Sir Robert ‘Bom’ Gillies

Our knighted taonga – saluting the Maori  Battalion’s last man standing 

Words Jill Nicholas

Pictures/video Stephen Parker

“The lowest of the low, a private, that’s me, a non-entity”

When Sir Robert Bon-Bom Nairn Gillies looks in the mirror he insists that’s the person he sees reflected back.

Take your pick on the Bon or Bom. His nickname’s interchangeable and he doesn’t give a hoot. It’s a nonsense one anyway, says this 97-year-old who, from the age of six, grew up within Ohinemutu pa. To add further confusion he was known there as Bon-Bon. He hasn’t a clue why, other than calling each other random names went with the pa kid territory. 

The Gillies whanau whare was a stone’s throw from what he calls “the river”. Most know it as the Utuhina Stream but who’s going to quibble over such a tiddly detail with Rotorua’s newest Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit? 

Much as he trys to deny it, as the last surviving Maori Battalion member, Sir Robert is a national taonga, the last man standing out of the more than 3,600 who enlisted in its four companies. These were based on tribal boundaries. The people of Te Arawa, of which Sir Bom is one on his mother’s side, were assigned to B company. As their last of the last emphasises several times over, all were willing volunteers. 

Humble knighthood recipient

The citation that accompanies his high ranking award reads that it is acknowledgement of his services to Maori and war commemoration.

It’s an honour he wears with the humility that’s his hallmark.

Sir Bom (the name we’ll use for the purposes of this profile) isn’t a flash fellow, a captain of industry, politician, judge or heart surgeon, the types generally bestowed with knighthoods.

In his time Sir Bom’s dug ditches, grubbed ragwort, erected power poles and swung hammers on building sites. He still shimmies up ladders and remains as fit as many some decades behind him.

There’s something else that makes “our Bom” unique. His 2022 knighthood is his second major honour. In October 2019 he was awarded Italy’s Order of Merit, that country’s equivalent of a knighthood. 

Then, as now, he’s adamant he only accepted these recognitions on the understanding they are not for himself but for his Maori Battalion buddies whose lives are over. 

“At the ceremonies my heart was blank for myself but it was full for my mates, especially those who lie on foreign soil.”

Tamatekapua wharenui

The Italian medal was presented to him by that country’s ambassador to New Zealand at Te Arawa’s premier wharenui (meeting house) Tamatekapua at Ohinemutu.

It’s where many significant events of his life have been marked. He grew  up attending hui and tangi there. In 1946 it was the welcome home venue for B company battalion members returning from the Second World War’s battlefields. He met his late wife, Rae Ratima, at a dance there.      

We are not done yet with Sir Bom’s Tamatekapua association. The King George VI sword of valour, which Governor General Dame Cindy Kiro tapped his shoulders with in April, was presented there to the whanau of fellow battalion member Haani Manahi by Prince Andrew. That was St Patrick’s Day 2007. In turn, the whanau passed it to the head of the Defence Force.**    

With these milestones in mind it was only fitting Sir Bom chatted to the In Profile team inside what is best described as his marae HQ.

Pa life

Before we delve into his war service as that self-described “lowest of the low, non-entity” private, we take him back to his growing up years in the pa.

He was six when his parents arrived at Ohinemutu, refugees from the 1931 Napier earthquake which destroyed their Waimarama home. His mother, Maata (nee Horomona ), was from the pa. His father, Ture Gillies of Ngati Kahungunu, was confined to a wheelchair after a farming accident wrecked his back.

“He came to the Bath House sanatorium [now the museum] for treatment. It fixed him for a while but not properly. He was in that chair for the rest of his life.”   

As Bom remembers it, when the Gillies arrived, no pa homes had running water.

“Everyone went to the river for its clean cold water but there was plenty of hot water for our baths and steam from the ngawha [hot springs] to cook our kai.

“For us kids there was always a lot of activity going on. The elders kept us in line; if we stepped over that line we got the boot to straighten us up. If we misbehaved at home our mother would send us to get a stick. If it wasn’t big enough she’d send us for another one. She wasn’t frightened to use it on us but she was a great mother.”

She was also instrumental in him becoming a weekly Sunday School attendee.

“Mum hounded me to go. I hated it because my mates were outside playing games in the pa. It was in the old St Faith’s, the one with the square tower.  We had this crabby old teacher who was like a sergeant major.”

Those dreaded classes formed the foundation of the unshakable Christian faith that’s sustained him since.  His Maori Battalion-issued prayer book is a personal taonga.   

Schooling  

Bom’s first school was St Mary’s Convent in Seddon St. After a year he transferred to Rotorua Primary, followed by the then Rotorua High School.  But this wasn’t a kid wedded to learning.

“I only went to eat my lunch, I just wanted to get out of there and get a job.  Now they [young people] don’t want to work, they just go on the benefit. A lot are in halfway houses; it’s shocking.”

The young Bom’s first  job was chipping ragwort with a shovel “on Charlie Andrew’s farm at the top of Sunset Road”.

When the government opened Waipa Mill he went on the night shift “using a machine to stamp a black fern on butter boxes going to England.

“I bought a bike for nine pounds to peddle there, one pound down and a pound a week to pay it off.”

War beckons

When war was declared, teenager Bom joined his mates queuing to sign up.

“The recruiting office was where Pak `n` Save is now. They told me I was too young, to come back when I was 21. I tried twice more before they accepted me.” By then he was 17 and, like many Maori Battalion wannabes, had become accomplished at fibbing about his age.

His first military posting was to Papakura Military Camp. 

“Some of the [Maori Battalion] units went overseas then they decided to make a second full battalion because there was a threat the Japanese would land up north. We went to Ohaeawai. There were four infantry companies and a headquarters company. We had two Christmases there.”

When the Japanese scare subsided that section of the Maori Battalion boarded the liner New Amsterdam, destination Egypt and desert training.

In the thick of it

“Then we night marched to Alexandra where we caught a ship to Italy, landing at Taranto right at its toe. We marched up into the hills and made camp at the Sangro River. Our first engagement was there, fighting the Jerries [Germans]. It was freezing conditions, terrible, many deaths.

“I was by the radio when I heard Johnny Pile, the Maori All Black from Whakatane, gurgling his last.”

How did the young man, used to peaceful pa life, cope?

“You just did. Training and military discipline helped.”

The depleted battalion crossed mountain ranges to Orsonga. Unloading a truckload of ammunition at the battalion’s HQ Private Gillies copped a load of shrapnel in the arm.

“A shell burst. They patched me up. I was okay.” 

The battalion’s history-making battle to claim the heavily fortified Monte Cassino followed. 

The battle for Monte Cassino 

This is Sir Bom’s account of that dreadful February day and night in 1944.   

“A and B companies moved forward across the Rapido River. Jerry had been there for months. There were box mines exploding, flares going up, the river was wiped with machine gun fire. We were trying to get our tanks across the river. The engineers were building a Bailey bridge. They had one span to go. When daylight came Jerry started shelling. We were pummelled.

“When A and B companies took the railway station [Captain] Monty Wikiriwhi from Whaka put the signal up. The Jerries saw it and fired. His leg was shattered. His mates covered him with a tarpaulin with the leg sticking out so they [Germans] thought he was dead.  Joe Te Whare from Taupo was cut in half.”

Like his Te Arawa mate Bom, Monty Wikiriwhi survived the war.

They learnt of its end crowded around Te Rau Aroha, the Maori battalion’s canteen truck donated by pupils from their homeland’s native schools.

Not a big spender by some soldiers’ standards  Bom had kept his “seven shillings a day” pay book topped up. It was his passport to post-war leave in Britain.

“England needed money and I had enough to go. We went to London and to Scotland to look at Edinburgh Castle, made our way back to London before seeing the white cliffs of Dover then going back to Italy.”

B company’s homecoming

Bom was among the 700-plus Maori Battalion members who sailed into Wellington on board the Dominion Monarch, arriving in January, 1946. 

“There were a lot of people, a lot from Maoridom, waiting to welcome us on the wharf  Afterwards B company got on the train and made our way north. At Frankton we changed trains to come this way. We marched down the main street to this big welcome outside Tama. It was like all the tribe was there, not just our next of kin. The families of those who didn’t return were there. It was very moving. There were speeches, items, a big kai then we went home and waited to be discharged.”

It saddens him that neither his mother nor grandmother were there to greet him. His mother died in 1939 after the war started. His grandmother died while he was on active service.

Like many of his comrades Bom found his return difficult.

“It took me about three months to settle down and get a job.  The government had given us free travel on the railway so I went down south to Dunedin twice to meet up with a couple of battalion mates.”

When his pass ran out Bom joined the P&T  [Post & Telegraph]. “Putting poles up the manual way between here and Reporoa.”

Tamatekapua had become Rotorua’s social hub. ‘Tama’ dances remain legendary for the marriages they spawned, Bom’s to nurse Rae (Mariana) Ratema included.

“We had great dances in here [Tamatekapua].  A saxophone, banjos, now it’s all guitars. We danced foxtrots, waltzes. Today it’s all body shaking, they don’t do these great old dances.”  

Bom and Rae married in 1948 and produced three sons.  

When the boys were small a brother-in-law offered Bom a job building rehab houses for returned servicemen who won ballots for land at Galatea.

He built the family home he still lives in.

Battalion commitment continues 

Sir Bom’s commitment to commemorate the sacrifices Maori Battalion members made, as laid out in his knighthood’s citation, continues.

His name’s on the pleading to the Waitangi Tribunal to hasten the work Lieutenant Colonel James Henare began almost 80 years ago to have the battalion’s honours posted on its flag. 

“They are very slow with things like this. Why? All it takes is a simple ‘yes’.”

He’s also involved in the push to have whanau reunited with the medals no one told Maori Battalion members they were entitled to receive.

Bom only found out about his when he was told to wear them on a return visit to Casino. He’s been back twice. The second time was the 75th anniversary of the battle, in 2020.  

 For Bom the medal oversight was only one of many slights the battalion was subjected to once its service to king and country was done.

“I don’t think we were treated well at all. There remained places we couldn’t go to because we were Maori. Some RSAs wouldn’t accept us. 

“A lot of my mates hit the booze when they came home. It was a way of blotting out their terrible memories. They died young, there was nothing like PTSD recognised then.”

If, knowing what he now knows of war, would he scramble to fight again?

“Absolutely not. Someone is trying to get a third world war going. It’s the fault of the war mongers. It’s terrible. I suppose someone makes money out of it.

“Why don’t they try peace for a change?  The world is going to end anyway. The Bible says so.”            

**  B Company’s Haane Manahi was recommended for a Victoria Cross for bravery during the Maori Battalion’s North Africa campaign. This was downgraded by British top military brass to a Distinguished Conduct Medal.  Local representations were made to the Queen for the VC to be reinstated. She declined but substituted several gifts, her father’s sword included.