War hero 'victim of VC quota system'

Lance-Sergeant Haane Manahi's leadership led to the capture of 200 Axis soldiers at Takrouna. Photo / Supplied

World War II hero Haane Manahi missed out on a Victoria Cross because of an informal "quota" system and Britain's highest-ranking officer overruling recommendations, a new book claims.

Lance-Sergeant Manahi's leadership led to the capture of 200 enemy soldiers in April 1943 at the taking of Takrouna - an imposing 200-metre-high fortification held by German and Italian forces in Tunisia.

The action was one of the Maori Battalion's most celebrated.

The 29-year-old was recommended for the VC - the highest military honour - for his role by seven officers, including the commander of the New Zealand forces, Lieutenant-General Bernard Freyberg, and the British commander Bernard Montgomery.

However, he was instead awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal the following month.

In a biography to be released next month, Victoria Cross at Takrouna: The Haane Manahi Story, historian Paul Moon writes that the chairman of the VC committee and Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Lord Alanbrooke, held the final decision on who was awarded the medal.

There has been a suggestion that a lower-level "unknown official" was responsible, but Moon says that "seems implausible".

"We can exclude everyone else. If we go up the foodchain, we look at the generals in the field, right up as high as Montgomery, who endorses it - there's no one who opposes it.

"Only Alanbrooke has the seniority to overturn the decision."

Moon writes that an informal quota system meant giving Manahi a VC at virtually the same time as Te Moananui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu was awarded the medal posthumously is likely to have swayed Alanbrooke.

The book also makes a point of looking at whether atrocities were committed, specifically Maori soldiers throwing their enemies off ledges.

Moon says it is a nasty accusation that entered the historical record well after the fact by way of lazy historians.

"I examined it, I looked at the evidence. If there was any hint of a war crime it would have been recorded in enemy archives. There was nothing."

Manahi's death in 1986 aged 72 galvanised supporters into lobbying successive Governments and Queen Elizabeth for a posthumous award. They were only partly successful as the Queen refused to change her father's policy that no more VCs for deeds in World War II be awarded after 1949.

Instead, in 2007, in recognition of Manahi's bravery, Prince Andrew on behalf of his mother gifted Te Arawa a special citation for bravery, an altar cloth, letter and sword.

Massey University's Dr John Moremon said it was generally accepted by historians that war crimes were committed at Takrouna but Manahi was not implicated.

Finding someone to blame for the VC controversy served no purpose, when so many did not come home.

"Honour him for what he did regardless of what medal ended up on his chest."

The fight for Takrouna

Haane Manahi did not have orders to take Takrouna Ridge on April 19, 1943.

Instead, the Maori Battalion B Company lance-sergeant was part of a small group of Te Arawa soldiers who were to create a diversion at the base of the 200-metre-high outpost.

One soldier called the base a natural deathtrap, surrounded as it was by walls of cactus booby-trapped with mines.

Manahi's 12-man company had orders to feign an attack on Takrouna's southern pinnacle, which had been ruled out as a point of Allied access because of its steep, forbidding terrain.

They were to keep the enemy busy so others on the more accessible northern side could attack.

After communications broke down, Manahi and his superior, Sergeant Johnny Rogers, who died in the action, decided on an assault up the incline, which was strewn with boulders.

The next morning, 70 to 110 prisoners were marched off the ridge. But Takrouna was far from empty.

Facing sheer rock faces, Manahi and his small band used telephone cables to climb to what was known as the "ledge", then took the pinnacle, which they held for most of the day under fire before Manahi was relieved.