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Home
 My Uncle John was born on 17 November 1921, and spent his childhood as a farm-worker's son at Omahina, 11 km inland from Waverley. My mother was Uncle John's twin sister. They were both attended St Joseph's Convent School from the beginning of 1927 until the end of 1934, then both went straight to work, Johnny as a farmhand and truck-driver. Uncle John's photo and war mementos were on our mantelpiece in the 1940s and 50s. For years I wore a watch he had brought back from Italy. Later he told me stories of his night patrols into No Man's Land in central Italy. He and a mate came to a cold stone barn on a pitch dark night. He gently opened the heavy barn door and they could suddenly hear the ticking of the watches of sleeping German soldiers. His mate tossed a grenade into the barn while Johnny dived for cover behind the door. He was wounded at El Alamein, then Castel Frenanto, and they kept patching him up and sending him back to the front lines. The third time in northern Italy he was close to an artillery shell explosion and had no flesh wounds but he got “shell-shock." He was in the army 5 years and spent 18 months of it in hospital, including 6 months after the war ended, recovering from shell-shock. Uncle John's photo and war mementos had pride of place on my older aunts' mantelpiece. 1. I was given a copy of my uncle's war record |
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2. I copied each entry onto a spreadsheet (a) I then found the online war history of the battalion Uncle John was posted to. (b) For each date on Uncle John's record sheet I looked up where his battalion was located
and what it was doing.
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| Entered Central Districts Military Camp (Linton) | 16 4 1941 | |||
| Admitted to Camp Hosp | 22 4 1941 | |||
| Day patient at Racecourse Hosp | 14 6 1941 | |||
| Sick leave | 23-26 6 1941 | |||
| Transferred to No. 1 Training Battalion | 30 6 1941 | |||
| Admitted to Camp Hospital | 21 7 1941 | |||
| Transferred to xxxxx 5 Wellington Hospital | 22 7 1941 | |||
| Moved In from Area 5 xxxxx | 6 8 1941 | |||
| 7 days sick leave | 6 8 1941 | |||
| M/In from sick leave | 13 8 1941 | |||
| M/I to 2nd Field Training Depot, em HM Transport 31432 | ||||
| entered Egypt | 20 10 1941 | |||
| Admitted 3 NZ Gen Hosp from C 2nd Field Training Depot | 27 10 1941 | |||
| Discharged from Gen Hosp to HQ Base R D | 7 11 1941 | |||
| Moved Out to C 2nd Field Training Depot from HQ Base | 11 11 1941 | |||
| 1-27 7 1942 | First Battle of El-Alamein | |||
| M/O posted to 22 Btn Middle East | 29 7 1942 | Troopship left Wellington harbour | ||
| M/I to 22 Btn | 6 8 1942 | Troopship | ||
| transferred to 31 Btn | 6 8 1942 | Rommel's failed gamble | ||
| M/O posted to 18 Btn | 6 8 1942 | Two batches of reinforcements, totalling 220, brought 18 Btn up to something like full strength again early in August, | ||
| Battle Casualty, Wounded in Action | 1 9 1942 | 3rd day of the Battle of Alam el Halfa (30 August – 5 September 1942), | ||
| 18 Battalion War History page 318 | ||||
| FIVE MONTHS IN HOSPITAL, |
Second (Main) Battle of El Alamein 23 10 1942 to 4 11 1942) |
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| TWO MORE MONTHS CONVALESCING | ||||
| Discharged from hospital to 1NZ Convalescent Depot | 9 2 1943 | |||
| Tranferred to 31 Btn Training Depot | 13 4 1943 | |||
| Tranferred to 32 Btn | 15 4 1943 | |||
| M/O att f.AP. to 2NZ Gd Coy ex | 21 5 1943 | |||
| M/I CBTA No 2 Guard Coy to 32 Btn | 16 6 1943 | |||
| M/I posted to 25 Btn | 7 7 1943 | 25
battalion War History |
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| M/O alt NZ Field Pk Centre (Guard) | 18 8 1943 | Read Chapter 9 from page 314 | ||
| 2nd NZ Div. landed at Taranto, Italy | 5 10 1943 | and then Chapter 10 (Next Section) | ||
| Crossed Sangro R. Battle for Castelfrentano | 28 11 1943 | at page 341 Johnny got concussion from an enemy artillery explosion | ||
| Umt nep Battle Casualty Effects of Blast | 1 12 1943 | |||
| Discharged from hospital | 5 12 1943 | Rejoined 25th Bttn on page 352, held front lines in deep snow | ||
| Battle for Cassino February, March, April 1944 | ||||
Discharged from hospital |
5 12 1943 | NZ Div rested May June. Took Arezzo in July | ||
| Johnny
did night patrols for many months. To experience his war,
interloan this novel |
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| “The Long Day’s Dying” by Alan White, from any public library. | ||||
| Battle Casualty, Effects of Blast | 19 10 1944 | at Pisciatello, north of Rimini. | ||
| THREE WEEKS IN HOSPITAL | ||||
| Discharged from Hospital | 13 11 1944 | |||
| WAR in Europe ENDED | 8 5 1945 | |||
| Admitted NZ Advanced Base Camp Hospital | 23 7 1945 | |||
| Discharged NZ Advanced Base Camp Hospital | 24 7 1945 | |||
| M/I att Area 6 wef Wellington | 1 10 1945 | |||
| M/I to Area 6 |ool on Th WOP Wellington | 9 1 1946 | |||
| Discharged 2ip 26F w e f Area 6 | 9 1 1946 |
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3. I marked on a map where Uncle John was, what he was doing, and what the conditions were like. The season of each advance is coloured: Autumn - Winter - Spring - Summer
The numbers
are the relevant pages in 25
battalion War History
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4. The next step will be to take all this information and put it into an essay format. |
webpage put on internet
15 August 2026