SAS salute one of the family

By Bronwyn Sall

MAHIA - Some of the country's elite soldiers were among the first to see in a subdued Anzac Day dawn as they gathered to honour their only fallen friend buried in New Zealand.

A dozen members and former members of the formidable Special Air Service (SAS) came from around the North Island to the tiny community of Mahia, on the northern tip of Hawkes Bay.

They wanted to attend a dawn service before travelling to Wairoa, 50km away, to visit the grave of Sergeant Graham Campbell, one of two New Zealand SAS soldiers killed in battle and the only one buried here.

As showers gave way to a pastel morning, the SAS men joined about 180 Wairoa locals for toasts and jokes that had the Kaiuku Marae shaking with hearty laughter.

After breakfast came the time for solemnity, as the soldiers and their partners headed to Wairoa Cemetery, each laying a poppy on the plaque marking the grave of Sergeant Campbell.

The soldier was 28 when he died in the Phuoc Tuy province of Vietnam in 1970.

His body was brought back to New Zealand and buried on Waitangi Day.

The only other New Zealand SAS soldier killed in combat, Trooper Albie Thomas, is buried in Malaya.

Sergeant Campbell's wife, Ellen, was left with three young children. She was one of about 20 old friends who knelt by his grave yesterday, tearfully remembering the reserved, good-humoured man.

"I'm just grateful he was brought home when so many weren't," she said.

She later married one of the commanding officers who served with her husband, troop commander Major Terry Culley.

He recalled the war as a special time in the lives of the soldiers, who worked together in small bunches against massive odds.

Major Culley said the pilgrimage made yesterday a special Anzac Day for the SAS family. "Because that's what we are, we're a family."