Burgers, brawls and romance during War times

Wendell Perkins (left), Jack Gillespie (centre) and Jimmy Dukes have happy memories of their time stationed in New Zealand.

Former United States Marine Wendell Perkins has many happy memories of when he was stationed at Paekakariki during World War II but the hamburgers are not one of them.

Private Perkins, just 18 when he arrived in New Zealand on May 15, 1943, was stationed at Camp Russell, at McKay's Crossing near Paekakariki, north of Wellington. Along with the tens of thousands of other US servicemen there he found himself missing some home comforts.

"One enterprising New Zealander opened a hamburger stall in Paekakariki. I walked the two miles [3.2km] down there and ordered eight," Mr Perkins, 81, said.

"I bit into it and it was mutton - I littered the highway all the way back to camp."

Mr Perkins was speaking at a Porirua Pataka Museum exhibition in San Francisco dedicated to the US Marines.

The hamburger was not Mr Perkins' only problem with New Zealand culture, despite the efforts of the friendly locals. "They opened their hearts and their homes to us.

"People came out of their homes and invited us to 'tea'. I turned them down a few times because I didn't realise that tea meant dinner - I didn't like to drink tea."

Mr Perkins and the other Marines were stationed in New Zealand to counter the threat of the Japanese in the Pacific. The first ship, USS Wakefield, arrived on June 14, 1942, and the Marines finally shipped out in November 1944 to join the war in earnest.

Former Sergeant Jimmy Dukes, 82, had one standout memory of his time in New Zealand - his girlfriend Fay Barnett.

Mr Dukes, of Oakland, near San Francisco, had been brought to New Zealand to Silverstream Hospital at Upper Hutt after his leg was injured by a Japanese mortar at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

He said everywhere the Americans went in New Zealand, they were treated with great kindness, including when 750 of them were taken on a 10-day holiday to the South Island.

"On the ship we spun the wheel and got a number that coincided with a family who took us into their home."

Mr Dukes went to a farm at Oxford, in North Canterbury, along with another Marine. He met Miss Barnett while he was there. "We were deeply in love but we finally wrote each other and said 'I'll go my way and you go yours'," when the distance became too much to overcome, he said.

"In those days the only way to get back to New Zealand was by ship - it took me 31 days."

It may have been the end of the romance but it was not the end of the friendship. "We got back together and went all over the South Island with her hubby, so I guess there were no hard feelings," he said.

"I used to go back every five years to New Zealand but we've all got so old and dilapidated that it's kind of fallen away."

He is planning one more trip to New Zealand next March, with his son and family but sadly, Mr Dukes said, his former sweetheart had died of cancer since his last visit.

Unlike Mr Dukes, San Franciscan Mr Perkins did not find love in New Zealand. "Me? No! I was a mere child. I celebrated my 19th birthday there."

Fellow San Francisco resident Jack Gillespie, 89, a former staff sergeant in the Marines, said he had not made it back to New Zealand but had been as far as Australia, where he has family.

Unlike the 1600 Marines who had been stationed in New Zealand but were later killed at Tarawa atoll, Mr Gillespie did not see any action. "I never got close to any fighting - I was a lover, not a fighter."

Mr Dukes did not remember any trouble with the New Zealand men despite the Marines' friendship with the local women ("We had no competition - they were all gone") but there was some other friction in Wellington.

"There was a problem with the English Navy. We had a big drag-out at the Allied Service Club. I think there were six square blocks of fighting."

Mr Dukes was not injured in the fracas. "No, no, I survived okay."

Mr Dukes' leg injury did not improve enough for full duties and he was sent back to the United States in August 1943 for another operation.

A watchmaker by trade, when a recession hit the United States in 1949, he "took the exam" and became a prison officer at San Francisco's infamous Alcatraz on an island in the middle of the bay, and then later became a member of the California Highway Patrol, made famous in New Zealand by the 1970s and 80s television show CHiPs. "We didn't like [the show] that much."

Also present at the San Franciso show of the Marines' time in New Zealand, staged during the launch of the Toi Maori: Art from the Maori People of New Zealand exhibition, were former Marines Chief Johnny, Merle Hamilton and Ken Goulthart.

Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast spoke about her mother's experience of the Marines on their South Island trip. "My mother said in the two weeks the Marines were in Christchurch, she had 14 proposals and she was just 16."

Rotorua Deputy Mayor Trevor Maxwell also spoke about the lasting impression the Marines left.

"I wasn't born when you came to Rotorua but I do have a lot of relations that are related to you - you did come for recreation."

- NZPA