Books preserving wartime letters capture poignant family stories - John Williamson

The great increase in numbers at the dawn ceremony at the central cenotaph in Whangārei as well as at later services, continues to inspire. Photo / Sarah Curtis

This past week has been one of remembrance with gratitude of the commitment and sacrifice of many New Zealanders in international conflicts.

The great increase in numbers at the dawn ceremony at the central cenotaph in Whangārei, as well as at later services, continues to inspire.

We attended the service at Kamo War Memorial Hall, and the organisers, Kaurihohore Church, were overwhelmed by the numbers. At both ceremonies it was great to see servicemen, dignitaries and school prefects in full uniform including ties – but more of that later.

Traditional symbols of poppies and service medals were worn with pride, but in a later service I attended, the letters to home from servicemen were the centre of attention. This contact with home by the exchange of mail was an important dimension of a service person’s life, reminding them where they have come from, and the appreciation of those back home.

My wife, Marg, felt that these letters were too important not to be permanently recorded. So, she has written and published two books.

The first were the exchanges between her father and uncle, who served in Egypt and Greece in World War II, and their sister who kept all those letters but also kept comprehensive diaries about her feelings of their contents. Both brothers were evacuated from Crete and were invalided home in 1943.

The second book was a compilation.

Firstly, about my father’s war as a bomber pilot in World War II.

He operated out of Calcutta, bombing Japanese installations in Thailand and Burma. It was based on his flight records and diaries. He saw the war out in 1945. The book is called Colyton Connections.

The second connection is compiled from letters written home to my grandmother, by her boyfriend, Howard Hughes, who served in France in World War I.

Colyton is a farming district just out of Feilding where both my father Bob, and Howard were born and raised. Howard’s letters were always considered private to Laura, my grandmother, until my aunt Joye, her daughter, attended the Anzac ceremony at the cenotaph in Colyton in 2014. Howard Hughes is memorialised there. She announced then that she felt she had permission to go home and read those letters.

There is nothing more poignant than to hold letters dated in 1915-16 describing the experiences of a soldier, his training, and service in the trenches, that he did not survive.

The letters are dated about two weeks apart and he describes rats as big as cats in trenches, lice such that you needed bathing in disinfectant, close ground calls with machine gunfire and bombs dropping close by.

He describes sleeping standing up while in the trenches, and he also talks about the 40 gallons of beer and 12 bottles of wine which were procured to celebrate his 21st birthday.

On July 13, 1916, at the end of his letter he writes, “Many have written to you and many more will write, but no one thinks half as much of you, as the one that writes tonight.”

On September 10, 1916 he wrote, “Dear Laura, Just a few lines to answer your welcome letters which I received last mail. We are really getting into it now. Last night the ground around us was shaking all right with the guns firing and the shells burning. We will be getting into heavy fighting, before many more days are over, so I thought I would scribble these few lines before we go, Love Howard.”

Howard’s last letter to Laura was posted two days before he was killed, and it was received in Colyton on November 6, 1916. His family had been notified four weeks earlier.

In Marg’s book the formal photographs are of these service people in full uniform with neckties in place. It was gratifying to see the school prefects at Kamo fully uniformed with blazers, white shirts, long pants and ties, and that the necktie has endured throughout the ages.

My first involvement with the necktie was as a 12-year-old, sent to boarding school at Carruth House. I have a photograph of me decked out in an oversized blazer, white shirt, school tie, worsted grey trousers and black shoes. My mother bought clothes for two years’ teenage growth! It is great to see the basics of that uniform are still in place today. As well, the sulu for Pacifica students has recently been incorporated as part of the WBHS Number Ones.

Mayor Vince Cocurullo shows what is possible with sartorial elegance in lifting the image of a person and a role, John Williamson says.

I wore a tie throughout my work life. While I was never a stock agent, it was great to see agents after working drafting cattle in the saleyards putting on their corporate ties before getting on a rostrum. I left that industry after 11 years and went tertiary teaching. I had the view that, because I was teaching business subjects, I would always wear a jacket and tie when in front of a class. That continued for 17 years, despite the derision of some of my teaching colleagues.

The ties got more flamboyant as Disney characters, animals, kiwifruit and significant events became necktie fashionable. I gave one of those colleagues, who had been appointed director of another polytechnic, a Danny Morrison World Record Duck tie. I included the message, “When it gets tight at the top, just duck.” My Irish clan tie caught the eye of Prime Minister Helen Clark after she had just opened the new Whangārei library in 2006. The tie can be a great conversation starter, even for prime ministers.

It is sad to see the gradual demise of the necktie with the casualisation of the workplace.

But our current mayor, Vince Cocurullo, shows what is possible with sartorial elegance in lifting the image of a person and a role.

What is really interesting though, is the increased usage of the necktie as a fashion accessory for women. You never know, blokes might just catch on again!