One of Wattie Tait’s WW2 North Africa campaign images featuring General Montgomery and Winston Churchill.
Te Kūiti resident Dave Roebuck was so gripped by news of the commemoration of the 1941 Battle of Crete that he contacted us with a curious yarn of his own.
Dave Roebuck with just two of the images captured by his father-in-law on the camera taken from a dead German soldier. Photo: Viv Posselt
The May 20 battle began when thousands of elite German paratroopers dropped from the skies in what was believed to be the first mainly airborne invasion in military history. For 12 days troops on the ground, including Greeks, New Zealanders, Australians and British, tried to repel the assault. The statistics were horrendous.
More than 1700 British, Commonwealth and Greek soldiers were killed, and 15,000 captured. There were 670 New Zealanders fatalities and 2180 Kiwi prisoners of war, in addition to the 1800 captured after the campaign ended in Greece. More than 6000 Germans were killed or wounded and more than 350 German aircraft lost.
Dave read last month’s story of the Te Awamutu RSA’s commemoration of the battle, at which Richard Cato spoke about his father, Sgt Colin Cato, who then headed No 3 Platoon of the 27th Machine Gun Battalion.
This rare image of the German commander Rommel was among the images on the camera Wattie ‘acquired’.
Digging graves
His interest piqued, Dave contacted The News with memories of his father-in-law, Charles Walter Dugleigh Tait – known to all as ‘Wattie’ Tait. “Wattie was also a member of the 27th Machine Gun Battalion and was in Crete briefly. He described it as last in, first out.”
He said Wattie had enlisted at Ᾱria in the Waitomo district. His own father, also named Charles Walter Tait, had served in World War One.
Dave, who was born in the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray, migrated solo to New Zealand in 1966, aged 19, and quickly picked up where he had left off in England, working on farms. He met Wattie’s daughter Margaret at Taupō’s famous Karapiti Blowhole, the one-time famous vent just north of the town. Wattie had been working as caretaker at Te Awamutu College around the time the young couple met.
Dave and Margaret married in 1969 and, after moving around, finally settled in Te Kuiti in 1980. Dave worked on the railways for 40 years before retiring and Margaret (widely known as Bobby), worked in seniors’ motivational therapy. She died in 2013.
Dave kicked off the story of ‘Pops’, as he called Wattie, by saying he was one of many Kiwis labelled a ‘deserter’ after disobeying army orders to return to the WW2 battlefront for yet another tour of duty.
A picture of German troops on the ground in Crete, taken by the German soldier.
One of the images taken by the German soldier.
“He was one of several hundred who came back in 1944 and refused the call to go back. A lot of them took that stand,” he said. “He had already done four years over there. He looked at the work needing done on the farm and decided it was someone else’s turn.”
The old telegram informing Wattie of his changed status now hangs on Dave’s daughter Chandry’s wall … a reflection of her grandfather’s military journey.
While in Crete, Wattie took a camera and Luger 9mm pistol from a German soldier who, as Dave said, “didn’t need them any longer”. Wattie carted both around for the rest of his service, most of it in North Africa, adding his own photographs as he went to those taken by the dead German soldier.
Years later, Dave and Margaret had the films developed and offered the images to Waiouru Army Museum. They were extremely interested and have incorporated many into their displays. Among the images are several taken by the German soldier, and a number taken by Wattie, both in Crete and in North Africa.
Some show the action on land and in the skies, others are of major political players of the day, including UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Commander of the NZ Expeditionary Forces General Freyberg, and the German commander Rommel, also known as ‘The Desert Fox’.
They are an unexpected treasure of memories taken by a soldier who determined his future would unfold in New Zealand, no matter what, and are now a source of pride to his Kiwi family.
Te Kuiti’s Dave Roebuck with a framed image of his family. Photo: Viv Posselt
One of Wattie Tait’s WW2 North Africa campaign images featuring General Montgomery and Winston Churchill.
