Finding Owen - Kiwis at war in North Africa

Northland RSA Trust members Brian Towgood, left, and Chas Sibun, right, with author Martyn Thompson.

Writer Martyn Thompson has contributed to local Armistice Day commemorations by working with the Whangārei RSA to future-proof some valuable national war records. They are soldiers' stories, not from the First World War but from WWII, specifically New Zealanders fighting in the Middle East. After Thompson went searching for the grave of his uncle, Owen Gatman, who died in Libya, he became interested in the experience of Kiwis fighting in that WWII theatre. Martyn Thompson tells the story of looking for his lost uncle, and the people he met because of that search.

In 1998 I found a box in my mother's cupboard full of letters sent home from North Africa by her brother Owen Gatman.

Owen was in the 19th and 22nd Battalions and left with the First Echelon of the 2nd Expeditionary Forces to Egypt in January 1940, to fight in Greece, Crete and Libya in 1941. He was killed in Libya during the campaign to relieve Tobruk in November 1941.

Owen was a very skilled letter writer and I thought his words deserved a wider audience so I researched the campaigns, sourced supporting photos and put together a book of his letters, On Active Service, published in 1999 by Longman.

A special edition of the book was used in a project with the Royal New Zealand Returned Soldiers Association (RNZRSA) to raise money for veterans in need, raising $50,000.

The publicity about that campaign led to another old soldier who had known Owen in North Africa contacting me.

Martyn Thompson, with his book <i>Our War</i>, and relics from the North Africa campaign.

He said he was surprised Owen had no known grave and he could draw me a map of the battleground at Sidi Azeiz in Libya were they had buried Owen and a number of his comrades.

I decided to make a tour to Egypt and Libya to follow Owen's and the 2NZEF's progress in the 1941 Libyan campaign. I would try to find where Owen was buried at the battlefield of Sidi Azeiz, which lies in the desert between Tobruk and the Egyptian border. I joined a tour group of mainly British veterans making the same journey.

I did the trip twice, in April 2000 and April 2001, but could not find Owen's grave.

Each time there was a Māori woman in the group: the first one, Moira Rolleston, lost her brother Jack Hayward in Libya; the second, Ngaire Te Paa, lost her brother Wi Te Kowha Hau at El Alamein on November 2, 1942. It was extremely moving to see them reunited with their brothers after 60 years.

The British veterans would talk about their desert war experiences, not just the fighting but the details of what was involved in living and fighting a war in the Sahara, the heat and cold, sand and huge wind storms, flies, dodgy food and limited water.

When I returned home after these trips I knew I needed to capture the experiences of our New Zealand veterans first hand, while they were still with us. By 2000, all were at least 80 years old and time was running out.

I contacted the RSA for names and addresses of veterans and I tracked down others who had fought with Owen - from infantry, artillery, divisional cavalry, medical, transport, ammunition, signals, YMCA, padres, officers and other ranks.

I interviewed about 80, including five women, from 2001 to 2003, and recorded 90 hours of talking.

Most were done face to face, although some were over the phone. Doing these interviews was a wonderful experience.

It was like visiting your favourite uncle and aunt; ''Mum'' would put on the jug and bring out the cuppa and bikkies while ''Dad'' and I chatted in the lounge.

Most of these chaps had never talked about their war experiences before and I think they thought this interview was possibly their last chance to talk about what they did and saw.

Former broadcaster and North Africa veteran Jim Henderson said it best: ''All really had something to say ... something worthwhile, some deserving recognition, some insistent thread to be part of our national fibre.

''Something crying at the door of the years.''