More War Strategy

Yesterday I posted my summary of John French's memoirs (so far as I had read up till then) of his days as Commander-in-Chief in the early days of World War I.

 

During the day I read a few more pages; it is clear that he had a grasp of the strategic task facing the Allied armies.

 

The First Battle of Ypres (Oct-Nov 1914) was about holding the line, roughly Bruges to Lille, against much heavier forces of men and weaponry. French describes this as essential for the survival of Britain, because if the Germans had broken through the Allied line, they would have had access to all the Channel ports as far as Le Havre, and so been able to plan an invasion of Britain as Napoleon had planned a century earlier.

 

Not only that but submarines and planes would have had Channel shipping at their mercy.

 

So after they had managed by great efforts to hold the line in Belgium, French was interested in closing off any German access to the Channel by pushing them back along the coast as far, if possible, as Antwerp.

 

He put this idea to the French generals, but they were not interested, and the Paris Government was even less enthusiastic. Even the British cabinet did not support his idea.

 

During this period French was visited several times by Winston Churchill, a former comrade-in-arms from South Africa, and by now a good friend. Churchill was then the Minister in charge of the Royal Navy. They discussed the tactical and strategic situation as they toured the units of the British Army.

 

One can see the strategy for a quick end to the war forming in their minds from French's account; in fact almost the history of the next thirty years appears hazily in the background. But even Churchill was unable to sell the idea of an attack along the coast to his Cabinet colleagues.

 

One of French's other strategic points was that the pressure Russian advances in Eastern Europe were putting on Germany meant that they had less ability to move more reinforcements to the West. This later collapsed, and one can see the Dardanelles fiasco and Gallipoli forming in the back of their minds.

 

French blames the greed of the Russian aristocrats who milked the armaments industry they controlled for excessive profits and this deprived their armies of the guns and other equipment they needed to keep up the pressure against the German eastern front.

 

But if the Western Governments had supported one or other of these initiatives whole-heartedly, according to French, the war would have been over in a few months, instead of dragging on for another four weary, deadly years.

Books and People

This time last year I reviewed two books. One was a book about Italian War brides lent to us by friend Nigel Hayton, whose father, Stuart, features in the book: In Love and War.

The other was a biography of Norman Kirk: the Mighty Totara.

At present I am reading French's memoir of the first stages of World War I. John French was the British Commander-in-Chief during those early days in 1914. He supervised the deployment of the troops in France alongside the French armies, led the retreat as the Germans penetrated nearly to Paris, and then directed the counterattack towards Belgium again.

I am at present reading the chapters about the first battle of Ypres, when the British line stretched from near Bruges in the north to Lille in the south. When we visited that part of the world a few years ago we travelled from Bruges to Passendale, roughly the same line, and saw endless flat countryside.

Those early weeks in 1914 sound from the perspective of the 21st century like very old-fashioned warfare: lots of cavalry action, dashing attacks and fast-moving manoeuvres. But before long the development of much heavier artillery slowed things down and caused such slaughter of attacking forces that French soon reached the conclusion that these new weapons gave the defence so much advantage that new methods of attack were needed.

And so for years war became prolonged periods of entrenched forces facing each other across a barren wasteland which could not be crossed without almost certainly fatal results.

In fact it was the development of aerial bombing during the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) that enabled the Second World War to move more fluidly, and only massed bombing raids (Dresden, Hiroshima) which could bring about a decisive result.

This week we watched a programme (Waka Huia) about an old acquaintance and hero of mine, Jim Henare, the last Colonel of the Maori Battalion in World War II, and later member of the Bay of Islands County Council, and one of the founders of the Kohanga Reo movement and of the Maatua Whaangai programme which I worked on in the eighties.

It featured his two grandsons, one of whom is a Member of Parliament, who were with our children at the New Plymouth Kohanga Reo at that time, when their father, Erima Henare, who died earlier this month, was the local Director of Te Puni Kokiri.

Jim Henare was the kaumatua of the school Margaret and I taught at at Kawakawa. He was always a very fine-looking gentleman, who carried himself in military style, and when called upon to speak in public could provide impressive oratory in either English or Maori. He was one of the leaders who persuaded Robert Muldoon to back the movements for the Maori pre-schools and the Maori family fostering arrangements that I was involved with when I worked for the Department of Social Welfare.

As chair of the Paihia Community Council in the seventies, I attended County Council meetings and had lunch with the members: Jim was often there and we enjoyed conversations over the meal on several occasions. His contribution to New Zealand life was a major one.

A new venture

Superlab Group

The Labour Party in New Plymouth launched a new initiative this week. Not another administrative gimmick, but a discussion group for older voters.

This Group is being set up to meet recent requests for more opportunities to discuss policy. We are holding it during the daytime session for retired members and supporters who feel they would like to contribute more to policy formation but are not enthusiastic about going out on winter evenings.

Five of us met over morning coffee and cake to think about the three policy matters the Labour Party is concentrating on at present: Jobs, Education and Housing.

We started by asking: what did you learn about work situations from your years of experience in the workplace?

Answers concentrated on three subjects: unions and solidarity, job creation in the regions, and an education system for non-academic work.

One of our members stressed the importance of a vision for the future to inspire the nation to focus on its dreams. Others were concerned about the fate of small-town  communities, and still others about helping younger generations to be aware of political realities.

We certainly recognised the changing nature of work in this century: the ability to do some jobs from any location, flexibility of hours and workplaces, or increased difficulty in getting into the workforce in the first place.

Future meetings will be held over coming months: next month to provide some feedback to Labour's Future of Work Commission, being led by Grant Robertson. We have two articles from the Work Research Institute at AUT to read as "homework"!

After that we plan to spend a couple of meetings talking about Education, and two more about Housing. Then we will think about making this a permanent activity.

Watch this space!

 

A fine morning for sketching

At the Harbour

 Yesterday the U3A Sketching Group had our fortnightly meeting.

 

We got together this time at one of the popular cafes, the Bach, on the harbour front at Port Taranaki.

 

After morning tea we all dispersed a little way to try an exercise suggested by some pages in our "text-book", to try to differentiate foreground from background. Here is my effort:

 

 

 

 

 You can just make out one of the other members working away at the top of the steps in the foreground.

 

During the week I have been trying to catch the colours in trees near our home with water-colour and pencil.

 

On the left is a Kowhai you can see from our kitchen window. Two kereru, huge and groggy, had just gorged themselves on berries and flown there for a well-earned snooze.

 

Below is a totara, which stands just beyond the kowhai. I had been watching the light and shade on it for a few days, especially as the sun moved overhead.

 

This is my effort to catch the light and colour later in the morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One cooler morning I climbed the hill behind us and found a sheltered spot on the northern slope, because the breeze was blowing from the south-west and feeling a bit cool.

 

I could see a variety of trees as I looked across the suburbs to the coast.

 

Below is my attempt to catch the trees using coloured pencils.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has been a busy week: on Wednesday an organ recital to enjoy, on Thursday morning Grandparents' Day at Carys's school (Tikorangi, near Waitara), and yesterday the Sketching Group.

 

Then this morning we went to watch two of the grandchildren playing sport: here is Carys in the thick of a major soccer championship, and Spencer delighted at catching his sister's action on his camera! After sport we went to the museum to look at the World War I exhibition (the children's great-great-grandfather fought in France), and this afternoon Margaret took them to try out a brand-new entertainment centre.

 

 

 

 

 

  

In Print

A Letter to the Editor

This morning's local newspaper (Daily News) carries a "letter to the editor" from me. If you look back a couple of posts to the one headed The Blindness Epidemic you can read it, because the letter I sent them is the same except that I left out the last two paragraphs.

The paper gave the letter a new heading: "Culture when it Suits", which we quite liked. Along with my offering were three other letters, all on the same topic, one from a Maori leader expressing a point of view that I could sum up as "What's different?" Another was very anti-Mayor and anti-Maori, and the last was supportive of the goal of the Mayor, but very critical of his tactics. Altogether quite a range of opinions.

I hope the Mayor feels some support from my effort. He has been very courageous at sticking his neck above the parapet and taking a lot of flak, some of it very venomous, as a result, in order to follow his strongly-felt principles. I have already had a phone call from a friend expressing support
for my letter and for the Mayor.

My basic position in all this starts from the premise that pakeha like me, who have no whakapapa to Maori ancestry, are able to live as citizens of New Zealand under the constitutional protection of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which allowed for the establishment of a system of government, especially law and order, under the mana of Queen Victoria.

Once here, it is our moral and legal obligation to uphold that Treaty in order to maintain the validity of that arrangement. Which means we need to hold our governments to account that they follow the spirit and words of the Treaty all the time.

The alternative is to reject the Treaty, in which case we remain here only by individual arrangement  with one or other of the Maori iwi, and under their absolute jurisdiction, as was the case before 1840.

That is the deal our parents undertook for us when they registered our births with the New Zealand Government, and the deal we undertook when we applied for a New Zealand passport, or a New Zealand Marriage Certificate, or a Driver's Licence, or a school qualification, and so on.

So the Treaty and its integrity is really far more valuable and important to non-Maori citizens than it ever has been for Maori: tangata whenua have an absolute right to live here from before the Treaty and after it. I hope my fellow-citizens all come eventually to realise this key point!

All in a good cause

For Nepal!

We're just back from our Tuesday morning date at the Cathedral, where they are serving breakfast in aid of the Nepal Relief Fund of World Vision. All the food and labour is donated, so every cent of the charges (50c an item) goes to the Relief Fund. The Dean and his family and a band of volunteers prepare and serve the meals.

We were there just as they opened this morning, our tongues hanging out for the delicious breakfasts they serve. Today we had porridge, followed by tea and toast and marmalade. My porridge had peaches as well; Margaret had hers neat!

By the time we left half an hour later, they were bringing out more tables and table-cloths to accommodate the families and couples arriving in support of a good cause.

We sat next to a couple of regulars - one of the cathedral staff and his wife. At another table were two of Margaret's former colleagues from teaching days. In another direction we greeted an elderly couple (well, older than us!) who are also regulars. They live a few minutes away, and he rides his disability scooter. I am getting interested in disability scooters - I might need one sooner than you think - so we had a quick chat about them.

Then there was a couple and their three children, and at still another table a man with his primary school age son.

Then old friends arrived, Jill and Ian, a couple we see regularly around the town, together with a couple we had not seen before. Jill's brother and I were best friends as teenagers in the fifties. Later they introduced the newcomers to us as their neighbours, and we had a chat with them all as well.

Catching up with one's friends and acquaintances is one of the side-benefits of the Tuesday morning breakfasts; we regularly try to arrange a meeting with others ourselves, but this week we were unsuccessful. Still, given the number of people we greeted this morning, we needn't have worried!

We didn't sit chatting, because the tables were in demand. I decided to walk home, as I often do, and found the brisk exercise invigorating this morning, with a cool temperature and no wind, and the help of my trusty kauri carved walking-stick!

Before the Nepal earthquakes, the breakfasts supported Doctors Without Borders' work in West Africa with Ebola victims, and for a few weeks the Vanuatu storm relief funds.

What an all-round positive community project these folk are working at!

The Blindness Epidemic

 

I wonder how many of my New Plymouth neighbours have been struck as I have by a stark irony in the news this week?

The media has been full of Prince Harry's visit, and the avalanche of powhiri, hongi, hangi, korero, te reo, waka, haka and korowai which has formed the window-dressing for our welcome and entertainment of this most recent royal guest. In the same week the citizens of New Plymouth have overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to set up a Maori Ward for Council elections.

We trot out oodles of Maori culture for royalty as if it is the most valuable part of our common life, and yet we cannot even acknowledge Maori requests for some say at the Council table to the extent of one seat!

Do we really understand what the Treaty, signed at Waitangi in our name, had to say? It promised Maori (in Clause Two) COMPLETE rangatiratanga over taonga. This referendum denies them even less than 10% rangatiratanga.

The same Treaty, in Clause Three, promised Maori equal rights with other citizens. But the law that governs Council elections allows binding referenda to overturn decisions on Maori wards, but no such barrier on non-Maori wards. Not only is this law contrary to international human rights agreements, as argued by Mayor Judd, but it is also contrary to the Treaty.

Yet we continue to pay lip-service to Maori values whenever an important visitor arrives, or a national celebration is needed! How much longer will we go on being blind to this denial of fairness and justice?

I believe we need a constitutional Council of State, to check all legislation, and regulations made by any arm of government, against the Treaty, and to send back to the House of Representatives for correction anything which does not conform to the principles and words of the Treaty.

Surely 150 years after the ending of armed conflict in Taranaki we can bury the hatchet and treat former enemies as if we really are the heirs of 2000 years of Christian and enlightened civilisation!

 

Three gripes and a cheer!

TV news

There are a couple of things that irritate me about Network News broadcasts. While we have our evening meal, we regularly watch Prime News at 5 30, then switch to One News at 6, and then switch again at 7 to Campbell Live.

I am regularly disappointed that the news is identical in subject and treatment on Prime and TV One. I thought we had a bit of competition to keep the networks honest, but there seems rarely to be any difference in what is regarded as important, or in the way news items are approached. New angles are infrequent, unorthodox opinions almost non-existent, and the sensational seems to win all the time.

Another irritation concerns the "Updates" to news or weather during later programmes. At 7 30 or 8 30 the networks give us what they call "a News Update", which turns out to be a repetition of the main  headlines from the last news bulletin. The word "update" surely means that we will hear an up-to-the minute" development of a previous story, but we never do.

 

And on Saturday and Sunday morning, it's as if there is no news at all. No news bulletins to keep us up to date. Absolutely zilch. There are plenty of us who get up at the normal time in the weekend; don't we pay our tax and spend our money on advertisers' products like everyone else?

 

However, I must give at least one cheer for our No 1 favourite programme: Q+A. This is extremely well presented, always covers important issues, and makes an effort to look at its subject-matter from a variety of points of view. It is one we try never to miss. Especially, I must say, when Corin Dann is doing the interviewing. Corin does not let his subjects avoid his questions, which are usually right on the button. Long may this programme continue!

Still Sketching

Close to Home

 

 

 

The other morning I walked up a nearby street to where it reached the top of the hill, and opened out on to a view across the racecourse to the mountain.

 

On the corner of the street there was a house I had never seen before from this angle.

 

It had recently had a hedge of large trees above a crumbling, ancient concrete wall removed, and the wall replaced by a row of ponga stems.

 

Here, then,  was a perfect subject for an original sketch.

 

 

On a wetter day, I found an advertisement in a Country Life magazine lent us by friends, and decided to try copying it.

 

This is a mansion in South Wales.

 

My effort has a few things I would do differently next time, but here it is.

 

On a slightly more pleasant day, but with the clouds gradually getting thicker and the wind rising, I drove down to the beach, and spent a vigorous hour walking, talking to people I met, and gathering a bag of kelp for the compost heap.

 

Then I sat in the car, with the rain threatening, and sketched the view to the west.

 

Last Friday we had our U3A Sketching Group meeting.

 

We gathered at a café called "Espresso", overlooking the Huatoki Plaza in the centre of the town.

 

There were five of us: some sat on the balcony you can see in my sketch below, others, like me, moved to the seats in the Plaza and sketched the buildings.

 

We were doing an exercise from our "text-book": concentrating on capturing the light and shade on the buildings we could see.

 

Immediately below the balcony is the Huatoki River. On the left bank, where the café now sits, was the original railway line to the old New Plymouth Railway Station which stood a few metres downstream right on the edge of the sea, near where the Wind Wand now stands. That is why you can make out a railway engine painting on the wall of the basement of the café underneath the balcony!

 

And there are figures painted on the end wall of the balcony. But the best thing about the café is that they serve the most delicious savoury muffins to have with one's coffee! Altogether an enjoyable morning.

 

An interesting weekend

 

This is the early morning scene at Kohupatiki Marae, a few kms north of Hastings, where we went ten days ago to attend a regional conference of the Labour Party.

 

You can see Margaret in front of the beautiful old (1913) wharenui talking with our two New Plymouth colleagues, Rob (treasurer) and Ruth (chair), about the agenda for the day's meetings.

 

On the right is the hall where we had our working sessions and behind it is the wharekai, where the local people put on the most enjoyable meals during breaks.

 

Kahupatiki is the home base of Ikaroa-Rawhiti Member of Parliament, Meka Whaitiri. Her mother and sister were helping in the kitchen, and others of her extended family were assisting in other ways.  It must be a great advantage for an MP to have this kind of backing from her home base.

 

Because Ikaroa-Rawhiti is a huge electorate: it stretches from East Cape in the north almost to Wellington in the south, in other words half the eastern coast of the North Island.

 

Other MPs at the conference were Ian Lees-Galloway (Palmerston North) and Adrian Raruwhe (Te Tai Hauauru). And Stuart Nash from Napier. Others who dropped in for part of the programme were Annette King, who deputised for Leader, Andrew Little, and Grant Robertson, who came to report on the "Future of Work" Commission. Party President, Nigel Haworth, also came to address the Conference Dinner on Saturday night.

 

There were also several candidates from last year's election who were with us: Deborah Russell, who we had met at the List Conference last year, and Hamish McDouall, (Whanganui).

 

Chair for the business sessions was Liam Rutherford, an excellent manager of such matters, and he was assisted by Deborah, and by Liz Clark from Southland, a member of the Policy Council. All in all a very capable and impressive team of leaders.

 

Here on the right you can see members of the New Plymouth delegation consulting with Deborah about the day's programme.

 

Our first morning was a series of local people telling us something of what is happening around Hawkes Bay.

 

There were many interesting points made, but the highlights were Jacobi, a young lady who is a District Councillor and member of the Health Board, and also a member of the local Polytech Board as well.

 

And Paora Winitana, captain of the Bay Hawks basketball team, who runs an academy for top-class athletes, and was very inspirational. 

 

Saturday afternoon we heard Andrew Little's message from Annette King, and then Tim Barnett, the General Secretary, reported on organisational matters he is having to work on; he wanted our feedback on some of these matters.

 

Late afternoon we talked with our Whanganui neighbours about things we can work on together, and in the evening we enjoyed a banquet from the amazing kitchen workers.

 

Sunday morning we dealt with 21 proposals for policy amendments: 7 were lost and 14 carried. We had brought nine of these from New Plymouth, and we lost one!

 

Then we had a workshop session with Grant Robertson about the "Future of Work". This is a project to find out exactly what is happening and what needs to be done by any future government to make sure there are more jobs, better paying jobs, and a secure working future for us all. So we learned what questions they need answers to and we are all better equipped to find out what our neighbours and friends are experiencing in this area.

 

Because this does not involve only Labour Supporters: several of the Commission members are from other backgrounds, happy to help because they think it is such an important issue.

 

Altogether a boost to us; and the welcome and conclusion by the local people of the marae were moving and fully hospitable as only marae events can provide.

  

 

Wedding Anniversary Poem

 

 

 

Today is our Wedding Anniversary, our 38th. I wrote this poem for Margaret two years ago on the 36th anniversary.

On a May Morning

 

Light is all around us

The sky is light

The air is light

Even the grass is light.

We could float upwards

Like Richard Bransen in his rocket-plane

Towards the mountain’s peak.

 

The sky is cloudless;

The Autumn trees sparkle in the light

In Tom King’s garden

While Newton and Truby

Scamper across the lawn.

 

If it were not for your friends

And my family

We would probably have soared away

Never to return.

We did escape for a time

Thanks to a car

Planted in Hawera.

 

I still remember the light,

The weightlessness,

And the sense of needing to

Hold on to the earth

On that unique May morning

Thirty-six years ago.

 

Six packets of six years it has been,

The perfect number.

 

 

And if we play the Cookies’ game,*

Which packet do you prefer,

I will still say: the last one,

While I can walk across the street

Holding my grandson’s hand

On the way to McDonalds.

 

Or watch my sons

Shouldering their loads

Of leading a family.

 

Or see my granddaughter caring for

Her man…..

 

Mind you it was all fun:

Working together,

Finding our way,

Building the future,

And they will be again

Whenever we come back

Down to earth

On a May morning.

 

-10 May 2013

 

*Our friends, Paul and Nanette Cooke play a game with their family. Each person chooses a year of their life they would like to revisit, and tells the rest of the family why.

More Family History

 

The Anzac Day Centenary commemorations have stirred an interest in relatives who were involved in "the war to end wars".

 

Margaret's grandfather, Hughie (U. E.) Mitchell-Burnard, was on the Western Front for the last twelve months of the war, in the New Zealand Rifle Brigade. My great-uncle, Frederick Bigelow, was there for roughly the same period, and was wounded in his leg, which had to be amputated above the knee. He was fitted with a wooden leg, which fascinated me as a boy when we went for holidays on his farm in Northland.

 

So there was a great deal of interest in a programme last Wednesday night at Puke Ariki, as part of the current WWI exhibition. A group of about 20 of us, including two friends, Janette Theobold and Bev Mulqueen, were introduced to sources of information about details of the war.

 

There are plenty of websites on this subject, and in no time at all we found the detailed documents of the war service of these two relatives. This material is not accessible from home, but you can  see it on the museum's computers.

 

It appears Hughie may have been at Le Quesnoy, and I was thrilled to find that Fred had spent two months of his recuperation, over Christmas 1918, at Brockenhurst in the New Forest, where Margaret and I visited in 2008.

 

Here are photos of that village:

 

This is the memorial to soldiers who died while at the NZ Military Hospital in the village (demolished after the war) in the graveyard at the local church.

 

In the church is a chapel dedicated to those New Zealanders who were treated there or who worked at the hospital.

 

Our friends, Marilyn and Michael Messent, who live a few minutes' drive away, take a special interest in this chapel and the graveyard.

 

The chapel has a book containing the names of all who lived there while the hospital was working.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of the graves that Marilyn watches over and tidies if necessary.

 

What a surprise to find that my revered Uncle Fred spent time there.

 

After that he was transferred to Walton-on-Thames Hospital to have his wooden leg fitted, and to learn, no doubt, to walk with it. Once that process was adequately successful, he left by troopship for home, where his first son was waiting for him with wife Katy.

 

 

This is the New Zealand Chapel in the local church at Brockenhurst.

 

Other materials we were shown last evening included books of history of the war.  

These cover detailed accounts of the action the various NZ units were involved in.

 

There will be a lot of work to do to identify exactly which of these our relatives took part in, by comparing the historical accounts with the dates in their war service records.

 

Fortunately, these books have all been digitised and are readily available from home computers and mobile devices so we will be able to do this research in our own time.

 

It is only the details of the war records that we will need to search at the museum.

 

So there is lots of interesting reading ahead!

 

Still Sketching

I have continued to be interested in the paintings of L S Lowry, introduced to us by our friend Gwen Herbert, who has been embroidering them for years and has steered Margaret through her own effort to embroider one of them too.

 

So recently I found one that I liked and spent a few hours sketching it with pencils and water-colours. Here it is. The church in the centre was demolished a few weeks after Lowry painted this scene early in the twentieth century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our U3A Sketching Group has had a new lease of life this year, and last meeting there were nine of us at the Pukekura Park Tea House for morning coffee, a chat, and an hour sketching a scene of our own choice in the park.

 

My effort is below, looking from one of the vantage-points over the main lake towards the south, where in good weather you can catch a glimpse of Mt Taranaki.

 

Next time we will do another exercise from our "text-book", a little book by Thomas Wang on Pencil Sketching, published about 30 years ago and containing lots of helpful hints which are worth practising.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another morning I stopped by the Cathedral grounds and sketched one of the graves - this one the only one left which is still awaiting restoration.

 

Fortunately, one of the family members was working on the grounds while I was there and she was interested in my effort.

 

 It is a bit odd looking to us now, but still in excellent condition itself even though the surrounds will be the better for the eventual restoration work.