by Glyn Harper
26 March 1943 Moana Ngarimu North Africa
3 May 1943 Leonard Trent Over Holland
11 August 1943 Lloyd Trigg Over the Atlantic
POST SECOND WORLD WAR
Date of action Recipient Place
May–September 2004 Bill (Willie) Apiata Afghanistan
APPENDIX 2
Useful Army Information
ARMY CORPS, UNITS AND EQUIPMENT
CORPS
The army is divided into groups, known as corps, according to the type of job they do. Put simply these are:
Infantry Men who fight on foot, mostly with rifles and machine guns.
Artillery Specialise in the use of heavy guns, including howitzers, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
Engineers Specialists in both building and destroying things, including bridges, buildings and roads. They also lay minefields and dig tunnels.
Signals Provide military communications, including telephone and radio.
Armour These men fight in tanks or armoured cars. Some parts of this corps used to be cavalry, who were horse soldiers. Other corps during the world wars included Medical, Military Police, Service (transport, supply and repair), Pay, Chaplains and Pioneers.
German Panzer III tank
UNITS
Army corps are divided up into units that are grouped together into formations, which are made up of a mix of corps, who combine their combat skills. The following is based on an infantry structure.
Section Ten infantry soldiers with rifles commanded by a corporal. In the Second World War they would have a Bren light machine-gun as well.
Platoon Three or four sections, normally about 30 to 40 men, under the command of a lieutenant and a sergeant.
Company Three or four platoons, of about 120 to 200 men, commanded by a captain or major.
Battalion First World War: eight companies and a platoon of heavy machine-guns. Second World War: four rifle companies and a support company with mortars, heavy machine-guns and other weapons. About 800 men commanded by a lieutenant colonel.
Brigade Three infantry battalions, with an artillery battalion, a signals company and other corps. About 5000 strong commanded by a brigadier.
Division Three or four brigades, with an engineer, armoured, signals, medical battalions and all other corps (effectively a complete fighting force). Normally between 15,000 to 20,000 men commanded by a major general.
Corps Two or three divisions plus extra artillery and armoured battalions, commanded by a lieutenant general.
Army Several corps as well as more battalions of specialist troops commanded by a general.
WEAPONS
Pistols The British mostly used revolvers, but the Germans used automatics, especially the Luger.
Rifles During both wars the British used the Lee Enfield bolt-action rifle. This had a magazine, but the bolt had to be moved back and forward by hand to load a new bullet after firing a shot.
British .303 rifle
Bayonet
Tommy guns Used in the Second World War and named after the Thompson light machine pistol. These fired small bullets automatically. They had big magazines of 20 to 50 shots. The German one was often called a Schmeisser.
Machine guns These fired the rifle-sized bullet automatically. At the start of the First World War these were big weapons on three-legged stands (tripods), with the bullets in belts, and got so hot the barrels had water coolers. Lighter versions loaded from magazines and that one man could carry came later, including the Lewis gun for the British. In the Second World War each section and many vehicles had light machine-guns. The British used the Bren, which had a two-legged (bipod) mount to support it and a curved magazine on top. The German one also had a bipod, but was still belt fed and fired much faster. The British also still used the Vickers heavy machine-gun from the First World War.
British Vickers machine-gun
Grenades A metal container packed with explosive and set off by a fuse. These are thrown by hand or sometimes fired from a specially adapted rifle. The British one, often called a Mills bomb, was oval shaped and had a thick metal case with deep creases so it would break into pieces. The German grenades mostly had a wooden handle so they could be thrown further, and were called stick grenades or potato mashers by the British.
Mortars A tube that can be aimed which has a bomb dropped tail first down it. The bomb has a small explosive at the bottom that goes off when it hits the bottom of the tube, sending the bomb high and slow into the air. The bomb comes almost straight down some distance away and is short range (can hit targets 2 or 3 kilometres away). The weapon and ammunition are light enough to be hand-carried and can fit into trenches, so they are mostly a heavy infantry weapon.
Artillery Big guns that are always worked by a crew of men. These include cannons and howitzers that fire high-explosive shells at the enemy over long ranges (up to 20 kilometres for large ones). Anti-aircraft guns, including the British Bofors and the German 88-mm guns, knock out attacking planes. Anti-tank guns destroy enemy armoured vehicles.
British 25-pounder gun
APPENDIX 3
Useful Air Force Information
AIR FORCE UNITS AND EQUIPMENT
AIRCRAFT TYPES
At first during the First World War the military simply tried to use civilian aircraft to do military jobs, like looking for the enemy. The pilots and their lookouts soon wanted to be more aggressive, so they dropped small bombs from their planes onto enemy army units and shot at enemy aircraft with pistols and rifles. As aircraft design and technology developed rapidly, they were also made to do one or two jobs really well. Then these specialist aircraft were put in groups so they could operate together on that one job.
Fighters Made with large engines for speed, but also able to do aerobatics for manoeuvring. They had machine-guns and small cannons so they could shoot down enemy planes.
Bombers These planes had one or more engines, and could carry a heavy load of bombs to drop on the enemy.
Reconnaissance Often these planes had radios fitted and they went looking to see where the enemy were.
Coastal These were either flying boats (planes that could take off and land on water) or long range bombers. They carried depth charges to attack submarines, or bombs and torpedoes to attack enemy ships.
UNITS AND RANK
The air force originally was part of the army as the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. Then it used army ranks, but named its company-size units squadrons, which is what the engineers and cavalry called them. The basic unit of airpower is the single aircraft and its crew, which may be just the pilot or several men. The units described are for the Second World War. The pilot could be a sergeant or an officer and most men in flight crews were also at least sergeants. Because multi-engine bomber squadrons needed so many more men, the ranks for all the command appointments were higher than in fighter units.
Flight Three or four aircraft. A fighter flight would be commanded by a flight lieutenant (army equivalent is captain) and in bombers by a squadron leader (army equivalent is major).
Squadron Three or four flights. Fighter squadrons were commanded by squadron leaders and bombers by wing commanders (army equivalent is lieutenant colonel).
Wing Two or three squadrons. Fighter wings were commanded by wing commanders and bombers by group captains (army equivalent is colonel).
Several wings made a group. A mix of different types of aircraft groups was called a tactical air force, able to support an army in the field. Several groups of the same types of specialist aircraft, such as fighters, bombers or ocean patrol aircraft, were called a command.
AIRCRAFT IN THIS BOOK
British BE2b
BE2b A British two-seat plane designed in 1914. It was a bi-plane, meaning it had two main wings, one on top of the other. It was made when planes did not carry machine-guns and to carry any load very far meant it had to leave its observer behind. Really built as a reconnaissance machine, it was used as a bomber som
etimes.
British Wellington bomber
Wellington A British two-engined bomber with a crew of six that was made throughout the Second World War. Very advanced when it came out, it had machine-guns in turrets at the back and front to protect itself and could carry 2000 kilograms of bombs to Germany from England.
Messerschmitt Bf 110 A two- to four-man German, twin-engined heavy fighter. This plane had enormous firepower with cannons and machine-guns. However it wasn’t any faster than the single-engine fighters and less aerobatic. Because of this it became a night fighter, carrying RADAR to help find British bombers.
Lockheed Ventura An American designed light bomber developed from civilian mailplanes and the Hudson bomber. It had a crew of four, but was not fast or very well protected. These planes, as well as the Hudson, were used by New Zealand squadrons in Europe and the Pacific and both were used by Coastal Command to patrol the oceans and attack enemy submarines.
Messerschmitt Bf 109 The most common German single-seat fighter plane. Fast and agile, the only British plane that could reliably beat it was the Spitfire. It could only fly for an hour and a half, which was not good for attacking England, but for defending Germany or her bases this plane was very good at its job, with cannons as well as machine-guns to knock out its enemies.
German Messerschmitt Bf 109
Spitfire The best British single seat fighter of the war. This plane was a little more aerobatic than the German 109 and could stay up longer. By 1943 it also had cannons and machine-guns to give it punch.
Liberator An American four-engined heavy bomber with a crew of up to 10. This plane was big but had a huge range and carried a heavy load of weapons as well as protective machine-guns. When the British received enough of these from the Americans, they used them to make their Coastal Command patrols even longer to cover more ocean. Being so big though, they were not very aerobatic.
Fairey Battle A British single-engined bomber, with a three-man crew, designed in 1937 to support army units. By 1940 it was already hopelessly out of date and poorly protected, so that in battle in France they were shot down in large numbers.
Douglas Boston An American twin-engined bomber with a crew of three. Fast, very well protected and with a 4000-pound bomb load, it was a very popular and versatile aircraft. Further modified with extra guns in its nose, it was also used as an attack aircraft and operated by British, American and Russian air forces.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
GLYN HARPER is a Professor at Massey University. He joined the Australian Army in 1988, and after eight years transferred to the New Zealand Army, where he held the rank of lieutenant colonel until 2001. He is the author of 13 books on military history and is currently Massey’s Project Manager for the Centenary History of New Zealand and the First World War.
COLIN RICHARDSON retired from the New Zealand Army in 2016 as a colonel. He was previously New Zealand Defence Attaché to Canada. On exchange in Australia he taught Military History and Strategy at the Army Command and Staff College, and International Relations at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in Canberra.
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in 2006
This edition published in 2016
by HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
harpercollins.co.nz
Copyright © Glyn Harper and Colin Richardson 2016
Glyn Harper and Colin Richardson assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work. This work is copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India
1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom
2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada
195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA
ISBN 978-1-775540-86-1 — ISBN 978-1-77549-123-1
National Library of New Zealand cataloguing-in-publication data:
Harper, Glyn, 1958–
Best and bravest : Kiwis awarded the Victoria Cross / Glyn Harper & Colin Richardson. Revised edition.
1. Victoria Cross—History—Juvenile literature. 2. New Zealand—Armed Forces—Biography—Juvenile literature. 3. Great Britain—Armed Forces—Biography—Juvenile literature. 4. New Zealand—History, Military—Juvenile literature. 5. Great Britain—History, Military—Juvenile literature. [1. Victoria Cross. 2. New Zealand—Armed Forces. 3. Great Britain—Armed Forces. 4. New Zealand—History, Military. 5. Great Britain—History, Military.]
I. Richardson, Colin (Colin Patrick), 1959– II. Title. 355.1342—dc 23
Cover design by Alissa Dinallo
Cover image by MILpictures, by Tom Weber/Getty Images
Illustrations by Colin Richardson
