KEY POINTS:
How people laughed when I said I was going see Corporal Willy Apiata, aka Mudguts, recipient of the VC, national hero, SAS soldier. It was the last part of that description that provided the merriment. Here's a joke about interviewing an SAS man. Whatever you ask him he'll answer: name, rank, serial number.
Yes, very funny. I would have tried that one with Apiata but my joke question about whether, when he goes pig hunting, he kills the pigs with his bare hands went down so well that I thought it best not to risk another.
He did laugh but I think that was mostly with relief because it was a question that didn't deserve an answer. (I still think, or like to think, that it's on the cards that he does away with pigs in such fashion.)
There was a bit of palaver about going to see him because it was at SAS headquarters and so we had to sign a form saying we wouldn't take pictures of anything or anyone other than Apiata. Although they would be filming us interviewing him.
They say this is for their archives but I think it's also designed to make you nervous. It's a fair exchange, I suppose - although you just end up with everyone being nervous - because who would want to be Apiata? Not him, I suspect, just at the moment though he did, bless him and his magnificent moustache, try his best not to appear as if he was hating every moment.
He's been given media training since Monday when he appeared on television. I could see why they did it: on telly he was clearly as overwhelmed as anyone would be who had gone from anonymous soldier in a top-secret organisation to national hero overnight.
He was, he says, overwhelmed. "Yes, I was, eh? Just the shock and awe of walking into a room and all of the pressure like that. I wasn't prepared for that. How could anyone prepare themselves for that?"
Good question. But now, I think, he has been over-prepared. He answers questions, well, like an SAS man, so perhaps the training has just made no difference at all. None of which can disguise the fact that he's a good bloke.
I have no doubt he could shoot a hole bang in the middle of my forehead from a block away, but he is, you can still tell, a sweetheart. This might sound an odd thing to say about a bloke who could kill wild pigs with his bare hands. But it's true. I had to ask him (it was in his official biography) about his father, who he hasn't seen for years. He says, "I haven't seen my father for a long time and I'd like to keep my family and my personal life private." It's hard, this, isn't it, I say, becoming a public figure. A little laugh: "I take it one day at a time."
He must have hated the questions about his family, and he didn't answer any, but he was polite and sweet all the way through. At the end he gave me a nice, bristly kiss (again, that might have been partly relief that it was over) when a lot of people would have got all sulky and stayed that way.
He did get animated, just before the kiss, when he asked me to thank everyone who had written to the Herald, and the website, sending him messages of support. He has been genuinely moved. He might have just been doing his job, which he has been forced to say, over and over, but he takes the responsibilities of the VC very seriously. I asked him about valour and what it means and he says, "I understand that's what it's for, but, umm, not just for myself but all my mates here ... Any one of those guys would have done exactly the same thing that I did that night."
In the very unlikely event of all this attention going to his head, it is those mates who will ensure that it doesn't. I know, from having spent the time waiting to see him in the company of other SAS blokes, that they're all a right lot of tricksters. Their idea of fun is, say, to sew up one of the eye slits in a mate's balaclava, or to substitute his magazines with a banana, or to offer to Taser me (one of the military police.)
I'm sure that Apiata is every bit as much the prankster. He certainly has an easy laugh and a great big lovely hero's smile. But here we are, in the CO's office (I know his name but I would have to, of course, boom boom, kill you if I told you) with that bloody film crew; the CO, or "boss" to Apiata; and another SAS bloke, the hero and the journalist at the tail end of his day of interviews. "Hey, that's no worries," he says when I say "thank you for seeing us." They are trained fibbers, these SAS soldiers.
I wondered whether they'd had to twist his arm behind his back, very hard, to convince him to spend a day doing what every fibre of his SAS being must have been screaming out against. But he says, "hey, you know, the public in New Zealand want to know who I am. I'm here talking to you so they know who Willy Apiata is."
I thought he must be someone who is regarding the other soldiers who received citations, but remain anonymous, with something like envy. It's tricky, all of this. The SAS doesn't talk about what it does, and I don't mean just publicly. They don't go around talking to each other about what they've done - that's the way soldiers are. "Hey, part of our ethos is humour and humility and, you know, that's just not the thing you do when you come back from wherever you go. We're humble boys. We just have a beer and get on with our job."
So, of that paradox? "Oh, as you can see, an award of this magnitude ... I don't think it'd be right to keep this away from the public."
Still, he certainly doesn't want to go back over what happened early on the morning in Afghanistan when he picked up his comrade and carried him 70m across rocky ground, through enemy fire, to safety. "[That story] was basically given out in the citation ... I just saw my mate was injured and I needed to get him to safety and I put him up on my shoulder and carried him to safety and rejoined my mates and ... yeah, that's what happened."
It sounds superhuman; it sounds terrifying. "I was frightened for his life. His life was in danger." I did want to know about fear and how it works; because presumably SAS soldiers are trained to use it as a positive force. "You know, I can't really answer that question for you because, like I said, I was doing my job, I was looking after my mate."
I asked him what he loves about this job of his and he said, incredulously, "what's there not to like?" I said, "well, I don't know. It's so secret I don't know anything about it."
"Well, you'd have to do nine months to find out." This is cryptic, so I ask the CO, who says it means "it's very difficult to describe. Only when you've been through the process that we've been through collectively can you really appreciate what it's like."
See how tricky it is? I did find out his nickname - only because an old Army mate of his wrote in to the Herald website and used it; he'd never have volunteered it. "I have a passion for food and that's how it came about." But, Mudguts! What sort of nickname is that for a hero? A very Apiata sort of nickname, you suspect. "I'm here talking to you so they know who Willy Apiata is," he had said. "Well, who is he?" I said. "He's a soldier in the SAS," says Willy Apiata. "Which is a job that you don't talk about?" "Aah, yes." Now that is funny.
Anyone else I would have felt like strangling but for one thing, it is just possible I would have come off second best. And for another, who cares if all he says is that he was doing his job, and taking it day by day and about being on a journey? He's a hero and modest with it. Also, I somehow felt sorry for him. For all his valiant efforts, and he does valiant terrifically well, you can't help but look at him and think that there is not much to envy about having your life turned upside, for doing your job.
Also, you think, there's a bit of wistful thinking contained in a sentence which used to begin, "he's a soldier in the SAS" and will forever now be finished like this: "and the man who won the VC and became a reluctant national hero."
