Willie donates VC to the SAS Trust
Corporal Willie Apiata has donated his Victoria Cross to the NZSAS Trust. It will be stored at the SAS Compound in Papakura.
I suspect it is not going to get stolen from there!
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Tags: Victoria Cross, Willie Apiata
April 25th, 2008 at 8:20 am
This is a respectable gesture from a genuine kiwi bloke.
Talking about the safety of the medals I do wonder if the keystones expect an arrest over the despicable theft of war medals from Waiouru. Last I heard Justice Potter bailed one of the culprits.
Lest we forget.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:55 am
The cynic in me suggests that it won’t do the ratings any harm on the doco on him screening tonight – I presume that this release has come from the wallahs at Defence HQ.
Kia kaha Corporal Apiata – your courage, integrity and humility are a lesson to all of us
April 25th, 2008 at 9:09 am
I suspect that the doco tonight will be a most powerful bit of television, Apiata is indeed a great man.
I was heartened to see the large turnout in my mid sized rural town for dawn service, each and every year the crowd seems to be growing in size if not the number of returned vets, it was also pleasing to see that the low life scum who protested last year seemed to have stayed away.
Lest we forget.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:35 am
If they had showed up to protest bigbruv I suspect that more than a few would have gone home with bruises. Given the number of people who were ready to give them a thrashing they wisely stayed away or kept a very low profile.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:18 am
To prepare for the future we must honour the past.
http://nzdebate.blogspot.com/2008/04/to-prepare-for-future-we-must-honour.html
April 25th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I note that stuff has a poll running on military service, an astonishing 22% would not fight for NZ under any circumstances, do these fools think that you can sit down and “discuss” things with the enemy?
April 25th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Yes they do big bruv. People like Rodgernome think that playing with words is the fullest extent of human expression. What a surprise he’ll get one day.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Big bruv, Goodgod many who are bent towards the socialist view of life have already forgotten what “least we forget” means. Given the amount of history taught to our young and the naive view of the world held by many in high office is it any wonder. I just hope we don’t ever get to regret living in a “benign part of the world”.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
ssb
Did you know that in Britain they no longer teach about the Battle of Britain or WW2, may students do not know who Winston Churchill was such is the infestation of socialist propaganda.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
If correct Big Bruv that truly is sad though I must admit I would be very surprised if NZ Kids were taught about their country’s participation in those events either.
April 25th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
ma(n)y students do not know who Winston Churchill was
Winston Churchill was the architect of the disastrous Dardanelles campaign in WWI. He was personally responsible for the death of every Kiwi who fell at Gallipoli.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Actually Swampash I think you’ll find it was the Muslims who shot them who are responsible.
Churchill not only spotted the Nazi threat three years ahead of anybody else, he also spotted the Islamofascist threat nearly ninety years before 9/11. If only we had listened.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Now what was the words that Churchill used when the 2nd
Div. went to Greece and then Crete, oh yes, you will see plenty
of aircraft overhead, and they did.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
“…Churchill not only spotted the Nazi threat three years ahead of anybody else,…”
An excellent example of the truism that if say its going to rain all the time, eventually it will.
Churchill probably killed more New Zealanders than Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler and Tojo combined. The Dardanelles campaign was a direct result of his obsession with the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, and the strategic blunder of sending (our) troops to Greece in 1941 before Wavell had finished off the Italians was as big a f**k up as anything Hitler did, apart from the latter’s decision to invade the U.S.S.R. Churchill’s Greek adventure led directly to the intervention of the Germans in North Africa and the deployment of significant German airpower to Italy, prolonging the fighting in that theatre into 1943 at huge cost in blood to us and the rest of the Allies, delaying the invasion of France (where the power of the United States could and should have been brought to bear directly against the Nazi’s well before June 1944, if it hadn’t been for Churchill’s Mediterranaen folly and his obstructionism to Overlord). And the defeat in Greece and Crete cost us heavily to, as well as our Commonwealth brothers.
Which isn’t to say the Royal Navy – a force failing in strength – didn’t suffer as well. Churchill’s near fatal mistakes in the Mediterranean committed the R.N. to a three front war and left nothing to confront the Japanese with in 1941/42. The loss of HMS Neptune, with hundreds of New Zealand sailors, is another legacy of Churchill’s “vision”. The loss of Force Z, and the collapse of the empire in the east after the fall of Singapore are direct results of Churchill’s decision making.
Churchill’s decision to conduct the strategic bomber offensive under the incompetent and doctrinaire Harris equally cost many, many New Zealand lives amongst the aircrew of Bomber Command.
Churchill – he was a towering figure in the literature of the English language, but I think NZ would have been a lot better off without him.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Toms: comparing him to perfection, yes, he made a lot of mistakes, as does anybody. But, if we didn’t have Churchill who would we have had instead? And where would we have ended up? (That is a genuine question – I don’t know enough history to know whom of his contempories was the alternative, and whether we would consider that person more or less likely to have screwed things up).
April 25th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Many a war has been won by those brave armchair generals who decades later tell everyone how it should have been done.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Well said DPF
We must always remember as much as love to despise the US it was the direct intervention of that country that prevented the complete over running of NZ by the Japs in the 2nd World War as well.
“PEACE IS WON” NOT WISHED FOR!!
April 26th, 2008 at 12:10 am
I get sick of people slagging off Churchill for the Gallipolli campaign. How the hell else were they supposed to assist the Russians on the Eastern Front? Suggestions anyone?
Churchill paid dearly for his mistakes in any event – he was forced to resign and spent the rest of the war amongst the fighting in France. Nobody could complain he was any sort of chickenhawk.
April 26th, 2008 at 8:14 am
toms @ 1744hrs: you are joking, right?
If you are going to play the ’cause and effect game’, then you’ve forgotten the biggest impact of all from the Greek and Crete campaigns: the fact that it delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union for about 8 weeks, which ultimately proved crucial to the outcome of the war.
WRT to the rest of your rant…….
“Churchill probably killed more New Zealanders than Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler and Tojo combined.”
That’s somewhat offensive, and certainly incorrect.
“The Dardanelles campaign was a direct result of his obsession with the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean…”
It might also have had something to do with the requirement to open access to Russia from the south, thereby increasing their ability to fight the Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Bulgarians. The Russians had plenty of men, but were short of supplies. Taking a global perspective (and remember, this was a world war), the losses encountered in achieving that access and sending those supplies would have been more than outweighed by the strageic impact on the Central Powers.
I might add that I have discussed the Dardenelles campaign with a number of Turkish military historians, and all conceded that the campaign actually came closer to succeeding than has often been thought.
“…and the strategic blunder of sending (our) troops to Greece in 1941 before Wavell had finished off the Italians was as big a f**k up as anything Hitler did, apart from the latter’s decision to invade the U.S.S.R. Churchill’s Greek adventure led directly to the intervention of the Germans in North Africa…”
Umm, no, it was the failure of the Italian invasion of Albania and the defeat of the Italians in Cyrenaica in late 1940 and early 1941 (prior to the Greece camapign) that led to the Afrika Krops being sent to North Africa.
“… and the deployment of significant German airpower to Italy,prolonging the fighting in that theatre into 1943 at huge cost in blood to us and the rest of the Allies…”
No, the airpower was deployed to interdict convoys through the Mediterranean and provide a buffer to the southern approaches to the German inductrial heartland. The presence of large numbers of German forces in Italy also kept Mussolini (who was a flaky ally, at best) in line.
The Allied invasion of Italy was intended to tie up large numbers of German forces prior to the invasion of France. It tied up approximately four times the number of Allied troops engaged.
“…delaying the invasion of France (where the power of the United States could and should have been brought to bear directly against the Nazi’s well before June 1944…”
Absolute rubbish. The infrastructure required to support an invasion was not available until early 1944, and the inmvasion itself could not be conducted until summer.
“… if it hadn’t been for Churchill’s Mediterranaen folly and his obstructionism to Overlord).”
Source?
“And the defeat in Greece and Crete cost us heavily to, as well as our Commonwealth brothers.”
Agreed. It also cost the British and Greeks.
“Which isn’t to say the Royal Navy – a force failing in strength – didn’t suffer as well. Churchill’s near fatal mistakes in the Mediterranean committed the R.N. to a three front war…”
The RN was committed to the Mediterranean by the requirement to support operations in North Africa and maintain oil supplies from the Middle East.
“…and left nothing to confront the Japanese with in 1941/42.”
No, it had already been determined that in the event of a war with Japan the US Navy would take the lead in the Pacific.
“The loss of HMS Neptune, with hundreds of New Zealand sailors, is another legacy of Churchill’s “vision”.
How?
“The loss of Force Z, and the collapse of the empire in the east after the fall of Singapore are direct results of Churchill’s decision making.”
No, the decisions that led to the loss of Force Z were actually made in the late 1920s, when the Singpaore Naval Base and ‘main fleet to Singapore’ strategy was conceived. New Zealand and Australia were willing participants in, and strong supporters of, the strategy – largely because it provided defence ‘on the cheap’.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Last nights doco “Reluctant Hero” was everything that I hoped and expected it to be and much more, Apiata is indeed a true hero and while it sounds like a sickening cliché he is the epitome of your normal guy who did an extraordinary thing.
NZ is short of role models and hero’s right now, in Apiata we have the very best example of both.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:34 am
PaulL on Churchill: “But, if we didn’t have Churchill who would we have had instead? And where would we have ended up?”
Paul, you raise a very good question. Interestingly, a major international survey of historians in about 2000 named Churchill as the most significant personality of the 20th century. They based this on his achievement in galvanising the British (and Commonwealth) people in 1940-41. Had Britain fallen in August 1940, Germany would almost certainly have won the war.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Duxton
Thank you. I was about to get stuck into Toms’ s brain fart but you’ve saved me the trouble. What amazes me is that the sort of stuff he spews out is still regarded as a challenging and new counter-narrative to the standard view of Churchill & co – when I’ve been hearing the same crap since the 1970′s. Good to see revisionist history revised.
One additional point: the reference to Churchill’s ‘obstructionism’ of Overlord. Churchill certainly argued for a long time against a direct, cross-channel attack on Europe, the reason being his great fear of a repeat of Gallipoli, with the Dieppe disaster as further evidence.
In short, Toms tries to have it both ways: at Gallipoli Churcihill is reckless, foolish, callous (take your pick). When it comes to Overlord 20 years later he is an ‘obstructionist’. Perhaps the actual common thread for Toms is that the first venture was to aid Czarist Russia while the latter would have helped the USSR!
April 26th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
toms is just a plain fucktard. Pick all the mistakes, ignore the overall context, stick them all together and call it truth. He’ll meet a similar end as rodgernome.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Thank you Duxton.
Tom Hunter has said what i wanted to..
It just goes to show how low our education system has dropped..
Toms obviously has no idea how and where to find a library, let alone how to research a subject.
April 27th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
….