A meeting 66 years in the making

Harry Grey finally met Margaret Stinson, the granddaughter of mate Don McKenzie, after she saw him in the Herald. Picture / Paul Estcourt

When 24-year-old Harry Grey lined up at the Trentham army camp as a volunteer in 1940 he was given his service number of 35119.

Another volunteer, 38-year-old Don McKenzie, must have been standing in the line just three behind him as he was issued with number 35122 at the Upper Hutt military base.

Mr Grey survived nearly four years of the war, including the battles of Crete and El Alamein.

But on September 3, 1942, Mr McKenzie was killed in action in Egypt.

The two had served together as signalmen in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Mr Grey helped bury his mate in a shallow grave from where the body was identified and later shifted to the official El Alamein cemetery.

It was after a trip to the cemetery in 2002 that Mr Grey learned Mr McKenzie was from Sandringham, only a couple of suburbs away from his home at Mt Roskill which he built after he returned from the war.

He made it his mission to find Mr McKenzie's family. He tried through his community paper but failed to come up with leads.

But after Mr Grey featured in the Herald's Anzac Day coverage last month, he got the result he was waiting for.

Mr McKenzie's granddaughter Margaret Stinson contacted the Herald wanting to meet Mr Grey. This week the two got together.

Mrs Stinson, 54, showed Mr Grey wartime photos of the grandfather she never knew, for the first time getting explanations of where they were taken.

"That's Don, no doubt about it," said Mr Grey.

There were photos Mr Grey wanted to show her too, from the 60th anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein where he found Mr McKenzie's grave.

They included the service Mr Grey and others held in respect for him with a Maori cloak draped over the grave.

Mrs Stinson said getting in touch with Mr Grey meant a lot to her mother, Betty Ion, who was just eight years old when her father left for the war.

"She can remember his last words to her at the Auckland Railway Station 'make sure you clean your teeth'."

Mrs Stinson hoped her 74-year-old mother, who now lives in Kerikeri, could meet Mr Grey herself. Mr McKenzie had worked as a lineman before the war, and his passion, like Mr Grey's, was motorbike racing. Mr Grey now has only one last question.

He recalls Mr McKenzie telling him he was sending an Italian Moto Guzzi motorcycle back to New Zealand in bits. The family are not aware of any parts, but Mr Grey knows they are out there somewhere.

"I wonder how much of the motorbike did he manage to get sent back?".


The quick and clean death of an army signalman

The death of Don McKenzie, by an unknown soldier:

"As it happens I was not more than 100 yards from him when he was killed, but I didn't know at the time that it was he that had been hit. A single German plane had been going up and down our area for some time, starting just after dark, and had been dropping small bombs and flares all around us. Then some time about 10pm, if I remember rightly, he dropped a big bomb that sounded like it was coming through our bivvie tent. At this stage Don and another chap arrived in a five ton truck and pulled up not 100 yards away. Don was jumping from the left hand door of the truck, probably intending to make for a trench nearby, when the bomb, a 1000 pounder, landed not 10 yards from the truck and in a line with the door of the truck. Don got the full force of the burst and was killed instantly. He never knew what hit him. For all we know he may not have even heard the bomb coming, in fact if the motor of the truck was still running, he probably didn't. Tell Mary that he died the quickest and cleanest death that anyone could wish for ... he was buried alongside the truck which was absolutely riddled ... I hope Mary and Betty have recovered from the shock."