CHB Home Guard photo: Can you help with names?

Home Guard Platoon 1941-1942, Central Hawke's Bay.

CHB farmer David Petersen would love to know the missing names of these Home Guards, all thought to be from Farm Road, Middleton Road and Arlington Road Waipukurau.

So far he has the names of his father Carl Petersen, Harry Coats, Bob Bennett, Cliff Schroder, Sid Thomson, Frank Sainsbury, Bill Hall and Colin Cook.

As a child, David remembers watching his father's Home Guard platoon training on his father's farm.

"They used to have a target range. On of the guards would stand down in the creek and hold up a target, the bullets would go through the target and into the bank behind. If you put a metal detector over that bank it would be full of bullets.

"I saw them digging trenches. They were really concerned about the Japanese landing on the coastline. The Home Guard wouldn't have lasted two seconds but they were prepared to fight for their homes.

"The trenches are still here on the farm, although the blackberries have grown over them."

David also watched the soldiers making ammunition by opening the ends of shotgun cartridges and pouring in melted candle wax before re-sealing them.

"It would come out like a bullet."

David says the photograph, which belonged to his father, always intrigued him.

"There's my father with a machine gun. I never saw them with a machine gun - it must have been borrowed. As a six or seven-year-old I would have noticed a machine gun.

"I do remember the convoys coming through Waipukurau. They had a Jeep, a Valentine tank and an anti-aircraft gun. They'd pull up in St Mary's Road in Waipukurau near the primary school.

"I remember sitting in the seat turning the handle on the anti-aircraft gun. It was very exciting as a small child. I think the convoys were to build morale."

David had a larger photo of the entire Waipukurau Home Guard, taken under large elm trees on the Waipukurau Primary School field. He has donated that picture to the Central Hawke's Bay Museum.

"But I have kept this smaller one as it was my father's platoon and consisted of men from the Farm Road, Middleton Road and Arlington Road area.

"I'd love to know who the others in the picture were. I'm hoping people will look at the photo and say 'look, there's my grandfather,' and pass on the names."

If you can supply any more names, please email editorial@chbmail.co.nz or message CHB Mail on Facebook.