16
ENDINGS
On 8 May 1945, came the wonderful news that Germany had surrendered unconditionally. There was not the wild exhilaration one would have expected in Maadi Camp. The news was received with quiet relief that at last this ghastly nightmare was over. It is true that we took over the Officers’ Club that night and it cost us about five pounds each the next day to repair the damage. We paid without protest. The nightclubs of Cairo were a shambles of course, but considering the circumstances, they fared remarkably well.
The Ballad of Going Home
We piled into trucks and began the first step of our long road home. As we passed out the gate, the General, tall, a little older with battle wounds was standing there waving to us all. I have shaken the hand of Freyberg twice, and once received his letter, but no gesture is closer to a soldier’s heart than this cheery wave. Once or twice when things were bad, and tank shells and bullets hurtling by, he had appeared, standing up unscathed and unconcerned, and given us that same wave. It had done more than endear him to us – it had given us some little of his courage ... Anyway, we waved at him, some cheered. Some called out, ‘Good old Tiny,’ and the big man smiled. Thus we passed out of his command.
‘The Div’
There are few who served with the Division who will not carry its imprint on their personalities for the rest of their days. It had a life and being of its own which was shared in this war by few divisions ... Throughout the years the formations and units remained basically unchanged, and the men who led them remained with the force throughout. From the companies and platoons upwards, men dealt not with strangers, but with people they knew, and knew well. The signature at the bottom of a difficult or irritating order was not just that of ‘some bloody staff officer’ but of the chap who had D Company at Enfidaville or who had got the M.C. the day the Huns shelled the ammo dump in the Inferno Track.
Modern mobile warfare also helped to build up the spirit of the Division. For in this war it was possible for the ordinary soldier to get an impression not only of his own unit, but of the whole force to which it belonged. As he stood by the roadside waiting to embus he might see the greater part of the Division go past, feel pride in its strength, and identify himself with every part of it. Those tanks leading the way, the guns bumping behind their quads, the signallers, even the Div. Hygiene Sec. and the Mobile V.D. Unit, even the bludgers staring from the trucks of Battalion, Brigade and Divisional Headquarters, were the same brown-faced sceptical Kiwis or Digs as in his own unit. Freyberg in every way encouraged this sense of separate identity.
The Division had the further advantage of common origin. We were a segment of New Zealand life transferred overseas ... Men who are fighting alongside their fellows from their own town, alongside men who will remember their success or failure throughout the rest of their lives, have strong incentives to do their best. You cannot let a man down if you are going to meet him in the street every remaining day of your life.
Often I marvelled at the wonderful spirit of comradeship that grew up among this cosmopolitan group of citizens turned soldiers with their sprinkling of regular force officers and non-commissioned officers ... It is my firm conviction that the New Zealand soldier fighting in World War II was among the best disciplined soldiers in the world. His discipline under fire was superb, his response to leadership spontaneous, his execution of orders intelligent, and his attention to personal cleanliness and hygiene even in the most impossible conditions, unbelievable.
End of a Famous Division
The famous 2nd New Zealand Division for all practical purposes has ceased to exist. Except for administrative parties clearing up in Italy and the Middle East, the Division now consists of a Brigade group of about 4000 men who are intended as the New Zealand contribution to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan. This group, known as Jayforce, will become autonomous and the division will then have been dissolved.
The cost to New Zealand of the division’s maintenance in the field from Greece to Trieste has been heavy. Almost 10,000 of its men died in battle and the total casualties were more than 25,000. In the years to come the burden of the loss upon a country so small will be difficult to sustain. Yet in terms of achievement, the cost has not been out of proportion, for the division had its due share in the silencing of the Hitlerian thunder.
One valuable legacy for the men of the division is a maturity unobtainable save for the exceptional few in a country so insular as New Zealand. Thousands of young men who fought in the division have discovered understanding, both of themselves and of those with whom they mixed and fought. Their propagation of the discovery will be a valuable contribution toward the battle of the peace.
This is not to imply that the division always comprised earnest young men. On the contrary, among those who knew it the reputation for eccentricity of its members was outstanding. It invariably referred in terms of the fiercest affection to its commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg VC, who himself was given to conducting animated, friendly discussions with hilarious privates who had just hailed him with the famously inconsequential nickname of ‘Tiny’. Yet in no division of the Eighth Army was discipline better.
Perhaps one of the finest and most enduring of General Freyberg’s accomplishments as a commander was his understanding of, and pride in, his men. They called their officers by their Christian names and insisted on a man-to-man understanding, they dressed outlandishly and their criticism of ‘spit and polish’ was unrestrained, though they could present an extremely smart turn-out when the occasion required. When the word was passed down that there was a job in hand, there was never any question of other than implicit obedience and there could be, and was, exhibited a dourness of concentration upon the task which was remarkable. In this way was endured the horror of Crete; the turmoil of Sidi Rezegh; the errors of Ruweisat Ridge, most expensive of divisional engagements; the ghastly bareness of Monastery Hill above Cassino; merging in the mind into Alamein, the sweep around Mareth, the incredible days of the break-out across the River Po and the long gallop to Trieste. To each of its tasks the division brought this dour quality, a grimness of determination almost fantastic in its unexpressed intensity.
The war is over, and there is no place, except in the memory, for the 2nd Division. Irrationally, the men who fought in it for the day when it no longer would be required feel regret and sadness that the time of dissolution has come.
Far too much has happened in those grim years for all to be forgotten. It is a matter of pride to know of the division’s esteem among the people of the Commonwealth and among the people of the United Kingdom especially. It is also a matter of pride to remember personal membership of the division. There could be no comparable experience.
It was Grim, Mighty Grim, at the War
Returned Soldier
Postscript
There was nothing left to fear in the world. No more physical terrors anyhow. After the experiences of the past four years that’s how many of us felt, I believe.
Only ourselves and that baffling reticence, intrusive and unwanted; a sort of involuntary shyness, it seemed then. We needed to snap out of it and get back to normality. Those shadows in the mind had no definition, couldn’t be measured. They could only be residual impressions, the husks of memory. Throw them out.
This effect is poignantly expressed by Germaine Greer in Daddy We Hardly Knew You (A.A. Knopf 1990):
The nervous disorders emerged quickly in some cases, only slowly in others. Men I knew during those years ... were to find their lives disrupted and degraded by psychological hang-ups. By 1950 a recurring depression had hit me and a series of blackouts would follow a few years later. Other blokes were plagued by nightmares, hallucinations, identity crises, claustrophobia, a fear of flying, agoraphobia and a raft of other anxiety neurosis. Some would turn to the bottle. Some would be impotent. Some would opt out.
The Dead
Everything that was good from that small, remote country had gone into them – sunshine and strength, good sense, patience, the versatility of practical men. And they marched into history.