Best and Bravest

by Glyn Harper

  Charles Upham hated being a POW. He was determined to escape as soon as he was well enough. After receiving some rough medical treatment where he narrowly avoided having his arm amputated, Charles made his first escape attempt. He didn’t get far, only making it into the roof of the prison. On his second attempt he leapt from a moving lorry on his way from northern Italy to Germany and stayed free for a few hours before he was recaptured.

  Arriving at the Weinsberg POW camp in Germany, he made two more unsuccessful escape attempts but didn’t get past the camp’s barbed wire.

  His fourth escape attempt was his most famous. He was scrambling over the barbed wire fence in broad daylight when a staple on the fence broke and he was pitched head first onto barbed-wire where he was stuck fast. He was soon discovered and an approaching guard unslung his rifle to shoot him. Charles calmly smoked a cigarette while waiting to be shot.

  This display of courage so impressed the German guard that he couldn’t shoot him. As punishment Charles Upham was sent to Colditz Castle, near Leipzig, a special camp for troublesome Allied officers. On his way to Colditz, he tried another escape, jumping from a speeding train and was free for a day and a night before he was caught.

  Charles was still in Colditz at the end of the war when it was liberated by Allied troops on 15 April 1945. Upham joined an American unit and fought with them for several days before his nationality was eventually discovered and he was made to return to England.

  After the war Charles Upham and Jack Hinton were given their medals at Buckingham Palace on Friday, 11 May 1945. Charles returned to New Zealand in September 1945, not knowing that he had been recommended for a second VC.

  The papers were sent to King George VI, who asked Major General Howard Kippenberger for his advice. The King said to Kippenberger that the award of a bar to a VC ‘was a very, very unusual thing: in 90 years there had been only two cases’. Kippenberger, who had been Upham’s first commanding officer, replied: ‘In my respectful opinion, Sir, Captain Upham won the Victoria Cross several times over.’ The King was persuaded.

  Charles Upham, the first combat soldier to receive the award twice, was back in Christchurch when he learned about it. He didn’t welcome the news, saying to a friend: ‘What about all the others? We all did exactly the same things. Why pick on me?’

  Charles Upham was now a household name in New Zealand and newspapers across the world carried the story of the awarding of a double VC. The people of Canterbury started a collection to buy a farm for him, which raised more than £10,000, an enormous amount of money in those days. Charles refused to accept the money, suggesting instead that it be given to the children of ex-servicemen. The Charles Upham Scholarship Fund was formed to award education scholarships to the sons of servicemen.

  A VC for Running Away

  SERGEANT KEITH ELLIOTT

  Another VC was earned at Ruweisat Ridge by Sergeant Keith Elliott of the 22nd Battalion, for a very unusual military action.

  Keith Elliott was born in Apiti, 45 kilometres north of Feilding, on Anzac Day 1916. His family moved to Feilding and Keith went to Lytton Street School and Feilding Agricultural High School where he played for the first fifteen. Unfortunately Keith Elliott had to leave in the third term of 1933 to work on the family farm when his elder brother became ill.

  For the next six years he worked as a farmer, breaking in new farmland at Marima, halfway between Pahiatua and Eketahuna, until one morning in 1939 while he was feeding the cows ‘my father came running across the paddock, waving his arms and calling out that Britain had declared war on Germany’. Keith’s response was instant:

  I must go. That was the only thought in my mind. Out of the simplicity of those three words was to arise something that was to completely change the course of my life . . . No time was to be lost.

  Keith Elliott tried to enlist in 1939 at Palmerston North but was classified as medically unfit because of his bad teeth. He eventually marched into Trentham Camp in January 1940 and was drafted into No. 11 Platoon, B Company, 22nd Battalion, and served with them for his entire time in the army.

  The 22nd Battalion sailed to the United Kingdom, arriving there on 16 June 1940 as part of 5 Brigade and they were there for the rest of the year. Soon after they arrived Keith Elliott was promoted to lance corporal. After Christmas in the United Kingdom, 5 Brigade was sent to the Middle East.

  The brigade had barely set foot in Egypt when it sailed for Greece. After lots of moving around and confusion, it occupied a position at Mount Olympus, where it had its first contact with the Germans. From Mount Olympus the battalion had a perfect view of the advancing German tanks and infantry. During the firefight that followed, Lance Corporal Elliott stood out for his calm manner and his aggression towards the enemy. A badly wounded soldier, Alan Murray, later recalled:

  I saw him [Elliott] pumping away with a Tommy gun as though he was playing marbles in the middle of a school room. I was getting out of it. I was scared stiff myself, but he didn’t look to be.

  The brigade stopped the German advance for one day and then withdrew when it was dark. Two days later they were on the road to Porto Rafti where the Royal Navy evacuated them to Crete. Keith later wrote:

  I arrived in Crete still only a lance-jack with my talents, if any, not yet discovered. I was never what might be termed a brilliant soldier, or even a brave one, but one of the luckier fortunate type, who had the wind with me and a sort of guardian angel looking after me. I found this throughout my Army career — shining at nothing; and only by the grace of God in the right place at the right time.

  Arriving on Crete on Keith’s birthday, 25 April 1941, the 22nd Battalion was sent to defend Maleme airfield. It would become a critical position. His platoon took up positions just above the aerodrome on a small riverbed. Then on 20 May — a beautiful clear day — while the troops were at breakfast, the German transport planes came over with their fighter protection. Keith later remembered the invasion:

  My most vivid impression is that the invaders were squealing like pigs as they drifted down, which is understandable, because they must have seen the grim-faced Kiwis below them waiting with their weapons. And we had to deal with them like pigs, charging with our bayonets. It was horrible putting our training into first practice.

  That night his platoon received the order to abandon their positions and move out. Keith Elliott was indignant:

  You know the Germans got the biggest hiding they’d ever had, up to that point in time . . . we defeated the finest fighting machine of the German Army . . . I suppose by ten o’clock in the morning it was all over in our area. And in the evening, when Major Leggitt came and said we were going to pull out, I said ‘Why? Have you got the wind up, Sir?’ He wasn’t very impressed.

  After some brief skirmishing near Pirgos during which Keith was wounded in the arm, the 22nd Battalion began the long march over the mountains to the evacuation beaches at Sphakia.

  Back in Egypt, Keith was promoted to platoon sergeant. He took part in Operation CRUSADER as part of the infantry platoon protecting Sidi Azeiz airfield, but the brigade headquarters there was captured by the panzers [tanks] of the Afrika Korps. Keith and his men were POWs for two months at Bardia under terrible conditions. The prisoners were kept on a near-starvation diet, there were no toilets and the prison pens were overcrowded. As Keith said: ‘All we knew were moments of misery, hours of heartache, days of depression.’ He weighed nearly 76 kilograms when he was captured, but when released he was down to just 44 kilograms — he had lost nearly half his body weight. He wrote about the experience in a letter to his old school:

  The force attacking us was mainly tanks, infantry coming up after we had surrendered. After our artillery and anti-tank guns had been knocked out there was only one more thing to do, and by surrendering, Brigadier Hargest saved many lives . . . The following weeks were tough on the men, but once again we came through and gained a great deal by our experience as prisoners of war.

  On 2 January 1942 Keith E
lliott and the other POWs were released when South African soldiers captured the prison camp.

  When the 2nd New Zealand Division was in Syria, Keith caught malaria and had to spend weeks in hospital in Nazareth. He missed the division’s return to Egypt and the breakout at Minqâr Qaim. He joined up with his platoon just in time for the attack on Ruweisat Ridge.

  The 22nd Battalion was one of the lead battalions in the centre of the attack. The battalion moved off at 11.00 p.m. on 14 July towards the ridge some 9 kilometres away. At midnight the 22nd Battalion hit serious resistance and fought the Germans and Italians for the next four hours until they reached the ridge. Just before dawn, Brigadier Kippenberger turned up in a Bren gun carrier. He took a quick look around and was pleased: ‘Hurry up and dig in before light, boys.’ Then he hurried away to look for his other battalions. It was very good advice because as Kippenberger left he came under fire from several German tanks.

  What the New Zealanders hadn’t discovered was that 10 tanks of 8th Panzer Regiment, part of 15 Panzer Division, were parked for the night in the middle of their new position. Three had been destroyed, but the rest sprang into action after first light on 15 July. They attacked the unprotected infantry from the south and east using natural cover, the early, misty light, and a dust haze to surprise the New Zealanders. The tanks with their supporting infantry captured 22nd Battalion with one exception — Sergeant Elliott’s platoon.

  His platoon, now down to 19 men, was on the battalion’s extreme right. Keeping to his farming routine, Keith had been up well before dawn, scanning the horizon. He noticed tanks and infantry approaching from the southwest and saw black crosses on them. He went to the platoon commanders to warn them, only to be told they must be British tanks. But Keith knew without a shadow of a doubt they were German tanks and didn’t want to be a POW a second time. He asked his men: ‘What is it, boys — Stalag or the bush?’ ‘The bush,’ was their reply.

  Keith decided to save his platoon and ordered his men to move forward and away from the approaching tanks. As he explained many years later:

  These [tanks] had the wrong jerseys. Yeah, they had big black crosses on them and they were coming around our flank . . . They [the two officers he reported the sighting to] had never been in action before. So I took a risk. I took my men forward and we watched the tanks come in and take our battalion.

  An eyewitness said:

  It was all very bewildering to have tanks coming in from the front and the rear and they now had their machine-guns going all the time to keep us down . . . One platoon on our right that was near a bit of a ridge made a run for it, they had of course to run a hell of a gauntlet of machine-gun bullets, and it was pretty grim to see these men running with dust being kicked up all round them as they fell or dived to the ground and then up and on again. These were Keith Elliott and his men, and as they began running men shouted: ‘What the hell are you running for — they are our tanks.’

  Keith led the platoon to the slight cover offered by a ridge some 275 metres to the north. On the way he was hit by a bullet fired from one of the German tanks — it was deflected by his pay book but it still took a chunk out of his chest.

  The platoon reached the ridge without loss, but had to move on to another small ridge 365 metres further north to avoid being in the line of fire of their own anti-tank guns. From this new position the platoon saw the rest of their battalion overrun and marched into captivity. Keith’s initiative and courage had saved his men. After having his chest wound attended to, Keith linked up with two platoons of the 21st Battalion.

  Later that morning a report reached the 21st Battalion of a badly wounded New Zealand officer lying somewhere to the north, and in desperate need of medical attention. Keith Elliott volunteered to look for him and bring him back, taking eight men with him.

  While they were searching for the officer, his party came under fire from an enemy machine-gun post in a slight depression some 450 metres away and from another post to their right. While Corporal R.F. Garmonsway took four of the men to deal with the closer one, Keith, although bleeding and in pain, led the other three men in a bayonet charge across 450 metres of open ground. It seemed like a stupid thing to do, but when they were only 45 metres away the 11 Italians stopped firing and stood up to surrender. There were four machine-guns and an anti-tank gun in the post, which Keith quickly dismantled. Two more enemy posts fired on them from about 90 metres to their north and directly ahead.

  Keith decided to press on and attack these posts, leaving his men to keep the POWs in order. Both posts were taken and Keith’s small party had now taken more than 50 POWs. There were more to come.

  Another post, this one on a gently rising slope directly ahead, opened fire on them. Keith decided to deal with them as well. He sent one man back for reinforcements and with the other two men he attacked the post on the slope. Once again they came under fire from a new post, this one to their rear from the west. Leaving his remaining two men to attack the post on the slope and look after the POWs, Keith attacked the machine-gun post by himself. It meant another dash across 180 metres of open desert during which he attracted heavy enemy fire. He was forced to shelter behind an abandoned water truck, but he was wounded in the thigh when a machine-gun bullet passed through the truck. Another bullet passed through the water tank on the truck, showering him with cool water. He rested for a minute and then fought on. All the Italians except the machine-gunner laid down their weapons and were ready to surrender. Keith shot a sniper, hobbled over to a sand dune overlooking the machine-gun post and lobbed in a grenade. He then attacked with his bayonet. With the machine-gunner killed, the other 15 men in the post surrendered.

  Taking his POWs with him, Keith returned to the post on the slope and helped his two men deal with that one as well. He was wounded again, this time in the knee and the back. The three New Zealand soldiers now had 80 POWs, and joined up with the rest of the platoon, which had captured another 62.

  Keith’s platoon, under his superb leadership, had killed 30 of the enemy and taken 142 POWs and he had been responsible for taking out five enemy posts, one of them single-handedly. As he later said: ‘It had been an exhaustingly eventful four hours.’ Only two men in his platoon were wounded, and his wounds were the most serious. The wounded officer, whose injuries had started it all, was rescued by reinforcements.

  By the time the action was over, the 21st Battalion had linked up with an Indian unit and Keith was taken to its ADS [advanced dressing station]. He was later evacuated to the New Zealand General Hospital where he spent the next three months. It was a remarkable performance, and Lieutenant Colonel T.C. Campbell, the battalion’s commanding officer, recommended a VC. Five supporting eyewitness statements were included. One was by Captain Russell Richard Thomas Young, who had been captured by the German tank force in the morning on 15 July, but managed to escape. He wrote:

  We were under heavy tank, machine-gun and mortar fire, hemmed in as it seemed on all sides with no effective anti-tank support, and for Sjt [Sergeant] Elliott to have been able to bring out so many men under such circumstances showed an amazing quick appreciation of the situation and outstanding qualities of leadership.

  The New Zealand official historian commented: ‘His exploits were all the more remarkable in that he was still suffering from the after-effects of a bad bout of malaria.’

  The VC was announced on 24 September 1942. Keith Elliott had been told about it the day before at lunch in the sergeants’ mess at Maadi Camp. After receiving the news, General Freyberg gave Keith a field commission, so he became an officer without completing the training course. Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery presented him with his VC ribbon. The presentation of the VC medal had to wait for nearly two years, when it was presented to Keith on 2 August 1944 in Wellington by the Governor-General, and Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Cyril Newall.

  Keith Elliott arrived back in New Zealand on 12 July 1943, nearly a year after Ruweisat Ridge. He wasn’t happy about all the p
ublicity and ceremony of being a VC holder: ‘It was an ordeal for which I was unprepared and I was thankful when I could escape from time to time to replenish my resources by working around the farm.’ Like Charles Upham, Keith Elliott was modest about his military exploits. He used to joke with his friends that he earned his VC while running away from the enemy.

  The Māori Battalion VC

  SECOND LIEUTENANT

  TE MOANANUI-A-KIWA NGARIMU

  Second Lieutenant Te Moananui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu won the VC at Tebaga Gap, Tunisia, on 26 March 1943. Unfortunately Moana’s VC was a posthumous [given after death] award. The young Māori warrior was killed in action after a night and morning of constant fighting during which he performed many brave deeds.

  Te Moananui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu was born at Kokai Pa on Kokai Hill, near Ruatoria, on 7 April 1918. With eight sisters and a brother, he came from a large family. Moana spent two years at Te Aute College in Hawke’s Bay as a boarder before leaving after the fourth form to work as a shepherd on his father’s farm. He volunteered early in 1940 for service overseas, enlisting in the 2nd NZEF on 11 February, just before his twenty-second birthday.

  While he was working in the intelligence section, he was noticed by Sir Charles Bennett, who would one day command the Māori Battalion:

  He had qualities which indicated to me that here you have a chap who was solid, who can be relied upon and a man of good intelligence who was disciplined, a bit of an introvert, rather than an extrovert. He was in control of his situation all the time. And he was the kind of fellow I felt where, if you give him a job to do, you can be sure he will do it.