October 25, 2023
Le Quesnoy honours Māori Pioneers
Historian Buddy Mikaere says the last French town to be liberated by the New Zealand Division in WW1 still remembers the extreme bravery of the soldiers involved.
The Tauranga Moana elder is just back from Le Quesnoy, where he attended the opening of the New Zealand Memorial Museum.
The division lost 196 members on November 4, 1918 during their assault on the medieval walled town on the Western Front that stretched across northern France and Belgium.
Mr Mikaere, whose grandfather and grand uncle were part of the Māori Pioneer Battalion attached to the division, says while the story of the soldiers who used a ladder to climb the town’s 6 metre wall is well known, the Tapsell whānau shared the story of their ancestor Winiata Tapsell, who got bored with digging roads and tunnels and joined up with a rifle brigade for the day.
“Winiata found a board and got across the moat on the board and found a hole in the wall. His mates threw his rifle over so he went into the town too, shot a few Germans, ran out of ammunition so he came back and this is the bit that makes the story so true for me because it is a real Māori thing – on the way back, out of the town, he grabbed a couple of chickens for the boys,” he says.
Buddy Mikaere says the future Māori All Black was given 14 days field punishment for not being at his post.