One family's sacrifice

By JO-MARIE BROWN

A tent in the backyard of a Rotorua house during World War II became a poignant, if temporary, reminder of the extraordinary sacrifice made by the Douglas family.

Before they left home to fight for the Allies, the Douglas brothers - Adrian, Wallace and Herby - used to sleep in the tent.

Only Herby came back from the war, but the tent remained.

"Dad just left the tent there," said the men's young brother, Ivan.

"He never took it down. I used to play in it, but eventually it just rotted away."

The Douglas men were three of about 30 people in the extended family who went overseas to fight. Six, including Adrian and Wallace, were killed.

Ivan was 3 and his sister Imelda was 7 when the men went off to war.

Adrian and Wallace sailed to Canada with the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1940. Herby also joined the Air Force, serving as ground crew in the Pacific.

Three years later, Adrian and Wallace were shot down and killed, Adrian over Germany at the age of 23, Wallace off the coast of Norway at 21.

The only opportunity their younger siblings had to get to know them was through their letters and later their diaries, which were brought home by their New Zealand comrades.

"They never said they were scared," Imelda said.

"They just spoke glowingly of the people they met and talked about their training."

The younger Douglases remember reading their brothers' letters, which arrived with newspaper clippings and the latest Frank Sinatra records, and listening to the radio on Sunday evenings to hear messages broadcast from servicemen stationed in England.

But they also remember the post office official who arrived all too often on the doorstep with a telegram in his hand.

"Of course, Mum and them knew as soon as they saw him that it was bad news," Imelda recalls.

The seven Douglas children who were praying at home in Rotorua for their relatives' safe return lost two brothers, an uncle and three cousins during the war.

"It left a terribly big gap in the family," Imelda said. "It was a hugely traumatic time."

She and Ivan remember the sadness that enveloped their family following the news of each death.

But their parents and eldest brother Herby suffered the most.

"To this day, Herby has never got over being separated from them," Imelda said.

"They were all so close in age and did everything together. All of a sudden there was this huge gap in his life."

Ivan recalls his father saying in later years that he regretted letting his sons go off to war.

But the excitement of joining the Air Force, overseas travel and patriotic fervour swept up the three brothers, and they quickly resigned their jobs.

Herby was an apprentice mechanic, Adrian an apprentice electrician, and Wallace a printer.

"They couldn't get over there quick enough," Ivan said.

In the early 1940s, Rotorua was a timber and tourism town of around 10,000 people.

Many residents left to fight, and 98 were killed in action.

But in Rotorua, the absent chunk of the population was replaced by an influx of Army and Air Force recruits at training camps in places such as Arawa Park and Rerewhakaaitu.

The arrival of American soldiers seeking R&R among the thermal surrounds also ensured Rotorua remained a lively town during the war years.

Imelda and Ivan's father, Edward Te Rangi Tuataka Taimona Douglas, was a member of the home guard, and their mother, Marguerite Rurangi Douglas, played piano at patriotic dances held in local halls.

Marguerite also knitted woollen gloves, scarves and socks to send to servicemen overseas, put together food parcels and wrote letters up to 50 pages long to her sons and their friends to bolster their spirits.

Both parents were shattered by the loss of Adrian and Wallace.

Although they tried to hide their grief from the younger children, Imelda remembers the house - normally full of music and laughter - falling silent after each telegram arrived.

"There was no counselling in those days," Imelda said.

"They had to bear everything and get through it as best they could because they had all of us to look after so they had to keep going."

Life did carry on for the Douglas family, although it was never the same.

Marguerite Douglas often turned to the piano to express her anger, sorrow and grief.

"Music was a great release, a healer for her," Ivan said.

"But the whole thing really took its toll on Mum because she ended up with a weak heart and died in 1955."

Fifty years after her brothers' deaths, framed photographs of the handsome young men in Air Force uniforms hang on Imelda's walls.

The family treasure their mother's worn notebook in which she traced the movements of those who went overseas to fight, and the dates on which they died or returned safely home.

Also stored away are heart-wrenching photographs of their uncle burying his brother in Libya and Canadian newspaper articles featuring pictures of Adrian and Wallace.

The mementos and Imelda and Ivan's childhood memories are a strong reminder to them about the futility of war.

"This family well and truly gave the cream of their youth to the war," Imelda said.

The impact of losing so many young men was felt throughout New Zealand and sorrow was not confined to families.

"Rotorua was a small town in those days so everyone knew each other. The grief of neighbours and friends was all shared," Imelda explained.

When the servicemen came home from the war, rehabilitation and training programmes quickly helped them return to the workforce.

The biggest hurdle for many was readjusting to civilian life and coping with the loss of loved ones.

On Anzac Day each year, Herby Douglas, now 84 and in poor health, lays out a row of small crosses - one for each family member killed in action - beneath a memorial at Rotorua's lakefront.

Herby named his own children Adrienne and Wallace, and Ivan believes his family have come to appreciate each other more for having suffered such loss during the war.

"We were a big family," he said.

"But not as big as we should have been."


Herald Feature: Anzac Day

Highlights of the 2002 Anzac photo exhibition: