At the Going Down of the Sun ..
The Lest We Forget Roll is an extracted list of those 2nd N.Z.E.F. soldiers and those airmen and sailors on the Freedom’s Call Rolls of Honour who were killed or who otherwise died while on active duty. Note: It is not known if some of these men on the latter roll who died or were killed in New Zealand, saw service overseas.
All you need do is click on the link to download.
Bull, George Robert, 1910-1966. Men of NZ Division opening first mails since cessation of North African hostilities, Maadi – Photograph taken by G Bull. New Zealand. Department of Internal Affairs. War History Branch :Photographs relating to World War 1914-1918, World War 1939-1945, occupation of Japan, Korean War, and Malayan Emergency. Ref: DA-04144-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23113348
“Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.”
The Lest We Forget Rolls too are in name alphabetical order, and consist of just the following columns:
Column A: Surname
Column B: Christian Name
Column C: Aliases/Nicknames
Column D: Service number
Column E: Date of Death
Column F: Age
My name is June Nathan and I live in Matangirau Whangaroa. I started researching my mother’s brother Tei Porter (801318) who fought in WWII and was killed in action in Italy.
What amazed me about the initials only, not the name eg: T Porter on our Roll of honour, was I was one of the so called lucky ones who knew my uncles name was Tei. This became my first obstacle as some families didn’t know what the initals stood for considering they knew them by another name. Being maori that was even harder.
Sadly there are also no photos to put to a few of these names, so what started as 1 has now led to 36 WWI veterans including 4 who are missing from the roll. 31 WWII including 6 also missing from the roll and this is where I began. That was 5 years ago.
The support I have been getting from the community in the way of photos and family ties (whakapapa) has been over whelming.
My list now includes 89 WWI & 81 WWII returned servicemen, but it doesn’t end there.
I have spent many hours studing files after files and some have definitely left me baffled.
But this is my way of acknowledging not only uncle Tei but every veteran in the Kaeo and Whangaroa rohe
Kudos to you, June. I can fully appreciate just how difficult this must have been for you. Many of the physical memorials spread throughout NZ are lacking – in that there are omissions and downright errors in the inscriptions. Also, I suspect that each district applies different criteria as to who should and should not have been put on a memorial or roll of honour. Just this week I had one chap alert me to someone who had been teaching in the Kaitaia area for a couple of years before enlisting in Kaitaia but not being allowed on the memorial by the local RSA by virtue of him having been born in Otago. He died in Italy in 1942. This online database, which is first and foremost a memorial to those who served broadens the scope to bring in many who might not otherwise be classed as Northlanders. I hope to have a little more information to hand regarding Tei Porter, as to his embarkation date etc, as I move forward through this second trawl through the rolls. You may want to return to the entry in another 12 months or so just in case I have additional info up there.