for the erection of the first of the 16 prefabricated warehouses, 108 feet by 48 feet. The erection of this warehouse was the first experience in prefabrication for most of the men. The tools available for the job were four hammers and one saw. A week after the arrival of works services, the wharf operating unit, which was in the course of formation at Waiouru when works services embarked for New Caledonia, arrived on the scene. A camp site a few yards from the construction company HQ had been prepared, and until the departure of the unit to Nepoui Wharf, wharf operating personnel messed with works personnel in the main bure. Before the main construction programme commenced Lieutenant-Colonel Jones was transferred to New Zealand, and Major S. E. West, his staff officer, became DCRE. With the exception of Lieutenant J. K. Scott, Lieutenant D. Brooker, his engineer stores staff, Sergeant George Aim and Sapper F. Harrison, of headquarters works personnel, were transferred to the construction company.

Within the first fortnight of their arrival in New Caledonia the works sports representative was sitting on the doorstep of the New Zealand National Patriotic Fund Board's office in Bourail, waiting for football jerseys, shorts and boots. Rugby and soccer teams had been formed, and were itching to sample the quality of the players in the rugby and soccer tournaments page 192already in full swing under the eye of the NZEF IP base units sports committee. Though the rugby club was not able to field a team every Saturday some hard-fought games were played. When the construction company moved down to Dumbéa, Quartermaster Sutherland took charge of the football gear without a murmur. Of the few games played in the Dumbea Valley, an American spectator commented upon the game as a form of amusement that stopped just short of organised murder. The soccer team, by travelling 110 miles by truck on Friday night from Dumbéa Valley to base camp and then on to the playing area on Saturday, won the B grade soccer competition on the Saturday afternoon after playing two very hard games. Probably the most characteristically New Zealand feature of the base sports committee were the long drawn weekly meetings and the 'ride home' the delegates so greatly enjoyed!

A fortnight after their arrival wharf operating unit moved up to Nepoui, which became the unit headquarters. A small detachment under Corporal Tom Artnon remained with works services and became specialists in the concrete yard or, as it was better known, 'The Humorous Concrete Coy.' In less than 15 months this small group made all the concrete products for the 4th General Hospital, the Kiwi Club and the convalescent hospital. It also made the 'seats' of infamous memory. During the 17 months in New Caledonia this unit worked on the average two ships a month. Owing to the 'wharf' being little more than a jetty alongside which the ship berthed, only three holds could be unloaded at a time. There were no wharf appliances and even the heaviest cargo had to be unloaded into the waiting trucks below using only the ship's gear. Such awkward lifts as heavy guns, tanks and bulldozers were handled in this way and without accident. One of the fastest unloading jobs was that of a ship loaded with a cargo of 11,000 drums of fuel oil, 24 large piles 65 feet long, and a two-ton launch. The captain of the ship estimated that at least ten days would be required to unload the ship. When it was completed within three days, the captain found his spell in port much less than he had planned for.

Népoui was one of the most isolated spots on New Caledonian coastline. Koné, the closest village north of Nepoui, was 30 miles distant, and in the south Bourail was over 50 miles away. By working between shifts on the camp site, wharf personnel had page break

Some of the staff of the field bakery producing the daily bread on Nissan Island

His Excellency the Governor-General shakes hands with members of Base Ordnance Depot

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The 4th New Zealand General Hospital at Dumhéa was a large and efficient prefabrication job. In the early stages of construction vast quantities of pieces were spread over the site. Below: The engineers at work on excavations for the hospital reservoir

page 193built themselves a comfortable home out of very little. Jim Hewitt and Eddie Heald got together on an improvised water heater that threatened to consume all the timber in the countryside. The nearest fresh water supply was six miles away and had to be carted in to camp every day in disused 44-gallon oil drums. All washing, from clothes to bathing, had to be confined to the small hand wash basins. The beach by reason of sea snakes, poisonous shell fish and sharks, was not popular. It was not until after 12 months that an improvised shower was erected, and a truck allocated for the purpose of taking the men to a nearby American airfield where pictures were shown every night and the amenities of a canteen were made available. Whenever there was a lull in shipping wharf personnel were transferred to one of the construction jobs as working parties, either to dig drains, foundation pile holes for hospital ward sites, or work on the roads. The work was hard, monotonous and, under the tropical summer of New Caledonia, reminiscent of forced labour in earlier days. The camaraderie which existed within the ranks of wharf personnel, their goodnatured toughness and the genuine zeal they brought to such uninspiring work was a credit to themselves and to their country. The concrete works was under the immediate control of Corporal T. Armon, an experienced concrete worker, and a small staff drawn from wharf operating unit. The group designed various styles of pipes for drains, culverts and other accessories; made their own moulds and produced all the concrete requirements for the hospitals and Kiwi Club.

Within the first month of landing the first issue of the unit newspaper, Dozerdust, was published. This was a three-paged mimeographed weekly that continued each week until a few weeks before the unit embarked for New Zealand. Camp gossip, articles, geographical information of Pacific Islands and, for several months, a series of caricatures of unit personnel by Sergeant Lyn Lipanovic, in civil life a commercial artist, maintained popular interest.

In the construction programme which lay ahead priority number one was the erection of the 4th NZ General Hospital, in the Dumbéa Valley, probably one of the most up-to-date hospitals in the South Pacific, Next came the construction of the Kiwi Club, at the Bourail Beach, and the last big job, the erection of a convalescent hospital at Kalavere. While each undertaking page 194presented specific problems, that of the 4th General raised all the technical problems which were later to be met in the other two jobs. Work on; prefabrication was, apart from the slight experience on warehouses in the Bourail area, new to most of the men. Methods of constructing the hospital wards, from the marking out of ward sites for piles, to the most efficient type of hurricane, tie stay, had to be worked out on the spot. The choice of clumsy methods in assembling parts would mean endless delay; foresight and willingness to make alterations in plans to meet local requirements had to be used. The installation of a complete sewerage system that would meet all requirements in the tropical summer had to be transferred from paper to what had been a barren hillside; A further example of the need for executive ability plus engineering background was illustrated in the prob-lern presented by the erection of a septic tank. A tank of this kind, it need not be emphasised, was most essential in the hospital scheme, but it was found that the one provided for in the original plans was unsuitable for a number of reasons which could not have been known to the designers in New Zealand. Time could not be spared to signal for instruction or further plans. The obvious course of designing a suitable 30,000 gallon tank was taken. The designing staff knew what they had to supply; the problem of working out the solution was one they enjoyed, and this experimental attitude was carried through to the men who were doing the construction work on the spot.

In the early stages of the construction of the hospital the shortage of heayy equipment was obvious and was responsible for a certain amount of irritation. In New Zealand such a shortage would not have proved so irritating as it did in New Caledonia. The proximity of an American engineer regiment which was well equipped with heavy equipment such as a Barber Green ditching plant and a power earth auger, as well as other heavy-machinery, made the somewhat battered Perkins graders, road planers and stone crusher look even more disreputable than they were. One of the Berkins graders was in and out of the mechanic shop so frequently that it became known as the 'Mrs. Perkins who was always haying operations,' and operative 'Bog Ape' Macale was suspected of harbouring dishonourable intentions towards the 'old lady.' Despite the irritation and frayed tempers to which the inadequate equipment gave rise, every man on the page 195job responded with a singleness of purpose that carried the work through a seven-day week that began with the 6.30 am whistle and did not end until the 5.30 pm signal.. The rigours of the summer heat, the food and the makeshift tent life were all born with a fortitude that earned the unit a name no member need be ashamed of.

Several pairs of boxing gloves were a National Patriotic Fund Board issue that were seldom out of use. This does not imply that works personnel were of a particularly pugnacious disposition. It is true that two cooks, Maurice Corrie and Maurie Campbell, once had an argument in which Maurie Corrie gave his companion a black eye. It was felt to be an uneven distribution so Maurie Corrie allowed Maurie Campbell to blacken his eye in return. They thereupon shook hands and pledged a slightly 'plonkish' friendship. And this is the only known instance of two members of the unit coming to blows. In the boxing ring Keith Morton, Ron Alderson, Len McGregor, Dave Holwell, Maurie Woods, Brian Tapper and 'Lofty' McCosh were among the most warlike. Two unit boxing tournaments were organised, but had to be postponed.

In common with other base units of NZEF IP, works services succeeded in turning out a very creditable surf team which took its share of patrolling the Bourail Beach. Probably the hardest afternoon, and the one which team members will remember for some time, was the exhibition on Anse Vata Beach on Christmas Day of 1943 which the team gave for the American base recrea-tion centre. The blazing hot afternoon, the sand and sea water put the team in a mood that worked wonders on the carton of beer Captain W. P. Boyd rescued from the 'fridge!' Another form in which incipient pugnacity displayed itself was a particularly ferocious debating club which always attracted a noisy audience. Ted Knowling and Percy Kenna could always be depended upon to rise to the defence of private enterprise, while Cliff Foster, Jim Paterson-Kane, Peter Wingfield and Brian Tapper were thorns in the flesh of the sturdy individualists. Teams from works met and defeated teams at the transit camp, Nouméa, the 4th General and a team from wharf operating. Less barbaric, but equally strenuous were the table tennis games in which 'Snow' McGovern, George Aim, Fred Broadley, Arthur Ward, Jack Mason, Fred Kronast, and Ted Knowling sometimes took a terrific thrashing and sometimes a win.

Costing a trifle above a quarter of a million pounds, the 4th NZ General Hospital was a self-contained unit in which the 96-bed wards, operating theatre, laboratory, dispensary, infectious diseases and dysentry block, administration block and staff quarters were all serviced with a network of tar-sealed roads, sanitation and drainage, electric light and recreation centre. A set of steam boilers was erected and the boilerhouse completed only a short time before the hospital was vacated by New Zealand personnel. During the construction of the hospital approximately 230 works construction personnel were engaged on construction work. Parties from the wharf operating company, the base supply depot No. 1 and infantry companies assisted with excavations, road formation and drains.

While work was proceeding at the 4th General, the detachment of 50 services personnel under Lieutenant R. Gilmour was carry-ing out a considerable programme of works in the NZEF IP base area. This included the construction of a bridge on the Téné Valley road; maintenance of all water points in the area; maintenance of all electrical plants; erection of prefabricated huts and bures at headquarters. Lieutenant J. K. Scott, of HQ works, supervised the installation of the ice-cream plant at the field bakery. The maintenance of 50 miles of road from Boguen Valley to Moindah kept Jim Blair and Nelson Waite busy on grader and planer; a party who had to work quarries and shingle pits found the going none too easy, while 'Deacon' Carswell, Archie Canavon and Laurie Thurston were keeping the draglines busy supplying shingle for the roads. At the base camp mechanics were kept busy on repairs; HQ works checking plans and investigating priority unit jobs that kept rolling in. Preliminary plans on the Kiwi Club and convalescent hospital were checked and finalised at headquarters. The tank squadron prior to moving 'north' occupied the site vacated by the construction company. Amicable relations were at once established between the two units. The celebration of a combined smoke concert, under the chairmanship of Sergeant Phil Henley of tanks, gave the personnel of the latter an opportunity of trying out their richly topical songs of their own composition.

The performance of heroic deeds and boldness of planning are the stuff of which war is made, but it is not given to all members of an army to play that dramatic role. Duty very often page 197imposes deeds which by virtue of monotony, long hours of hard and uninspiring work never make the headlines. Such a duty was imposed on the staff of works service engineer stores. Lieutenant D. Brooker, Sergeants A. Burge, A. Chapman, G. Lindsay, Corporal J. Mason and Sapper G. Crisp worked the clock round on more than one occasion. The store was the receiving depot for all materials used in the Kiwi Club, the convalescent hospital and much of the 4th General Hospital. Over 100 tons of nails, 600 tons of cement, pumping sets, electric lighting plants, electricians', drainlayers' and labourers' tools and stores had to be issued from the store. On the tapering off of the works programme the checking in of tools and equipment involved a tremendous amount of work, and a degree of vouchering and ledger keeping, for instance, that is seldom associated with an army on active service. While attending to the requirements of works services, the store also had to issue engineer equipment to other units in the base area. It is estimated that well over a million pounds in value passed through the store in one form of equipment or another in the 17 months it was in operation.

The end of March 1944 found the works programme drawing to a close. There was still work to do on the Kiwi Club, on the convalescent hospital and on the roads, but the end was in sight— the end for works services and for the Third Division. At the end of April the manpower survey of personnel for essential industry was quickly followed by drafts of personnel to New Zealand as essential workers. Early in May, except for the bricking in of the boilerhouse, the construction company had completed the 4th General and returned to base camp, at Leclere's Farm. Until the end of August the unit was busy making crates for engineer and unit equipment, and also crates for other base units.

Almost 17 months had passed since that winter afternoon when the Tyron dropped anchor in Nouméa harbour and the curious group of Kiwis gazed for the first time on Nouméa. Now the time had come for them to look upon it for the last time. Some did so with relief; some with a twinge of regret; some with a determination to see it again, and all conscious that while there they, with other members of the division in the Pacific, had been working to defend their homes in New Zealand. That is the story of Works Services Engineers, NZEF IP.