Kiwi Wars

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Jack recalled that Abe’s brother Harry had walked from the Crimea to India, to help quell the Indian Mutiny. A hellish, desperate march that had cost the lives of most of those who had started out. But Harry Wynter had survived, and once again he marvelled at the Wynters’ fortitude and resilience. This was obviously a family of survivors. Not without complaint though, because Harry at least never ceased complaining. The stamina in these two brothers was nothing short of remarkable. Others fell away, but they dug in, carried on, refused to go down. Both were scarred and ravaged men, with haunted eyes, but they were very much alive.

  ‘That’s an extraordinary story, Mr Wynter. And where is Mr Striker now?’

  ‘Striker’s his nickname. His proper name was Strickland. Oh, he’s back in England somewhere. He don’t like this part of the world and who can blame him. It’s not a place for home-lovin’ men.’

  The beer came and Abe Wynter immediately ordered two more, despite Jack’s protests.

  Jack said he would send Abe Wynter a map of the region he preferred for his farm. Wynter said he could not promise anything, for many Maoris were ‘dead reluctant’ to sell. Jack repeated his warning that he wanted nothing that was illegal or even illicit. He might have added ‘immoral’ to his list, except that he guessed Abe Wynter would not really understand the meaning of the word. The two men parted with a shake of the hand and, his head thumping again – probably due to the ale he had consumed – he returned to his quarters.

  Later, an incensed Harry Wynter requested to speak to him. Jack came out of his quarters. ‘What is it, Wynter? Can’t the sergeant deal with it? I’m very busy.’

  ‘You bin to see my brother,’ accused the private.

  ‘I wasn’t aware that you still speak to him, after his treatment of you, but, yes, I ran into him on a bridge and we spoke.’

  ‘You had a jug or two with ’im, so I’m told.’

  ‘Your spies are very efficient, Wynter.’

  ‘It’s our trade, an’t it, sir? Well, what’s it all about, eh? What’re you two cookin’ up ’tween you?’

  ‘My conversation with your brother is confidential. And if you don’t want to end up in the guardhouse, Wynter, I suggest you moderate your tone. Rest assured, it has nothing to do with you. This is purely a private matter between myself and Abraham Wynter. Now, was there anything else?’

  Harry Wynter’s eyes narrowed. ‘Just this, sir. If you think you can trust Abe, you’d better think again. He’s got no more soul than a snake – no more’n what I have, and you know that an’t much, Captain, you an’ me ’ave bin together quite a bit. I wouldn’t ’ave nothin’ to do with him meself, if I weren’t his baby brother. He’s a back-stabbing bastard, is Abe, and you couldn’t trust him with nothin’.’

  ‘Thank you for the warning, Wynter, but I’m well able to judge a man’s character for myself.’

  ‘Well, don’t say I din’t tell you.’

  With that the private ambled off, towards the huts used by the rank and file, a bent, mean-looking man bearing many grudges.

  The call to arms came on an early winter morning in June. Jack’s head was at its worst, but he knew he had to do his duty. It had been raining a great deal and the ground around the camp, and presumably further afield, was layered with thick sticky mud. These conditions had not seemed to deter Colonel Gold, who ordered Major Nelson, the senior army officer at the army camp, to attack a pa known as Puketakauere. During the planning of this attack Jack had suggested that scouts were sent out to examine the ground before any assault took place, but his suggestions were ignored. His senior officers were not men to take notice of army captains who were in New Zealand merely to draw maps of the countryside. Why, this Captain Crossman did not even have a company to command! All he led were three rather dubious-looking soldiers, one of whom was a damned North American, if you please!

  Jack’s head was thumping as he made his way to the mustering point. A Maori woman had given him some powders. He had taken one in a glass of water, which had at least dulled the pain to a throbbing ache. He had no idea what the powder contained, but he was grateful for anything to relieve the agony.

  The rebel chieftain, Wiremu Kingi, had built two more pas, not fifty miles away, but each within one insolent mile of the British camp at Waitara. There were, as usual, trenches and rifle pits guarding the approach to the pas, but what protected the flanks was swampy ground. Even as Jack and his men joined the assault troops, Jack recalled at least two battles in which swamps had played a significant role to the detriment of the most powerful army: the first was the Battle of Marathon, where the overwhelming numbers from the Persian King Darius’s army were driven into flanking mire by a headlong charge of around ten thousand Athenians; the second was the Battle of Agincourt, where bogs devoured many of the French knights who charged Henry’s archers and were forced to split to right and left of their target. Jack was sure there were many others, but battles between nations are as numerous as the stars, and no man knows them all.

  Major Nelson set out that morning at the head of around 350 officers and men. These included Commodore Beauchamp-Seymour and 60 men of the naval brigade. The sky was an ominous dark grey colour, with streaks of cirrus like paintbrush strokes running through it. Shrubs and trees were dripping with recent rainwater as boots splodged through the tacky mud. Miserable-looking birds watched the troops pass. It was difficult to decide who looked the more disconsolate: the wildlife or the men marching by. Jack could only hope the Maori enemy, towards whom they were heading, felt just as morose as he did. Certainly there was no confidence in the air: no spring in the step, no martial songs coming from the mouths of the troops, no fife and drum music to cheer the lads on to victory. It was one of those mornings when everyone felt they should have stayed in bed.

  Jack looked at his pocket watch as he trudged along. It had just passed seven o’clock. A heron passed overhead. A mile is only a mile, but when the ground is as adhesive as it was that day, it seemed to take ages. Eventually though, the Puketakauere pa loomed through the gloomy silver mist of the day, a lumpy man-made hill that looked deserted from a distance. The idea that the Maoris had vacated their fortress cheered the troops. Perhaps they would be able to go back to their beds after all, without an early-morning battle.

  ‘What d’ya think, sir?’ said Corporal Gwilliams. ‘Have they flown the nest?’

  Jack replied, ‘It does look like it.’

  ‘Back to the bacon and eggs,’ muttered Wynter. ‘I like it.’

  Just at that moment a shot rang out and one of the soldiers at the head of the column crumpled like an empty sack.

  ‘No such luck,’ Sergeant King said. ‘Here we go again.’

  But Jack’s men were held back. The naval brigade was at the head of the attack, both sailors and marines. They charged in, hampered by the swampy ground, only to find that the enemy had not withdrawn to the pa as expected but were in the outlying trenches. The Maoris were armed with double-barrelled shot-guns. These they discharged with devastating accuracy and effect, chopping down the attackers in swathes. Jack noted the quickness of the Maoris reloading. They were adept at this exercise, which took place at great speed. The air was full of deadly shot and those who ran in to face it were met by swarms of metal bees. Men were blasted skin from bone, while they were lodged up to their ankles in sucking mire. Shotgun fusillades were followed by patu charges. Maoris ran forward to hack down encumbered attackers with their honed stone axes. It was a dreadful sight for the troops at the rear and at times Jack turned away, sickened by the slaughter.

  ‘Take those trenches,’ cried the officers, who led their men from the front, one of them the gallant Beauchamp-Seymour himself. ‘Into them, men! Into them!’

  Eventually, some of the naval men managed to capture the first trench, but there were two more behind it. Although the artillery detachment was raining howitzer fire on these two trenches, it had little effect on the Maoris, who were well dug in and who commanded the field.
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  Jack saw Major Nelson looking anxiously around him and asked him what he thought.

  ‘Eh? Well, we should have the reinforcements here shortly. Colonel Gold has promised to outflank the Maoris. But I don’t see them, do you? I don’t see them. The signal has gone up, of course?’

  It was an anxious question, and a lieutenant standing near the major looked startled.

  ‘What signal, sir?’

  ‘The rocket, man, the rocket telling Colonel Gold the attack has begun. It surely went up. I instructed the sergeant myself.’

  The noise of the shotguns and rifles made conversation difficult, even from that distance.

  The nervous lieutenant shouted in Nelson’s ear. ‘I saw no rocket, sir.’

  Harassed, Nelson turned to Jack.

  ‘Nor I,’ said Jack. ‘That’s not to say it wasn’t sent. But I didn’t see it.’

  Ahead of them the men in the captured trench were undergoing heavy fire. Each time they put their heads above the parapet, a hail of shot and rifle fire threatened to decapitate them. Whoops and triumphant screams were coming from the Maori trenches, and from the pa. They knew they had the British troops at a huge disadvantage and this time they were going to teach them a lesson in warfare.

  ‘Where the hell are those reinforcements?’ cried Nelson. He seemed about to tug his hair out. ‘They should be here!’

  Finally, the major realized that his attack was not going to succeed, and that reinforcements were not coming. The withdrawal began, under the umbrella of the howitzers. King, Gwilliams and Wynter were heartily glad they had not been forced to take active part in this fiasco. They were pleased to be called ‘mere map-makers, of no material worth in a battle of this kind’. Jack too was not sorry he had been held back. He watched as Commodore Beauchamp-Seymour (known as ‘the Swell of the Ocean’ by his men) was carried wounded from the field. The commodore had a leg wound which looked rather grisly.

  If the march out had been disconsolate, it was nothing compared to the forlorn return home. They plodded through the mud carrying the dead and injured. A few had been left on the field, unable to be reached by their comrades. In all 64 men out of the 350 who had set out had been either killed or wounded. Major Nelson was still gnashing his teeth and asking where the reinforcements had got to. They met no other force on their journey back to the camp. If there had been reinforcements they were safely in their barracks now. Jack reflected on the age-old tendency of modern armies to underestimate a so-called ‘native’ enemy. The British soldier was a superb fighting man, but he often met his match on the field when faced by an enemy to whom battle was a national sport.

  Later King and the others talked over the day’s disaster.

  ‘I heard that Colonel Gold started out when he heard the shootin’,’ said Gwilliams, ‘but when it went quiet again, he turned his men back, thinkin’ it was all over.’

  ‘He’ll get hell from someone,’ prophesied King. ‘The army doesn’t like defeats.’

  ‘Who the hell does?’ muttered Wynter. ‘Anyways, they’re all a bunch of no-hopers, them officers. Don’t know their arse from their elbows. Some bleedin’ general will come here from Australia, you see, to kick somebody’s backside for this. Me brother says they got this electrolocal telegraphic wire in Aussie now, runnin’ from Sydney to Melbourne. It’s as quick as that –’ he snapped his fingers – ‘to get a message.’

  ‘What a debacle,’ said Gwilliams. ‘Never seen the like.’

  ‘A debacle?’ Wynter questioned. ‘I thought that was some kind of boat made of animal skin?’

  Gwilliams grunted, ‘You would, you bloody ignoramus.’

  ‘I never had no schoolin’,’ Wynter shouted back. ‘How am I s’posed to know stuff if nobody tells me?’

  ‘You could try readin’ a book.’

  ‘I an’t got no books. Books cost money.’

  ‘I’ll borrow you one.’

  ‘You bastard, you know I can’t read.’

  ‘Well, that settles that then, don’t it? Let’s go and get a drink. You comin’, Sarge?’

  King replied, ‘No, I think I’ll stay here and recalibrate some of my instruments.’

  ‘You might want to recalibrate your head at the same time,’ sniggered Wynter, taking familiarity just a little bit too far for comfort, ‘eh, Yankee?’ He nudged the corporal, who remained stony faced as the sergeant’s head shot up.

  King said sternly, ‘I’ll recalibrate your face for you, if you make another remark in that vein.’

  ‘All right, all right – testy, an’t we?’ grumbled Wynter.

  ‘You take it back now!’ said King.

  Wynter grudgingly did so, but he also added that people lost their sense of humour once they got three stripes on their sleeves. He and Gwilliams then left the hut and went to the local alehouse. There they had a peaceful two or three drinks, before Wynter took issue with something a Catholic Irish sailor might or might not have said. The sailor carried a shillelagh, with which he laid out the incensed Wynter in three seconds.

  Gwilliams was impressed by the way the sailor had wielded his national club and struck up a conversation with him.

  ‘What do you call that thing again?’ he asked.

  The Irishman told him. ‘This here’s oak,’ the sailor added, ‘but some prefer blackthorn.’

  ‘Does the job though.’

  Gwilliams invited the man to have a drink, which the sailor accepted without hesitation.

  ‘You must excuse my comrade here,’ said Gwilliams, nudging Wynter’s inert body with his toe as it lay amongst the slops of beer. ‘He’s one of life’s unfortunates.’

  ‘Flash temper – foights over nothin’?’

  ‘That’s about the size.’

  ‘Sounds loik meself,’ the sailor said with a laugh.

  ‘But I’ll wager you ain’t a complainer,’ Gwilliams said. ‘This one is – never stops complainin’. Wears a man down like a rough road wears down the sole of a shoe.’

  ‘We have one of those. Every army or navy has one of those.’

  ‘Not like him.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m certain sure, just loik him. We have a boatswain name o’ Desmond Cartwright. Always complaining, never stops for a minute. You know what we call him?’

  Gwilliams was quicker than many.

  ‘Desdemona,’ he said, promptly.

  ‘That’s roight!’ exclaimed the sailor. ‘Des-de-moaner. You’re a quick one, you are, boy. Where’re y’from? Americy?’

  ‘Sometimes. Other times from Canada. I keep ’em guessing. I was a barber. Used to shave and cut hair – that was my profession. Still do it for the captain, who’s lost one of his hands and ain’t so steady with the razor no more. I’ve shaved Kit Carson, the famous frontier scout, along with others like Jim Bowie.’

  ‘Jim Bowie? Did you know, fellah, that we have a man here from the Mexico wars? Eh? Name of Major von Tempsky. Colourful bastard. Company commander of the Forest Rangers. Wears this red sash and carries a long knife invented by that other fellah just mentioned – Jim Bowie. Makes ’em for his men too, if they ask for one.’

  ‘He carries a Bowie knife?’ said Gwilliams. ‘Ain’t seen one of them in years. Wouldn’t mind one meself.’

  From the floor there came a groan as Wynter sat up and rubbed the huge egg on the side of his head.

  ‘And here’s Harry-De-Groaner,’ said Gwilliams.

  The Irishman shook his head. ‘Doesn’t work the same,’ he said.

  ‘Nah, you’re right,’ agreed Gwilliams. ‘Pity though – I’d love to find something that does, just to get his goat.’

  They both took swallows of their whisky as they watched with mild interest Wynter’s failing efforts to get to his feet.

  Six

  Just when Jack thought his headaches were leaving him, they began increasing in ferocity and frequency. It meant he had to confine himself to his quarters for a few weeks. He found himself more and more dependent on the mysterious powders given him by
the Maori woman and often took to his bed. His quarters were in a building that had been built by whalers to store their equipment: ropes, harpoons, spare sails and masts, and other paraphernalia. The shed, as it was, had once been a huge open barn-like structure with coffin-shaped storage boxes fixed to the floor, but was now sectioned off into small rooms to quarter many of the officers arriving from Britain and Australia.

  There were now 2,600 officers and men in the region of New Plymouth, including nearly 900 militia. Another thousand men were scattered over the rest of New Zealand in towns like Wellington and Napier, the largest group being stationed in Auckland, all under the command of a General Pratt, who had just arrived from Australia to take command. Jack had never heard of General Pratt and for once knew absolutely nothing about the man in charge.

  Jack was forever finding artefacts left by the whalers, many of whom had been from American ships. When he first moved into his room he discovered one of those teak coffins in the corner, which had been nailed shut. The previous occupant, a young ensign, had used the box as a bedside table, but the boy had been devoid of curiosity and had not opened it. Perhaps the shape of it deterred him and he had been afraid of finding bodily remains within. Curiosity soon had Jack prising the lid open, however, and inside he discovered a treasure trove of small objects. There were some beautiful scrimshaws carved out of whale ivory by some idle sailor whose profession belied his artistry; a knife with a handle fashioned from a sperm-whale’s tooth, which still had dried blood on the blade; rope; harpoon flukes of varying shapes; letters from home countries, in Scandinavian and other languages, as well as English; and one or two books.