The weather at the Petone Working Men’s Club was dreary on the Saturday afternoon I visited. The light rain sprinkled timidly sideways, pushed horizontal by the crisp autumn wind blowing in off Wellington Harbour. It threatened to pour, but never quite found the courage to unleash itself.
The club was a two-storey dark blue metal structure that stood in the shadows of the bright orange hardware store to the rear, and the yellowy-brown cigarette factory to the right of it, coloured and stained like a chain smoker’s teeth.
Photo: Supplied
I entered the club through a pair of double-doors to the side, which led me through to a dimly-lit reception area from where you could either enter a modern-looking restaurant area, or go up a flight of stairs that twisted their way to what was known as the Anzac Room, the home of the Lower Hutt Memorial RSA.
I was here to meet with veterans ahead of Anzac day; to hear their stories, their perspectives, and their feelings. I had no idea what I was in for, or how willing they’d be to talk candidly. As I ran up the stairs, typically late and looking even more disorganised and shambolic than usual, I found Jim Hogg, Peter Gooch, Innes McNeil and Peter Stitt gathered near the window.
“That won’t stop the boys,” said Hogg, remarking on what, for Wellington, was pretty settled Autumn weather as he stared across the road to the rugby field at the Petone Recreation Ground. “They’ve played in worse before.”
“It’s the big annual game between Lower Hutt and Petone,” explained Peter Gooch. “Last year Lower Hutt gave Petone a good butt-whooping. We’re out for revenge this year.” I couldn’t help but feel I was holding them up from being part of a very important game.
The Anzac Room was typical of many other RSAs I’d been in. The polished wooden bar, offering none of that fancy craft beer stuff. It was Export Gold, Speights or Tui, at prices that were eye-wateringly cheap.
The red, patterned carpet had seen better days, trampled by thousands of feet and walking sticks over the years. A display cabinet packed with medals, shields and trophies led to a maroon feature wall at the north end, with the RSA roll of honour board taking pride of place above ceremoniously crossed-over New Zealand and Australian flags.
We took our seats at a table in the centre of the room, looked down on by the piercing, emotionless eyes of some of the country’s most decorated and celebrated soldiers whose portraits were lined up across the wall; Charles Upham, Willie Apiata, Bernard Freyberg. We ended up sitting there, chatting away for well over two hours.
Innes McNeil
Innes McNeil was the eldest of the group I spoke to that day, a World War II veteran, one of a group that is fast in decline.
He joined the Air Force as a flight mechanic as an 18-year-old and was posted to the Pacific where he spent most of his time stationed at Bougainville. Now an autonomous province of Papua New Guinea, the island was at the time the scene of fierce battles between allied forces and the Japanese, who were spreading closer to Australia and New Zealand.
“We were responsible for the whole aeroplane, other than the engine. We had a three month training programme... and then we were posted,” said McNeill. “On Bougainville, us Kiwis did everything with the plane, whereas the Americans had a specialist for every part, which was extraordinary! There’d be something wrong with the electrics and they’d be like ‘I can’t do that, I only deal with tyres!’”
Mr McNeill spoke of having friends and family die within months of each other, and the months of isolation in the tropics of the Pacific. “I can remember [a plane] crashed on landing. About six blokes in it, they were killed because it burst into flames straight away. That wasn’t very nice sorting that.”
For him Anzac day was a time of reflection, and remembering his father, uncle – who he never met – and those he fought alongside, but didn’t make it back. “There aren’t many of us left,” he said. “I’m fortunate to be still here, but there’s plenty who aren’t.”
Having been to every Anzac service since he was young, Mr McNeill said that he had noticed significant change. “It used to just be us for our march. But every year, more and more people are turning out – especially the young ones – that’s fantastic to see because they’re interested. Thinking of my father, he never spoke of the war, and it wasn’t until after he died that there were many questions that I wanted to ask. They’re interested now, which is really great.”
Peter Gooch
A tall, slender man originally from England, Peter Gooch was posted to Germany in the late 1940s as part of the occupying. While he never saw conflict, Mr Gooch said there were times when things were tense. “If we wanted to go to town for a drink, we’d have to change into our civvies (out of uniform),” he said. “But then again, it wasn’t all bad. We had a lot of Germans working on base with us that we worked really well with.”
Mr Gooch shared Innes McNeill’s recollections about generations before him, and how he knows nothing about their roles in past wars: “My father had two fingers missing. One day, I came out and I said ‘What happened to your fingers?’ And he said, ‘oh, I got shrapnel in that finger so they took that one off, [but] they found out it was the wrong finger so they took that one off as well.’
“That’s all he told me, though.”
Peter Stitt
Peter Stitt was the quietest member of the group, and the only one with shades of brown still in his hair. He seemed quite content just leaning back, intently listening to everyone else, let alone sharing his own story. But when it came around to his turn he revealed that he was posted as an electrician with the New Zealand Forces Medical Team in Vietnam in 1969. “I was fortunate... we were quite some distance up the country and quite a way from where the rest of the New Zealanders were.
“The team was responsible for the training of the Vietnamese in a 100-bed hospital, and for a young man from Devonport it was quite an eye-opener,” he said. “As you would expect in a war zone, there were a lot of war casualties; gunshot wounds and that sort of thing.”
The Vietnam campaign was very controversial in New Zealand, not receiving the aura and heroism surrounding veterans of earlier campaigns. But Peter Stitt said that wasn’t an issue for him, and despite the politics he remained proud of the contribution he made. “I believe we did a very good job there [in the hospital], I was one of the team members and we all pitched in to help each other when the need was there.”
“It was a funny old war, because at one end of the land you had New Zealanders shooting at people and at the other end of the land you had people patching them up.
“But then again, I guess that’s the stupidity of the whole thing.”
Jim Hogg
Opposite from Peter Stitt was Jim Hogg, the youngest and definitely the chattiest of the group. Mr Hogg served as a peacekeeper in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province.
“When I attend Anzac Day myself, I think of the mates we’ve trained with and lost... I think of guys I have known and who have been killed, and you reflect on that.”
“I think, a lot of the general public just don’t understand the comradery that we have as servicemen or servicewomen... the type of things we have to go through and see, the only time a lot us will talk about that is in this sort of organisation here at the RSA,” he said. The others nodded in agreement. There was definitely a connection that I would never be able to grasp, and they all felt comfortable telling stories in each other’s company.
“It’s not the kind of thing you’d just go down to the local pub and start a story with the person next to you,” said Mr Hogg. “It just doesn’t happen because they just can’t relate to it can they?”
What struck me about all these men was their humility. Nobody admitted to thinking about themselves and their sacrifice on Anzac Day, there were always many other people to think about first.
They were my age, some even younger, when they decided to jump aboard a ship (or a plane in latter instances) and sail off to war in what then was a much larger and more mysterious world. That’s a decision and sacrifice I can never envisage myself having to make.
There was something special about the RSA and its rundown-edness felt necessary. It wouldn’t be the same if it was an ultra-modern architectural masterpiece there to make a statement about itself.
The Anzac Room at the Petone Working Men’s Club was special in its modesty, just blending in with the dull April weather on a pretty ordinary back street in the Hutt Valley. The maroon walls had heard thousands of stories, under the protection and guard of the wall of portraits; it was safe to tell those stories. And yet, for someone like me who had none to offer, it was perfectly inviting. The stories were there to be told, and I found people willing to tell them – but we don’t have much time left to hear them.
Videos by John Lake.
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