events
The Ferret:
Sergeant Eric Batchelor DCM, and bar, m.i.d.
Book Launch
22nd July 2017
Sergeant Eric Batchelor DCM, and bar, m.i.d.
Book Launch
22nd July 2017
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The long awaited biography of the late Eric Batchelor DCM and bar, m.i.d. , entitled The Ferret, was finally launched in his home town of Waimate on July 22 where a copy was presented to his widow Thurza (89) by the author Tom O'Connor.
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Over a period of several years author Tom O’Connor interviewed Eric Batchelor several times during the time he worked as a journalist in Timaru, usually in the lead up to Anzac Day or some other military commemoration. Sitting in his homely kitchen in Waimate he shared stories of his exploits during World War Two in his quietly spoken manner. He was always frank with detailed accounts of battles as well as his personal experiences and recollections away from the front lines. He went into details of combat, death and survival few other returned soldiers were willing or able to do.
Such was his conduct and courage under fire that he won the rare Distinguished Conduct Medal, not once but twice and was the only New Zealand serviceman of World War Two to do so. The DCM is surpassed only by the Victoria Cross, the highest military award in the British Commonwealth. He was also awarded the Mentioned in Dispatches m.i.d. clasp for similar exploits.
The author has drawn extensively on the outstanding official history of Eric’s 23 Battalion by Angus Ross to ensure the chronology of battles and the history of the war in North Africa and Italy, where Eric served, were accurate.
This is not however another history of 23 Battalion but the true story of one of the men who served in the battalion, who survived the war and returned to his hometown of Waimate in South Canterbury where he continued to serve his community both in the military, in business and in many volunteer organisations for the rest of his long life and where he died in 2010.
One of the sad threads running through his story was the transition from excitable young men in their late teens and early twenties at the start of the war into hardened old men in their mid-twenties when it was all over. At the beginning some of their pranks and adventures were typical of over exuberant school boys pushing the boundaries of discipline and acceptable behaviour as boys always have. Those still alive four years later had seen and done things beyond the comprehension of people who have never served in the front lines of a world war. Their personalities, attitudes and empathy had irreversibly changed. Nightmares disturbed their sleep, the ear splitting sounds of gun fire and bombs, the terrifying closeness of violent death and the screams of dying men never left their memories.
Such was his conduct and courage under fire that he won the rare Distinguished Conduct Medal, not once but twice and was the only New Zealand serviceman of World War Two to do so. The DCM is surpassed only by the Victoria Cross, the highest military award in the British Commonwealth. He was also awarded the Mentioned in Dispatches m.i.d. clasp for similar exploits.
The author has drawn extensively on the outstanding official history of Eric’s 23 Battalion by Angus Ross to ensure the chronology of battles and the history of the war in North Africa and Italy, where Eric served, were accurate.
This is not however another history of 23 Battalion but the true story of one of the men who served in the battalion, who survived the war and returned to his hometown of Waimate in South Canterbury where he continued to serve his community both in the military, in business and in many volunteer organisations for the rest of his long life and where he died in 2010.
One of the sad threads running through his story was the transition from excitable young men in their late teens and early twenties at the start of the war into hardened old men in their mid-twenties when it was all over. At the beginning some of their pranks and adventures were typical of over exuberant school boys pushing the boundaries of discipline and acceptable behaviour as boys always have. Those still alive four years later had seen and done things beyond the comprehension of people who have never served in the front lines of a world war. Their personalities, attitudes and empathy had irreversibly changed. Nightmares disturbed their sleep, the ear splitting sounds of gun fire and bombs, the terrifying closeness of violent death and the screams of dying men never left their memories.
Tales of Three Campaigns
Book Launch
8th April 2015
Book Launch
8th April 2015
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A crowd of more than 150 people gathered in the auditorium at Nelson College on a wet and blustery evening to Launch the book. The venue was very appropriate, as Cyprian Brereton attended Nelson College, and was one of 600 of its old boys who served in World War 1. The original book was published in 1926 and this 2nd edition was republished in time for the 100th Anzac Day Commemorations.
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Address by Brigadier (Ret’d) John H. Gray, CBE, ED
I must confess I hadn’t even heard of Ngatimoti, in the Motueka River Valley, until I went there in July last year, seeking local colour before editing Cyprian Brereton’s 1926 military history, Tales of Three Campaigns.
One hundred years ago, it was the home-town of the three central figures of the Second Edition being launched this evening – Captain Cyprian Brereton, the author; his fiancée Daisy Guy; and her brother, Sergeant Major Hector Guy.
Only a hamlet then, and smaller still today, Ngatimoti’s War Memorial, marking the district’s sacrifice, fronts St James’ Church.
Cyp Brereton writes how on 16 October 1914, the church’s Vicar boarded their troopship in the stream in Wellington.
“Our greatly loved friend the Rev. W.G. Baker visited us in the stream to say Good-Bye to his boys from Ngatimoti. There were fourteen of us, and some had been ashore and had drunk too much, and would not face him. We mustered them all at last, to the joy of our visitor, who noticed nothing, and we had a jolly farewell.
Of the number, only two came back, Bert Thomasen and myself, and we scored seven hits between us.”
Only two came back…
Brereton’s First Edition solely recorded his war experience.
His “Three Campaigns” were The Battle of the Suez Canal, Gallipoli and The Western Front.
It starts with that troopship the Athenic leaving NZ, and ends similarly as he returns home in 1918.
It gives no account of his life before and after the War. His 1915 wedding in London gets but a passing reference – not even his wife’s name is mentioned!
However, a new Chapter 17 – The Fourth Campaign – written by his grand-daughter, Mrs Annie Coster, describing the brave wartime journey of Daisy Guy, comprehensively rectifies that particular deficiency.
The Second Edition is a different book altogether.
It includes the original Great War text, word for word – nothing is omitted. But an illustrated biographical essay now deals with the “before and after” the War.
Additionally, thanks to Annie Coster also making available Brereton’s unpublished autobiography from the 1950s, we now have, in total, a book which depicts Cyprian Bridge Brereton - man of action and man of letters, as both soldier and citizen, life-long, in the round.
In the biography we read of his early life in a pioneering farming family – a life almost cut short as an infant in the great 1877 Motueka River flood. This book has the makings of a film – read how Old Bess the mare saved the children through them clinging to her tail, - only to die of exhaustion later!
In 1890, when his father and elder brother drowned in Tasman Bay, he had to withdraw from his scholarship here in Nelson College at age 14, to manage his mother’s 250 acre, undeveloped farm for the next 8 years. We learn of the strenuous open-air life that that entailed, either down in the valley or when mustering stock in the high table-lands, and the management of men and materials, which augured well for his wartime field experiences.
Then, a career change: He became apprenticed to a dentist, and while continuing as a Volunteer, practised for ten years in Westport.
This was to raise capital to buy his own farm back in the Valley; achieved just before the War started, and to leave family space to allow younger brothers Tom and Allan to take over the working of the farm.
That tells me much about the measure of the man.
Incidentally, there are other instances of prominent soldiers having previously been dentists. Freyberg was apprenticed to a dentist in Morrinsville, when first commissioned into the Hauraki Regiment, and Colonel Bobby Young, Cyp Brereton’s commanding officer in France, and later Chief of the General Staff in New Zealand, was similarly a dentist in Otaki.
Cyp Brereton farmed at Orinoco for fifteen years after the Great War, always with difficulty because of the after-effect of his wounds. Annie tells me that he always walked with a difficult gait, could not ride a horse, nor lift heavy loads – scarcely ideal circumstances for a farmer.
By 1938 to do so was no longer possible and he started a new full-time career for 22 years, (until he was 84) as Curator of the Nelson Provincial Museum, and as an author of local histories.
It says much of his success in this quite different role, that the Museum, and its current director, Peter Millward, have been so brilliantly supportive of the present publishing project, over 50 years after his death.
The 1926 Edition had few photographs, and no maps.
This Edition has 14 maps and 115 photos, many of Gallipoli are Brereton’s own, which have never been published before, nor have those of the Suez Canal Battle from Turkish sources.
But to return to 1914:
When war broke out on 5 August 1914, Captain Brereton was the local company commander in the 12th (Nelson) Regiment of the Territorial Force, which had succeeded the Volunteers in 1911.
He immediately volunteered for the NZEF, as did most of his company, and only 11 days later he took 194 all ranks down to Lyttelton to become the 12th (Nelson) Company of the Canterbury Infantry Battalion NZEF. Most were existing TF members.
The NZEF reached Egypt in December 1914.
Although it was only of 24 hrs or so duration, and has been little written-about, the first of Cyp Brereton’s Three Campaigns – The Battle of the Suez Canal was of signal historic importance. In late January 1915, all four battalions of The NZ Infantry Brigade were called upon to reinforce the existing canal defences (largely manned by Indian Army units) when the very real threat of a Turkish attack developed. As it happens, only a minor NZ element actually became involved – two platoons of the 12th (Nelson) Company, commanded at first-hand by Major Brereton, totalling 100 all ranks.
On 3 February 1915, solely by their musketry skill – with neither machine-gun nor artillery support – they helped foil a brigade-size attack (some 5000 Turks) over the narrowest part of the Canal.
We read of their baptism of fire; of the death of Ngatimoti’s Private Willy Ham, first NZ field fatality of the war, and Cyp’s shrewd analysis of how the Turks may well have won, had they stuck to their German-authored plan.
Cyprian Brereton’s personal Gallipoli campaign was of two short but intense episodes; the first ten days at the Anzac Sector from the day of The Landing, 25 April 1915, and then three days at Cape Helles in the Second Battle of Krithia, attacking over the infamous Daisy Patch.
There he received a serious gun-shot wound to the head. The gallantry of the stretcher-bearers who saved his life, makes affecting reading.
It was July 1916, after treatment in England and New Zealand, before he was able to resume his company command on The Western Front near Armentieres. It says much of his abilities, that 14 months having elapsed, and with no experience of French conditions he was immediately re-instated.
Cyp Brereton describes his further 6 months leading the 12th (Nelson) Company of the 1st Battalion, the Canterbury Regiment in the Battle of the Somme in September 1916, and then back in the Northern Zone, south-west of Armentieres.
In January 1917, Cyprian Brereton, 41 years of age and clearly unwell – the effects of the brain damage caused by the head wound were still causing the walking disability which remained with him for the rest of his life – was posted to “light duties” in the United Kingdom.
These included command of the Canterbury-Otago combined Reserve Battalion of 2,800 all ranks, being President of a permanent Court-Martial on circuit, and for the last year of the War as an Officer Commanding Transports, in which appointment he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
Colonel Brereton strongly identified with his soldiery, many of whom – in the early days at least – were his friends and neighbours in the Tasman District. As a company commander he was at the highest level where one can know all one’s men, and he took care to do so. He is well-remembered in Nelson today, for that characteristic.
John H. Gray
(Editor)
I must confess I hadn’t even heard of Ngatimoti, in the Motueka River Valley, until I went there in July last year, seeking local colour before editing Cyprian Brereton’s 1926 military history, Tales of Three Campaigns.
One hundred years ago, it was the home-town of the three central figures of the Second Edition being launched this evening – Captain Cyprian Brereton, the author; his fiancée Daisy Guy; and her brother, Sergeant Major Hector Guy.
Only a hamlet then, and smaller still today, Ngatimoti’s War Memorial, marking the district’s sacrifice, fronts St James’ Church.
Cyp Brereton writes how on 16 October 1914, the church’s Vicar boarded their troopship in the stream in Wellington.
“Our greatly loved friend the Rev. W.G. Baker visited us in the stream to say Good-Bye to his boys from Ngatimoti. There were fourteen of us, and some had been ashore and had drunk too much, and would not face him. We mustered them all at last, to the joy of our visitor, who noticed nothing, and we had a jolly farewell.
Of the number, only two came back, Bert Thomasen and myself, and we scored seven hits between us.”
Only two came back…
Brereton’s First Edition solely recorded his war experience.
His “Three Campaigns” were The Battle of the Suez Canal, Gallipoli and The Western Front.
It starts with that troopship the Athenic leaving NZ, and ends similarly as he returns home in 1918.
It gives no account of his life before and after the War. His 1915 wedding in London gets but a passing reference – not even his wife’s name is mentioned!
However, a new Chapter 17 – The Fourth Campaign – written by his grand-daughter, Mrs Annie Coster, describing the brave wartime journey of Daisy Guy, comprehensively rectifies that particular deficiency.
The Second Edition is a different book altogether.
It includes the original Great War text, word for word – nothing is omitted. But an illustrated biographical essay now deals with the “before and after” the War.
Additionally, thanks to Annie Coster also making available Brereton’s unpublished autobiography from the 1950s, we now have, in total, a book which depicts Cyprian Bridge Brereton - man of action and man of letters, as both soldier and citizen, life-long, in the round.
In the biography we read of his early life in a pioneering farming family – a life almost cut short as an infant in the great 1877 Motueka River flood. This book has the makings of a film – read how Old Bess the mare saved the children through them clinging to her tail, - only to die of exhaustion later!
In 1890, when his father and elder brother drowned in Tasman Bay, he had to withdraw from his scholarship here in Nelson College at age 14, to manage his mother’s 250 acre, undeveloped farm for the next 8 years. We learn of the strenuous open-air life that that entailed, either down in the valley or when mustering stock in the high table-lands, and the management of men and materials, which augured well for his wartime field experiences.
Then, a career change: He became apprenticed to a dentist, and while continuing as a Volunteer, practised for ten years in Westport.
This was to raise capital to buy his own farm back in the Valley; achieved just before the War started, and to leave family space to allow younger brothers Tom and Allan to take over the working of the farm.
That tells me much about the measure of the man.
Incidentally, there are other instances of prominent soldiers having previously been dentists. Freyberg was apprenticed to a dentist in Morrinsville, when first commissioned into the Hauraki Regiment, and Colonel Bobby Young, Cyp Brereton’s commanding officer in France, and later Chief of the General Staff in New Zealand, was similarly a dentist in Otaki.
Cyp Brereton farmed at Orinoco for fifteen years after the Great War, always with difficulty because of the after-effect of his wounds. Annie tells me that he always walked with a difficult gait, could not ride a horse, nor lift heavy loads – scarcely ideal circumstances for a farmer.
By 1938 to do so was no longer possible and he started a new full-time career for 22 years, (until he was 84) as Curator of the Nelson Provincial Museum, and as an author of local histories.
It says much of his success in this quite different role, that the Museum, and its current director, Peter Millward, have been so brilliantly supportive of the present publishing project, over 50 years after his death.
The 1926 Edition had few photographs, and no maps.
This Edition has 14 maps and 115 photos, many of Gallipoli are Brereton’s own, which have never been published before, nor have those of the Suez Canal Battle from Turkish sources.
But to return to 1914:
When war broke out on 5 August 1914, Captain Brereton was the local company commander in the 12th (Nelson) Regiment of the Territorial Force, which had succeeded the Volunteers in 1911.
He immediately volunteered for the NZEF, as did most of his company, and only 11 days later he took 194 all ranks down to Lyttelton to become the 12th (Nelson) Company of the Canterbury Infantry Battalion NZEF. Most were existing TF members.
The NZEF reached Egypt in December 1914.
Although it was only of 24 hrs or so duration, and has been little written-about, the first of Cyp Brereton’s Three Campaigns – The Battle of the Suez Canal was of signal historic importance. In late January 1915, all four battalions of The NZ Infantry Brigade were called upon to reinforce the existing canal defences (largely manned by Indian Army units) when the very real threat of a Turkish attack developed. As it happens, only a minor NZ element actually became involved – two platoons of the 12th (Nelson) Company, commanded at first-hand by Major Brereton, totalling 100 all ranks.
On 3 February 1915, solely by their musketry skill – with neither machine-gun nor artillery support – they helped foil a brigade-size attack (some 5000 Turks) over the narrowest part of the Canal.
We read of their baptism of fire; of the death of Ngatimoti’s Private Willy Ham, first NZ field fatality of the war, and Cyp’s shrewd analysis of how the Turks may well have won, had they stuck to their German-authored plan.
Cyprian Brereton’s personal Gallipoli campaign was of two short but intense episodes; the first ten days at the Anzac Sector from the day of The Landing, 25 April 1915, and then three days at Cape Helles in the Second Battle of Krithia, attacking over the infamous Daisy Patch.
There he received a serious gun-shot wound to the head. The gallantry of the stretcher-bearers who saved his life, makes affecting reading.
It was July 1916, after treatment in England and New Zealand, before he was able to resume his company command on The Western Front near Armentieres. It says much of his abilities, that 14 months having elapsed, and with no experience of French conditions he was immediately re-instated.
Cyp Brereton describes his further 6 months leading the 12th (Nelson) Company of the 1st Battalion, the Canterbury Regiment in the Battle of the Somme in September 1916, and then back in the Northern Zone, south-west of Armentieres.
In January 1917, Cyprian Brereton, 41 years of age and clearly unwell – the effects of the brain damage caused by the head wound were still causing the walking disability which remained with him for the rest of his life – was posted to “light duties” in the United Kingdom.
These included command of the Canterbury-Otago combined Reserve Battalion of 2,800 all ranks, being President of a permanent Court-Martial on circuit, and for the last year of the War as an Officer Commanding Transports, in which appointment he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
Colonel Brereton strongly identified with his soldiery, many of whom – in the early days at least – were his friends and neighbours in the Tasman District. As a company commander he was at the highest level where one can know all one’s men, and he took care to do so. He is well-remembered in Nelson today, for that characteristic.
John H. Gray
(Editor)
