Three Whangārei veterans tell their stories of service

Peacemaker, sergeant in the NZ Army and then Police, John Larkin Photo / Tania Whyte

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Three Anzacs who will march in today's Dawn Parade talk to Lindy Laird about their overseas duty. Photos / Tania Whyte

Whangarei Police Sergeant John Larkin was a soldier for 20 years after joining the New Zealand Army in 1981.

In the army he was also a sergeant, seeing active duty as a mortar fire controller in the first RNZIR (infantry) battalion into Bosnia with the United Nations force after the genocide years from the early to mid 1990s.

During that time Serbs persecuted Muslims and Croats to carve out a Serbian Republic, killing an estimated 8000 Bosniaks.

Larkin was shaken by the extent of the killings, the destruction and the politics, as much as how people still lived there.

''It was really an eye-opener. Here in New Zealand we are remote but we're a modern and peaceful country.''

The NZ army was part of the UN force there to help the Bosnia restructure.

''There was a fair bit of devastation, everything was demolished. The bridges, the towns, they were blown to bits.

''As little old New Zealanders with that can-do attitude and most of all wanting to help people, we got the job done,'' Larkin said.

''That's the Kiwi way. We treat people as we'd want to be treated, we talk to them. That opened a lot of doors.''

Larkin was out of the army and in the police force when he was posted to East Timor (Timor Leste) with another UN contingent, just after the attempted assassination of new president José Ramos-Horta in February 2008.

''But the rebellious surges were more or less over when we got there,'' he said.

Despite huge political and factional ructions and stepped up security the small, poor, former Portuguese then Indonesian occupied nation continued to work toward self-management with help from UN forces. Larkin's detail was to help build a Timor Leste police force, ''through example as much as official structure''.

Again the New Zealanders showed how you behave toward people and got results. The UN personnel were split up and at first Larkin was with police from Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Kenya and several other countries.

When he was given lead of the Kiwi team he, ''Got the guys out there talking, making things, mixing with people, doing things that help. It was that Kiwi attitude again''.

Percy Blundell

They were for several decades the forgotten returned soldiers, the Vietnam veterans, but that doesn't bother Whangārei man Percy Blundell.

It was adventure he went looking for as a young soldier, not recognition.

He survived the war without injury and his health seems unaffected by being doused with or even drinking the water after the US drops of defoliant Agent Orange.

Private Blundell was a lead scout with Victor 5 Company (infantry), and served in Vietnam from May 1970 to about May 1971. His company and an Australian one were based in a rubber plantation which had once also been home to two villages, long destroyed, at Nui Dat, in Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam.

In May 1967, the first Victor Company of the RNZIR arrived in South Vietnam from Malaysia, followed by W (Whiskey) Company in December.

NZSAS was also based at Nui Dat from December 1968 until February 1971, attached to an Australian SAS Squadron, and was involved in intelligence gathering and ambush operations.

Blundell plays down his role as lead scout out there in the jungle, in front of a fighting force, in Viet Cong territory.

''It didn't matter who you were, you were as safe anyone else. Normally you were backed up by your men.''

He described the willingness to volunteer for that active service as the equivalent of ''any young Kiwi wanting to head off on their OE''.

''It was an adventure and we thought we were bullet proof. We soon changed out minds about that.''

Blundell's company lost four men in battle; 37 New Zealand men died on active service in Vietnam and 187 were wounded.

The army did not send any servicemen to the war who did not want to go.

''We were all volunteers. I did my three years in the army and then got out,'' Blundell said.

Retired now, he worked for many years in wholesale meat deliveries.

He would march in today's Dawn Parade as he does every year; it's an event that is important to him

But every two years there's another very special old soldiers' reunion - a fun, friendly social weekend somewhere in New Zealand for the families and men of V 5 Company.

Wayne Brasch

Wayne Brasch came in from the cold.

When Wayne Brasch joined the army he never imagined one day he'd be one of only about five passengers on a 300-seater plane flying into a deserted Moscow airport during the Cold War.

It was in 1979/80, and Brasch could thank then prime minister Rob Muldoon for the turn of events that led to doing a security stint in New Zealand's Russian embassy.

Muldoon had expelled the Russian ambassador to NZ for delivering money to the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party, and in turn the Soviet Union kicked out our ambassador, Jim Weir.

Weir later wrote about having to sleep with official documents stuffed in his pyjamas, waiting for the KGB to get really serious, so tense were relationships.

Brasch was in the NZ military police, three of whom at a time were posted to Moscow in the aftermath of ambassador-gate to protect the lovely 200-year old embassy building — a piece of NZ, in the diplomatic world.

The security team followed NZ army engineers who had carried out structural repairs and maintenance.

Brasch would do two stints in Moscow. For his first, he underwent SIS intelligence briefing here and was sent for ''about an hour'' more with MI5 in England on his way to the Soviet Union. Then it was that weird flight into Moscow escorted the last leg to the empty airport by Mig fighter jets.

There was little chance to socialise outside the embassy staff and even those staff weren't ideal company because everyone was potentially working for the KGB, Brasch said.

''It was a very solitary job, very tense at times, smack in the middle of the Cold War.

''At that particular time they were very vigilant about the west, there were active CIA spies up there and I've no doubt from several other countries. There were games being played. It was pretty daunting place to be and especially for young men who were not properly trained for it.

''We just had to be very careful. We were followed, we were watched, listened to, they tried to trap us. We would get approached and asked to do currency deals, all embassies were treated the same.''

The only way he could talk to family was very occasionally, via the diplomatic phone.

''We gave up, the KGB was listening all the time.''

Brasch later realised there may not have been absolute support in place should he have got into strife. That army security job wasn't recognised as operational military service until March last year.

During his second Moscow embassy posting in 1986, ''Chernobyl went up.''

''I actually heard about it on the radio, on the BBC. I thought 'where the hell is Chernobyl?'

''I phoned the Americans and asked them about it and by the time [ambassador Alison Stokes] got back in, I could tell her and the other embassy staff what we had to do.''

Brasch also saw service in South East Asia and Hong Kong, then after 10 years in the army joined the police where he worked for 17 years, mainly in South Auckland. He left the police and moved to Whangārei several years ago.

He belongs to the RSA ''but not actively'', although every year on Anzac Day he's up at dawn for the morning muster.

''It's amazing. It's a huge parade, and it's so good to see all those people, young and old, show their respect.''