Valoración de la estrategia

On a tall plinth, high above the Cenotaph in Wellington, the sculptor, Richard Gross, placed a life sized equestrian group consisting of a male nude astride a winged, powerful stallion (Figure 10). At first glimpse, this bronze sculpture, created in 1932 might seem to conform to the tired academic convention of the period. But there is something more compelling in the work that invites a better vantage point and a closer examination. The viewer cannot help but follow the determined upward gaze of the youth, emphasised by the thrusting right arm. The awareness dawns that it is not just the youth’s reach, but the horse he rides that seems to impel him skywards. The stallion’s raised leg begins the lift, and then from the powerful crest of the neck to the elevated tail, every muscle in the stallion’s body is tensed as if to push away from earth. The uplifting spirit of the work is unmistakeable, but the artist’s explanation of the iconography is more revealing:

… it is the figure of victorious youth holding the victor’s wreath; but who in order to rise above the mundane or material things has mounted the winged horse of inspiration to seek something finer and more ethereal: Pegasus spurning underfoot the victor’s spoils of war, and rising into the heavens enables his rider to emerge from the deluge of blood and tears, and to receive the great spiritual assurance of peace.1

Named by the artist, ‘The Will to Peace’, the sentiment, at first, seems uncomfortable and ambiguous today. It seems neither a tribute to the wartime dead or a celebration of peace. Rather, it appears to glorify war with its implication that peace is accorded to those who rise victorious out of the ruins of war. But Pegasus, born of the blood of the slain Medusa, and who became the winged warhorse of Bellerophon is both a symbol of inspiration and of immortality.2 On reflection, it is fitting that that the Wellington citizen’s memorial to their fallen soldiers should feature a mythic warhorse and his rider, for it is the mounted soldier that has emerged as an enduring symbol of New Zealand’s experience of war. This chapter looks at the development

1

Michael Dunn, New Zealand Sculpture: A History, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002, pp.50-2.

2

Betty Radice, Who’s Who in the Ancien tWorld: A Handbook to the Survivors of the Greek and Roman Classics, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin books, 1971, pp.76-7,186.

Figure 10: Richard Gross, ‘The Will to Peace’, Wellington Citizens’ War Memorial (1932), ATL, National Library of New Zealand, 114/137/11-F.

of this image and explores how mounted soldiery contributed to New Zealand’s growing identity, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as a warrior nation of adapt fighting men, fiercely loyal to the British homeland.

The horse has long been associated with war. New Zealand’s use of the warhorse is far shorter than most nations but that does not diminish the significance of its mounted soldiers and their horses. The rawness of the land, tamed by sturdy pioneers within living memory, served to enhance the reputation of the mounted soldiery. It was out of this frontier heritage that the New Zealand male emerged as a naturally skilled horseman and soldier. Jock Phillips, Ian McGibbon, John Crawford, Glyn Harper and Christopher Pugsley have all written about the role of the mounted soldier in the shaping of a national consciousness. McGibbon goes a little further by suggesting that the quality of the New Zealand horses was also an element that contributed to the growing pride and confidence in New Zealand’s military prowess. As military historians have indicated, horses along with mules and donkeys, have served Imperial and New Zealand military forces at home and abroad in a variety of roles. The focus of this chapter is on the mounted soldier from the early colonial period through to his final call to arms during World War II.

Māori warriors had a relatively small role to play in the history of mounted warfare in New Zealand. Rather, it was the aristocratic cavalry traditions of the Old World that the settler population aspired to emulate. Mounted soldiery was of limited military significance in the New Zealand wars of the early colonial period, but the conflicts initiated the tradition of the elite amateur soldier. The mounted volunteer corps raised by the colonists for defensive purposes also played an important social role in their communities. It was on foreign land, first in South Africa, then in the Middle East, that New Zealand mounted soldiers and warhorses gained their reputation as an effective fighting force. It is important to note, however, that it was not as traditional cavalry that their achievements were recognised. New Zealand mounted soldiers fought as mounted infantry, armed with muskets, not swords or lances, and their horses were used to carry them swiftly to the battlefield where they dismounted to fight on foot. The New Zealand warhorse was never part of a massed cavalry charge in battle and hardly ever did the New Zealand soldier fight from horseback.

Nevertheless, the culture that surrounded New Zealand’s mounted soldiers remained charged by the Old World ‘cavalry spirit’.

The pre-eminence and continuance of the cavalry is largely because of its close association with the ruling elites It was a key element of feudal society, an era in which land was allocated by the ruler to those who served him as mounted warriors. Land was worked by peasants, allowing the warrior class, or knights, the resources to obtain horses, equipment and time to develop the skills of mounted warfare.3 Even after Western Europe had lost its feudal characteristics, the cavalry maintained its close links with the aristocracy.4 From the fifteenth century through to the nineteenth century, horsemanship and swordsmanship were regarded as fine arts, requiring wealth and dedicated training under accomplished masters, to achieve their highest forms. A feeling existed that, while anyone could be a foot soldier, only a superior person could be a cavalryman. Of all the branches of the armed services, the cavalry carried the most prestige.5

Mounted warfare also carried with it a moral quality, harder to define but expressed as cavalry ‘dash’ or ‘spirit’. This emulated from the power of the horse and manifested itself in the rider as conviction and courage of the highest order. The assumption that the aristocracy had unlimited courage and dedication to duty is a longstanding one and nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the cavalry.6 It also helps explain why there was so much emphasis on the cavalry charge over the more routine work of mounted troops in intelligence gathering, reconnaissance and patrolling. Probably no other military action in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generated as much romantic imagery, verse or stories of gallantry as the offensive action of the cavalry charge. The charge of the Scots Greys at the Battle of Waterloo and the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War were expressed not as spectacular failures, rather as heroic but tragic actions. During the nineteenth century there was awareness that British aristocratic officers, skilled in riding to the hounds, led the charge at the gallop with the same reckless zeal that they displayed hunting on their country estates.

3

John Ellis, Cavalry: The History of Mounted Warfare, Newton Abbot, Devon: Westbridge Books, 1978, p.56.

4

ibid., p.59.

5

Philip Warner, The British Cavalry, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1984, p.41.

6

Even the Duke of Wellington criticised his cavalry officers for their unthinking habit of ‘galloping at everything’.7 Lack of order and discipline meant that even if some initial success was gained by the charge, it was often lost by the cavalrymen’s inability to control their horses to regroup, or to offer support. However devastating the outcome, horse and rider together shared in the triumph of the charge and were credited with the same selfless courage.

Old world cavalry spirit undoubtedly had a bearing on New Zealand mounted soldiery. When James Cowan wrote his account of the New Zealand Wars in the early 1920s, the cavalry charge still had enough grandeur for him to describe, in colourful detail, charges with the sabre at Hairini Ridge and Orakau in the Waikato, Nukumaru on the West Coast and at Kiorekno on the Opotiki Flat.8 Most of these were skirmishes involving small numbers of horsemen, although cavalry action at Orakau did inflict many casualties. The Auckland Division of the Defence Force, a colonial force of mounted soldiers riding their own horses, carried this out. A contemporary illustration, ‘The Charge of the New Zealand Cavalry at the Battle of Orakau is in the romantic tradition of cavalry depictions, showing a dense mass of spirited horses and courageous cavalrymen with drawn swords glinting in the sunlight (Figure 11). But the expectant clash was not the swords of an opposing army but rather the running down of the survivors, in a desperate escape from their besieged Orakau Pa.

While by the early 1860s sufficient horses existed among the European and Māori populations to supply mounted troops, traditional cavalry was of little use. Geography was the real deterrent. The rugged terrain, wet climate and few tracks suitable for large scale horse traffic of the North Island meant that the usual cavalry advantage of mobility was negligible. Not only was the dense bush often impenetrable for horses, but it also provided excellent cover for marksmen to shoot a soldier out of the saddle at close range. Swampland was a major obstacle to the soldier riding a horse that could be easily become bogged down in its depths. Even the most basic cavalry manoeuvres needed clear open space and this was something lacking in most of the locations that saw action.

7

Ellis, pp..143-4.

8

James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars and the Pioneering Period, Wellington: R.E. Owen, Government Printer, 1922-3, v.1 pp.357-60, v.2, pp.46-7, 106-14.

Figure 11: Frank P. Malony, ‘The Charge of the New Zealand Cavalry at the Battle of Orakau’[1864], ATL, Library, National Library of New Zealand, PUBL-0197-3-569.

The development of road access from Auckland south into the Waikato facilitated the use of horses in the Waikato War. The main requirement for horses was as draught animals with the Imperial Transport Corps dispatching 1,516 horses along with 729 bullocks from its depot on Great South Road at Penrose.9 But when Lieutenant General Duncan Cameron began his march into the Waikato, the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry rode with him. Popularly known as Nixon’s Horse, it was commanded by George Marmaduke Nixon, a former English officer serving in India, who had resigned his commission to take up farming near Mangere. In 1860 Nixon raised a group of volunteers to protect the communication and supply lines south of Auckland and also to form flying columns in response to Māori attacks on outlying farms. Nixon recruited almost 200 farmers, along with their horses, to support the Imperial troops in their Waikato campaign. Basically untrained and ill disciplined, this makeshift colonial cavalry was placed in the vanguard of a surprise raid on the Māori supply base at Rangiawhia. Dismounting to shoot indiscriminately, Nixon led his men on foot until felled by a defender’s bullet. His enraged men retaliated by burning the village, resulting in a death toll that included many women and children.10

This form of mounted soldiery falls within the bounds of what is now known as irregular or guerrilla warfare. The speed and mobility of horses meant that small groups of mounted soldiers were able, not only to exploit surprise in attack but were also in position to withdraw quickly. The demoralising and devastating effect of surprise raids was a guerrilla technique utilised by horse cultures throughout the history of mounted warfare and was to see resurgence in the nineteenth century, particularly on the colonial frontiers.11 With an environment unsuitable for traditional cavalry, New Zealand soldiers, nevertheless, found that the horse served them well for raiding, scouting and communication purposes. It was as small, mobile units on hardy colonial bred horses, first glimpsed during the Waikato War and later utilised on foreign land that was to establish in the minds of New Zealanders, their reputation as natural soldiers, dedicated to duty.

9

Maurice Lennard, The Road to War: The Great South Road 1862-64, Whakatane: Whakatane & District Historical Association, 1985, p.24.

10

Laurie Barber, ‘Nixon, Marmaduke George 1813/1814? – 1864’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 15 Dec 2003, URL:http://www.dnzb.govt.nz, Accessed 2 Aug 2004.

11

Although largely omitted from written accounts of the New Zealand Wars, there remains evidence that Māori made use of their horses in much the same manner as the settlers. Te Kooti’s surprise attack of about 60 mounted warriors on the Poverty Bay settlement of Matawhero is well documented.12 It was recognised that information could be gathered, reported and spread much more quickly by riders on horseback. From their trading base in Maugatautari in the Waikato, Ann and James Shepherd in the late 1850s observed groups of mounted Māori bringing news of government injustices in Taranaki that promoted much uneasiness among the Waikato Māori.13

Māori, like Pākehā, made use of warhorse symbolism. Judith Binney relates the legend of the white horse, one of the oral traditions surrounding Te Kooti. Many of his followers believed that the white horse that was identified with Te Kooti had mystical power and was able to spirit his rider away from his would be captors time and time again.14 As Te Kooti was well aware, the white horse had Biblical significance as Christ’s emblem of conquest. As written in Revelations ‘And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True… And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses’15 Te Kooti joined St. James, St. George and Napoleon and a long line of conquerors that were known to ride into battle on white chargers.16

A significant feature of the New Zealand Wars that was to have a lasting impact on warfare of the future was the establishment of organised groups of amateur soldiers throughout the colony who volunteered their services for defensive purposes. Fear of Māori attack led to the formation of volunteer corps in the early 1840s in various North Island settlements as well as in Nelson. These followed the British tradition of volunteer service during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.17 Yeomanry regiments of mounted volunteers had existed since 1794 when the threat of a French invasion loomed. These were highly localised organisations, sometimes being raised from a single estate. Others formed what one commentator has called, a

12

Judith Binney, Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Auckland: Auckland University Press with Bridget Williams Books, 1995, p.147, pp.119-21.

13

Margaret Shepherd and Rowland Green, ‘Three Pioneer Sisters’, Auckland Waikato Historical Journal, 73 (1999), pp.1-24.

14

Binney, p.147.

15

The Holy Bible, King James Version, Chapt. 19, Verses, 11,14.

16

M. Oldfield Howey, The Horse in Magic and Myth, London: William Rider & Son, 1923, pp.17-30.

17

John Crawford, ‘Volunteer Force’, in the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Military History, Ian McGibbon (ed.), Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp.566-67.

‘gentlemanly riding club’ in which every member from the commanding officer to trooper were either landed gentry or their tenants.18 This accounted for the close-knit nature of the regiments and for their reputation of loyalty and reliability. Each man supplied his own horse and equipment and although they received a small grant and pay if called up, this was not enough to meet expenses. It was in a spirit of service as well as comradeship and adventure that those with the means joined the yeomanry cavalry. As amateur troops, these regiments varied considerably in quality but most cavalrymen had at least enough experience to ride and to manage their horse in the field.

The formation of the New Zealand volunteer troops needs to be seen in this light. Although initially formed to protect their communities, they also served a social function in the new colonial settlements. The formation of a Wellington cavalry unit, as related in Ellen Petre’s journal is revealing. She describes how the Wellington settlers reacted to the news of the Wairau affray in 1843. Up to this time no arrangements had been made for the defence of the settlement, so volunteers for a militia were hastily summoned. The construction of a fort began and Ellen recorded how volunteers were assembled and drilled by Major Baker and a ‘few gentlemen on horseback’. Despite the shortage of horses at the time, Ellen’s husband, Henry, and some others decided to form a cavalry corps. Uniforms had to be hastily improvised with the agreement that either a red shirt or hunting coat would suffice. The long sword that Ellen describes helping her husband buckle on before he mounted for the first Sunday parade was probably the heavy sword issued to British cavalry regiments prior to the Napoleonic wars, but which had been largely superseded by the light cavalry sabre. She was aware of the limitations of a colonial cavalry as she confided to her journal, ‘I cannot see what use that can be in thick bush but at any rate it helps to make good fun now’.19 What the Petre journal reveals is that even with very limited participants and resources, a cavalry corps made up of what she called the ‘nobility’ was valued for more than its military worth. Just as in Britain, a place in the cavalry assured respectability and for those colonists with social aspirations, a horse, uniform and sword were important acquisitions.

18

Warner, pp.119-122.

19

Authorities recognised the limitations of a largely amateur colonial army and throughout the century various reforms were introduced to provide a regulatory framework for a growing volunteer force that was flexible enough to allow for a degree of independence for the local corps. The fact that each group was responsible for their internal organisation, the admission of members and election of officers made