NEWS RECEIVED TODAY THAT THE GERMANS HAD SURRENDERED
UNCONDITIONALLY TO THE ALLIES, AT 0241 HRS 7 MAY 1945.
The Maori Battalion was in Northern Italy at the end of the war, helping persuade Tito that the port of Trieste did not belong to Yugoslavia.
Well before the first day of peace dawned the battalion marched to the parade ground and in complete silence waited the arrival of Padre Huata. Then, as at the end of so many campaigns, the troops sang the hymn 'Au E Ihu.'
Back in the battalion lines the Maoris set about breaking down the hostility of the Slav population. On 9 June an agreement was signed in Belgrade to withdraw all Yugoslav troops from the disputed area east of the Isonzo River, and the next two months were taken up with wharf and guard duties in Trieste.
Then the NZ Division was withdrawn from the Trieste area at the end of
the month and made a leisurely move to Lake Trasimene.
In early September it was announced that memorial services would be held at war cemeteries near the principal battlefields and that Crete would be visited first.
Two elderly
Maori ladies and other relatives listen as
girls of the
Ngati Poneke Concert Party perform an action song
to welcome the returning warriors at Wellington.
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Colonel Henare was asked to detail the guard of honour, who would also act as the choir. Second-Lieutenant Wright and 24 other ranks from the different tribes and of the main religious denominations were selected and went into rigorous training in ceremonial rifle drill, haka, action songs and hymn singing; they emberked at Naples on 27 September and arrived at Suda Bay two days later. During the dedication ceremony, Padre Huata farewelled the Maori dead on behalf of the Maori people.
Similar ceremonies were later held at the Cassino and Sangro military cemeteries and the men lying in smaller plots at Coriano Ridge, Faenza, Forli, Padua, Monfalcone, and Udine were visited Padre Huata and a small party before the Maoris left Italy.
The Maori Battalion commenced its return to New Zealand on 6 December when it entrained at Florence then embarked on the Dominion Monarch at Taranto on 26 December.
The Dominion Monarch arrived in Wellington Harbour on 23 January 1946,
and berthed just after midday at Pipitea Wharf, in almost the same berth
as the Maori Battalion had departed from in the Aquitania nearly six years
previously.
Colonel Henare, Eruera Tirikatene, Walter Nash, and Peter Fraser
lead the Maori Battalion through Wellington on its return from WW2
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.
The troops assembled on the wharf and were met with all the ceremony pertaining to the return of a war party in pre-pakeha days. Anania Amohau, a returned original member of the battalion, pranced and leapt towards Colonel Henare as between them the ancient ceremony of the wero was enacted.
Then women garlanded with greenery raised a tangi for those of the war party who would never return. And before the men could mingle with their people they had to be cleansed from the blood of their enemies and the tapu of the warrior had to be removed.
Hakas and action songs by the Ngati Poneke Maori Club preceded welcoming
speeches. Then the troops moved into the quay shed and sat down to a real
Maori meal.
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Trains
throughout the afternoon carried the Maori soldiers to a hundred welcoming
maraes. A train carrying men of C Company would have arrived at Gisborne
mid-morning on 24 January, and they would have arrived at Ruatoria that
evening.
Maori
Songs - Kiwi Songs - Home
Published on the web September 25, 2001
