Although Cliff wrote at length about his experiences farming, down the mines and during the war, all that’s left from the period 1936-40 are various notes and his letters to Dorothy. This page summarises the years 1936-41, taking him through to Cairo and the Western Desert.
The pages that follow this one cover the same period in more detail — his time in the P&T, meeting Dorothy and her family, their burgeoning relationship, military call-up and training, and his impressions of Colombo, Cairo etc. They include an interlude from Dorothy, but apart from that they’re written by me and taken entirely from his letters to her.
The passing references to wartime news etc are lifted directly from his notes and letters.
In September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland. According to Cliff’s diary, by the time he moved to Paparoa in March 1940 6,000 New Zealand men had enlisted for service overseas and wartime rationing had begun.
Although he was still working for the Post Office and Telegraph Department, it was at the telephone exchange not as a postman. He enjoyed where he was living and was involved in the church within days, but it was a couple of months before he opened his Bible again.
He’d bought an old motorbike and spent a lot of time repairing it, and visiting home and a girlfriend in Papakura.
Studying Morse Code took up a lot of time too, something he needed for promotion to Telegraph Cadet.
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Those few words conceal day to day realities that are as different from today as Cliff’s experiences on farms and in the mines.
When he was heading out to visit his parents and girlfriend, Northland’s roads were far more primitive than they were even in the 1960s, which is when the government finally announced a programme to tar-seal them. That offer came with terms and conditions. Yes, Northlanders could have their tar-seal, but they shouldn’t expect the roads to be realigned. In other words all the corners on those hilly roads would remain as they were.
It was still big news. Gone would be the clouds of dust behind every car and along every road — coating everything on both sides for many metres.
And it would all take time, of course. When Jordan Valley Road was eventually tar-sealed, Cliff was the local councillor, and the road was only partly sealed at first — it ended at Dorothy and Cliff’s front gate. He was deeply embarrassed, and swore he had nothing to do with it.
Then there’s the telephone. If you had a phone at all it was installed on the wall in your house. You made a call by rotating a crank three or four turns to alert the operator, who said, “Number please?”, and then called the other party to connect you.
Several people would share the same “line”, so if you wanted to use the phone you lifted the handset and said, “Working?” in case someone was already “on the line”. Cliff and Dorothy’s number at Hikurangi was 52M, so if someone phoned them, the operator would dial two long rings — morse code for M — which is how the Baughs would know the call was for them.
If you were nosy you could carefully lift the receiver and listen to other people’s calls. And you could call people on the same line by dialling their number yourself.
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Dorothy met Cliff on the phone. She was working in her Dad’s butchery, taking orders over the telephone. He was the operator connecting her to her customers. Sparks flew between the operator and this regular caller with the mellifluous voice, and conversations began…
Taking up with Dorothy would have been a social challenge for Cliff. His Mum and Dad were North of England working class, the McCarrolls more like landed gentry. Officer class, literally.
Dorothy’s parents were Hugh and Vi. They and the wider McCarroll family owned a lot of land around Mareretu and Taipuha, mainly farming sheep and cattle. The butcher’s shop was a natural sideline for her entrepreneurial Dad. I can still picture the shop, unpainted and old when I knew it, across the road from the Taipuha School. And I remember the smell, more than the sight, of meat being broken down, cut into products and wrapped with grease proof, brown paper and string. There was a petrol pump outside the shop as well.
Dorothy had two older brothers, Ian and Don, five and ten years her senior.
I remember Vi as a delicate, gentle, genteel woman, and Hugh as a tall, angular, authoritative gentleman with a perennial moustache.
While John and Annie Baugh’s house was modest, the McCarrolls’ was much more generous. As a little kid I thought it rather grand. It was unpainted like the butchery, with a covered verandah up a few wooden steps that gave access to the kitchen and its wood stove. A separate pantry, wash house and toilet all opened on to the verandah. Past it along a path and and through a wooden gate was the garage and Hugh’s workshop, with a sawdust floor, smelling of wood shavings, oil, petrol and kerosene. Outside the gate the dogs were tethered, with wooden or tin kennels.
Inside this large, shady house the main things I remember were Grandpa’s office, with its strange regalia on the wall that I later found were from the Masons and Northern Ireland Orangemen. There was an upright piano in the formal dining room, next to which was the bedroom that we stayed in when we visited, and at the far end of the house a sunroom that looked over the valley down towards the railway line. Grandpa taught me the difference between the speeds of light and sound by comparing how long it took the puff of steam from the train whistle, and the sound it made, to reach us as we watched from the couch.
Across from the verandah was the red-painted wool shed with its sheep yards and its own memorable smells.
Out the front was garden, lawn, tennis courts and a marble bird bath.
It’s all gone now.
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It was 14th June 1940 when Cliff and Dorothy first met face to face. By then they’d been chatting on the phone for some time. He was impressed, but of course there was also the girlfriend in Papakura.
The two met again at a dance at Taipuha a week later, and on the 30th Cliff took her to Church. They arrived late, he nervous about the address he was to give. They had supper, which included a pie made by Dorothy, at the Parsonage. By that time the Reverend Peate was encouraging Cliff to go into the Ministry.
Meanwhile the Germans had occupied Paris, the Niagara had been sunk off the Hen and Chickens, and Compulsory Military Service had been announced for everyone over the age of sixteen.
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If they’d hoped to enjoy a long courtship it wasn’t to be. The middle of August, New Zealand’s Centennial Thanksgiving, was also when Cliff found out he’d been posted to Matakana, 90km away. He was notified on the 13th and left by bus on the 17th.
He got to see Dorothy again the day before he left, her parents driving her over for a send-off that had been arranged for him.
“They arrived late and I was waiting anxiously. Glad to see Dot. Sincerely thankful for the privilege of having so many nice friends. Enjoyable evening. Presented with a wallet and 10 shillings. Walked with Dorothy. Met Charlie and cursed him for keeping us talking. The McCarrolls arrived and after some time I parted unwillingly from Dorothy.”
Next day the overloaded bus drove past without stopping, but he still got to Matakana fast enough, “a miserable looking place in the rain.”
Two months from Hi to Goodbye.
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He felt like things were being torn apart. “Never have I been at such a loss for something to do. I have no immediate ambitions, no money and no prospects of getting any.”
He rang Dorothy for consolation. A week later he got a “very nice” seven page letter from her. He wrote eleven pages back.
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On payday he got £5/18/6. Five pounds, eighteen shillings and six pence. His board was £4/10/0, which left £1/8/6 to last a fortnight.
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Being so committed to Christ, Christ’s injunctions and his Methodist faith, he didn’t know what to think about the war. He was “not wholly a militarist, not wholly a pacifist.”
He worried that Dorothy would think him a shirker. Her father Hugh was an officer in the Territorials. Although he hadn’t served overseas himself, being blind in one eye, two of Vi’s cousins had died within days of each other in Flanders.
On the 29th Cliff receive his certification for national service. A ballot for the Territorial Force was coming up.
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Back at the McCarrolls for the weekend he helped milk, and thought, “I’m in the wrong furrow. I should be a farmer.” And again — did Dorothy’s parents think he was a coward or shirker because he’d shown no interest in joining up?
Mid-September he promised to take a service at Pakiri for the Methodist Minister, and spent some time in prayer over it — “the first really earnest prayer for some time”. He thought his first prayer at the service wasn’t so good, but he did a pretty good job of the sermon.
He rang Dorothy and various friends.
Meanwhile the invasion of England was imminent.
The Germans lost 165 planes in extensive air raids. They bombed Buckingham Palace. A delayed action bomb was removed near St Paul’s.
And he burned Doris’ letters — the girl from Papakura. He heard later she was heartbroken, and he felt bad himself. But what could he do? “Why is it that I love Dorothy more than the other decent girls I know?” Love was one of life’s mysteries.
There was good fellowship at a banquet in Warkworth, ninety people present including three missionaries from India.
And the German planes did more terrible damage to London.
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On October 2nd his name was drawn in the ballot for Territorial Service. His mother Annie was terribly upset but Mrs McCarroll was “pleased to hear he was going”.
In his diary that day he wrote that he hoped he’d pass the Medical — and though he was losing sleep over the silliest little things, nothing serious seemed to bother him.
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A week later Cliff drove with a friend to Wellsford for the Medical. There were two doctors and a nurse. He’d finished his test by 2.45pm and was sworn in by a Captain Wilson. But the friend he’d come with, and three others whom he knew, were rejected.
He often said that the exam was a farce. He was passed 100% despite being totally deaf in one ear. The man in front of him did his damnedest to persuade the Doctor that he wasn’t fit for service, and succeeded. He would have been a liability in any case, Cliff reckoned — we were better off without him.
He entered camp on the 18th October at Kensington Park, Whangarei, and his name was drawn in a ballot to serve overseas on the 4th December.
His first army pay was 9/-, including 2/- meal money.
He spent three months in Territorials Camp, and another three in Trentham Military Camp training for overseas service. On 7th April 1941 his contingent sailed from Wellington on the SS Mauritania, accompanied by the SS Nieuw Amsterdam.
Cliff was coming up for 23 years old, and you can’t say he wasn’t living an eventful life.
His Diary was neglected from the time he was called up, but when he’d gone to Matakana he’d started writing letters to Dorothy, which she kept until the end of the War, and which they passed down to me along with the rest of their papers.
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Cliff reflected years later:
During the previous months I had taken every rare opportunity to attend church services, and I had become engaged to dear Dorothy. Whilst in Trentham Eric Jebb and I visited the Seamen’s Mission in Wellington when on leave, and I sought the company of others with similar standards and beliefs to my own. Sadly Eric was killed in our first action.
I tried to do the same overseas, but one had a job to do and one could not really choose one’s mates. When I joined my first section, I shared a tent with a group that provided a fair example. I think there were eight of us and all but three were boozers who got drunk regularly and used appalling language. One of the three, a Salvation Army officer, didn’t drink or swear but found he couldn’t resist the advances of a prostitute. Another couldn’t stand swear words or booze and complained bitterly about it at times. I was the innocent third.
I woke one morning to discover that the man lying next to me, about 6 inches away, had developed VD.
Our bed was the ground of course.
One night when most of us were drunk, Frank became involved in a heated argument. He picked up his rifle and staggered outside. We wondered what he was going to do. We soon knew. He began firing shots through the roof of the tent. It took some time to pacify him.
Most of these men had been through the hell of Greece and Crete, and had some horrific stories to tell. Later, after similar experiences, I became a boozer myself. It helped one to relax and forget what had gone before.
Of the occupants of that tent, Charlie Barron and myself were to receive Military Medals and Gordon Nielsen was to receive a Military Medal and Bar. Two others were mentioned in Despatches. Five out of eight is a good effort, is it not? They were great soldiers.
The war placed a great strain on one’s religious beliefs. Alf Sanft left the ministry and became a Rotorua radio announcer, and Bill Peate became a land agent.
I retain my faith in God. It has sustained me through some very difficult times. I could not however believe all that the Bible teaches, and could never ever be a preacher. It becomes extremely hard to believe when one is forced to kill others, many of whom share your beliefs.
I was sustained by the love of my family and friends, and very importantly by the constant love and loyalty of my future wife Dorothy McCarroll. Sadly not everyone was so lucky.
Of the utmost importance to a soldier in action are those who share the rigours of war with him. I was blessed with the comradeship of many brave men who were prepared to lay down their lives for others.
Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down his life for a friend.
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