“I spent six weeks at sea on the RMS Rangitata. It had been a troop ship during the war. We were on two-tiered bunks, with 44 to a cabin.
“We stopped off at Pitcairn Island, and people came out in boats and sold us bananas and pineapples and things they had made.”
The local community helped raise money for his trip. The scout group raised funds, his parents contributed and they also shot wild pigs and sold the meat.
The Scouts arrived first in England and they were put up at Gillwell Park at a New Zealand scout camp 50km north of London.
“It was a pretty big area. Every three weeks we'd go visiting New Zealanders living in England, like Herbie Cook from Wairoa. He was a rugby league player, a fullback.”
They had a couple of months in England before decamping to France, but it was only two years after the end of the war and ruins were everywhere, he said.
“We saw a lot of war damage — even in London there was a lot of rubble. And in France there were tanks shot up on the side of the road.”
A contemporary report from the Guardian, August 1947, wrote: “Part of the Forest of Moisson, tightly held in a loop of the Seine 50 miles above Paris, was used by the Luftwaffe as a bombing range during the war. Circling above it yesterday, one thought that it might still be under fire, such were the plumes of dust rising between the pine and silver birch, veiling the vast tented camp which made an intricate stippled pattern of green and white and yellow specks.”
The scouts landed at Dieppe, where British and Canadian troops had landed during the war, and took the train to Moisson.
The Sixth Scout Jamboree was named the Jamboree of Peace, and had originally been planned to take place in 1941. The numbers attending proved the Scout movement was still strong and growing.
“At the jamboree the Scouts were camped in tents. It was hot and dusty and we spent our time visiting the other nationalities. There could have been 50 other nationalities,” Graham said.
“A miniature railway went around the whole camp, so we'd go visiting. It was very hot and there were clouds of dust. Towards the end every country had to put on a display. We dressed up as Māori, as two tribes meeting each other, and hunting a moa, and they reckoned it was one of the best displays.”
Again from the Guardian: “The sixth Boy Scout Jamboree, the Jamboree Mondial de la Paix, is an odd enough sight from the air, but quite astonishing as one drives around it in a jeep.
“One of the laws of this worldwide youth movement demands that each member be a friend to all ‘and a brother to every other Scout, no matter to what country, class, or creed the other may belong', and here it is being observed faithfully — but easily and naturally — by some 40,000 boys of very nearly every country, class, creed, and colour.
“In a pleasing confusion, an orderly disorder, camp dovetails into camp, their occupants consistently spilling and mingling, making themselves understood where there is no common language by mime. Here, indeed, the nations are united. Two thousand acres of this forest are now criss-crossed by roads and around the camp there runs a miniature railway operated by French Army engineers for the benefit of visitors.
“There are three trains constantly circling, but only the wheels on these can be seen for they are always decorated by the French visitors who come in large numbers from the villages around, from Mantes and from Paris, to pay the admission charge and see this microcosm of the world which demonstrates the possibility of a friendly world order.”
So the jamboree was a great success, and it made such an impression on Graham that he travelled to Wellington in 1997 to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
He did not continue with the Scouts after the jamboree, but went to farm at Putere on a 19,000 acre property he bought with his three brothers, then spent 26 years on a block at Frasertown.
The 75th anniversary of the jamboree is about to take place, but Graham doubts there would be many Kiwis around now to celebrate that auspicious anniversary.
The old Scouts are now getting thin on the ground.
