Gisborne man among liberators

BOUND FOR FRANCE: Private George How Chow is pictured at Trentham where he trained before being posted to France. The photograph was sent to his sister Annie. The writing in the bottom right corner says ”your affectionate brother George, Trentham, 13-07-17.” Pictures supplied

Today marks the centenary of the day New Zealand forces captured the northern French town of Le Quesnoy and ended four years of occupation by the Kaiser’s armies. Gisborne man George How Chow (1895-1971) was one of the men who liberated the 3000 inhabitants. Wynsley Wrigley reports on the battle and the life of George thanks to the effort of researchers working on behalf of his family.

The French town of Le Quesnoy has street names like Rue Neo-Zelandais and Rue All Blacks and a New Zealand museum is being built.

The strong New Zealand flavour is a lasting legacy of that day 100 years ago, today, when four years of German occupation ended with New Zealand soldiers, including Gisborne’s George How Chow, storming the eight-metre high medieval ramparts that circled the town.

The New Zealanders wanting to avoid civilian casualties — 3000 people lived in the town — avoided using artillery fire, and instead, scaled the walls by ladder in single file under heavy fire from German defenders.

A school and a street in Le Quesnoy have since been named after Leslie Averill of 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry (Rifle) Brigade, the first New Zealander to climb the ramparts and to enter the town.

How Chow, a Chinese-New Zealander, was in B Company of the same unit, the first company to get into Le Quesnoy.

About 80 New Zealanders were killed liberating the town, just seven days before World War 1 ended.

Residents, French and New Zealand dignitaries, and descendants of the Kiwi soldiers will commemorate the centenary of the battle tomorrow at 11am (French time).

An Australian-based member of the How Chow family will represent George at the ceremony.

Le Quesnoy residents remain eternally grateful for the events of 1918.

Each Anzac Day they honour those men who “came from the uttermost ends of the earth” according to an inscription on a marble balustrade on the New Zealand gate of honour.

Eng Kung How Chow, known as George, was the son of a Chinese father, also named George, and a English mother Sophia (West) How Chow who married in Gisborne on April 25, 1885.

George Junior, born in 1895, was educated at Central School and Te Karaka District School.

The soldier survived the battle for Le Quesnoy, but his family believed his war time experiences affected him for the rest of his life.

He enlisted on February 8, 1917.

Army records describe him as being aged 21, height 5ft 5½ inches, complexion dark, eyes brown, hair black, with his occupation being farmer.

He was attached to the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, 19th Reinforcement, in the second draft of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade.

On July 16, 1917, he boarded the troop carrier HMNZT 88 Athenic at Wellington.

How Chow left England in October and was posted to his battalion where he saw active service as a rifleman including in the Third Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Bapaume where the rifle brigade suffered heavy losses.

Between March and May 1918 he was out of the front line for nearly eight weeks, first with a sprained ankle incurred while watching an army rugby match featuring two teams from B Company and later with influenza.

He served in Cologne after the war on occupational duties before being posted to Sling Camp at Bulford, near Stonehenge.

It was there the New Zealanders, angry, bored and impatient to be shipped home, carved out a 127-metre kiwi on Beacon Hill.

How Chow did not set foot back in New Zealand until on October 2, 1919, when the troop ship Cordoba sailed into Wellington.

The huge kiwi still exists in England today with the British Army maintaining it as a legacy “to old soldiers in the new country from the young soldiers in the old country”.

Little known of How Chow after warHow Chow was not the only Chinese-New Zealander among the 6000 troops at Sling Camp, but his family was a prominent one in Gisborne.

His father, a naturalised New Zealander, owned the Central Bakery in Gladstone Road later known as the Empire Dining Rooms.

The Empire Dining Rooms, located on the site where the Odeon stands today, was damaged in a major fire in 1893.

The dining rooms were rebuilt and sold in 1901 when George (Senior) and Sophia bought the Te Karaka Tavern.

Inter-racial marriages involving Chinese were frowned upon in the larger centres of New Zealand in those times.

But researchers have told George’s descendants that smaller centres were more accepting of Chinese if they were hard working and social.

The family built a house at 1 Kipling Road, Te Karaka, which still stands today, but they moved to China in 1906.

George Senior was supposedly captured by brigands in China and held for ransom of 9,000 NZ pounds.

Unlike the rest of the family, George Senior never returned to New Zealand, and there was speculation he collected the ransom money himself.

Back in New Zealand, Sophia started her own boarding house located across the road from the Gisborne Bowling Club.

When World War 1 broke out in 1914 the family were farming in Opotiki.

Little is known of George Junior after the war. Newspaper reports indicate that he played club rugby in Gisborne for a short period of time. He later worked as a labourer at Puha, and as a farmhand in Waioeka Road, and in Taukau near Pukekohe.

George was engaged to an English woman he met while stationed in England during the war. It is believed they had a child named George Davis.

There was a George Davis who came to New Zealand in search of his father, and while here, changed his surname to How Chow.

An article in the Gisborne Herald on February 19, 1966, shows a photo of George How Chow at the opening of Waipiro Bay Fishing Club’s new ramp. There is a definite likeness, say family members.

The war veteran disappeared after the mid-1930s before the family rediscovered and occasionally visited him in Auckland.

It seems that How Chow went off to live in solitude perhaps because of his war experiences.

He died in Pukekohe in 1971.