Oliver Riddell reviews three books about New Zealanders at war.
Alex Hedley
HarperCollins, $36.99, pbk
Increased public attendance, especially by young people, at annual Anzac Day events is an accurate measure of increased public interest in New Zealand's military history and its impact on the country today.
This year should be no exception and one publisher has brought out three books to coincide with Anzac Day, one new one and two reissues.
It is surprising that it has taken so long to publish a book about the experiences of the 76,000 New Zealanders between 1939-46 who passed through Maadi Military Camp, 14 miles upstream from Cairo in Egypt.
Drawing on his own experiences from the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 which also used Egypt as a base camp, General Freyberg insisted on proper facilities for housing, training and nursing his troops.
Money was lavished on it by the government of the day; so unlike the experiences of the soldiers of World War 1 or indeed like the later Vietnam War.
This microcosm of New Zealand society did its job to almost universal satisfaction.
Even the strong anti-imperial impulses that have since swept Egypt and which have demolished so much have not obliterated the Maadi Camp sports facilities or its swimming pool.
Maadi Camp left an indelible impression on those who passed through it.
Fernleaf Cairo is filled with interesting vignettes of life, laughter, romance, disease, medical recuperation from both wounds and disease, the language used (it has a full appendix on the argot of Maadi), the sexual adventures, and the interaction with a wildly different culture.
Attempts are made to gloss over negative aspects of this interaction, such as describing the pejorative term "wog" as being an acronym of "wily oriental gentleman".
But at least there was nothing like the organised violence against Egyptians that featured in World War 1.
This experience of young New Zealanders having their first OE did not leave a blot on New Zealand's reputation.
Of course, there was some crime, hooliganism and violence, but boredom was not tolerated so that idle hands had very little excuse for doing the devil's work.
Excursions to see the wonders of ancient Egypt were universally popular, although today there would be less tolerance of tens of thousands of hobnailed boots climbing the Giza pyramids.
Fernleaf Cairo is a very readable military history looking behind the scenes of action.
The author and his researcher have done their subject proud, although having an index would have helped.
Ed. Megan Hutchings
HarperCollins, $36.99, pbk
The Italian campaign in the final years of World War 2 has had good press in New Zealand.
It was fought in a country with beautiful cities and countryside, inhabited by sympathetic people, and against soldiers of comparable status.
The food and wine were great (by and large) and the medical facilities were immediate and world-class.
A Fair Sort of Battering is a reissue of an anthology of 13 interviews with survivors which maintains that tradition.
It is interesting and entertaining rather than profound, and is informed by the general nostalgia to be expected from people interviewed so many years after the events it records.
It is a pleasant read.
The interviewees are varied indeed, although the naval pilot barely qualified from his limited involvement in Italy.
One ex-soldier was severely wounded and this is "real" war, which many of the interviews are not; one veteran was a Tui (Women's War Service Auxiliary); one especially vivid interview was with a Maori soldier.
There are some great vignettes, including why Major General Howard Kippenberger's wound gave him so much pain (which he probably never knew), and why Lady Freyberg was so popular.
The interviews contain details of the ethnic and regional backgrounds of each veteran, and what happened to them afterwards.
All in all, it is in some respects an unreliable retrospective of the campaign.
It is not sanitised, but blood and guts, cruelty and horror are not emphasised.
To have survived the war at all and to have lived for so long afterwards makes the interviewees an unrepresentative sample of New Zealanders who served in Italy.
Deborah Challinor
HarperRow, $36.99, pbk
Vietnam was an orphan in New Zealand's military history.
It was unwanted by the government of the day and not recognised officially, and has been swept under the carpet ever since. Yet its circumstances were as dramatic as any.
The then National government was reluctant to send a military presence.
Prime Minister Keith Holyoake has since been lauded for this reluctance, but its consequence was to starve men of the weaponry, clothing and even the food they needed.
So they had to cadge and steal from the Americans and Australians to survive.
This was openly connived at, with consequences for morale.
The Government allowed its men to be sprayed with defoliant (Agent Orange) and dosed with an untested anti-malarial agent (Dapsone); for decades the dangers of this have been denied and its impacts deprecated.
The Government also offered to sell defoliant to the Americans, but this was declined because the quantities were insufficient.
Getting redress from state agencies has been a protracted, humiliating and expensive process.
As might be expected, there is a good deal of suppressed anger in Grey Ghosts: New Zealand Vietnam Vets Talk About Their War.
But this reprint and extension of an earlier book is much more than just a history of New Zealand's involvement in Vietnam.
It sets out to tell what it was like to be there, by interviewing the veterans themselves.
The language is colourful and salty, the anecdotes fascinating and appalling - including a dissection of "fragging", coldly murdering an unpopular officer or NCO.
If the book is to be relied upon, there was nothing like the same drug culture among New Zealanders as there was among the Americans.
Having more about noncombatants, such as the nurses, would have given a rounder picture.
Serving in Vietnam was no fun; the misery was often alleviated by unrestricted "looting, boozing and rooting" and bullying the locals.
New Zealand proved to be no refuge afterwards, either.
The hostility and ignorance of so many at home on their return was very upsetting to men who had been told otherwise, and who thought they had been serving their country by risking life and limb.
Military histories tend to be dense, with great slabs of print; this one is not. It is very readable.
But it would have benefited greatly from having an index.
- Oliver Riddell is a Wellington writer.
