Last surviving member of 28th Māori Battalion to be knighted

Sir Robert Gillies, the last surviving member of the 28th Māori Battalion, has agreed to be knighted after previously rejecting the distinction twice.

Sir Robert Gillies didn't want to be knighted.

He doesn't want the spotlight either, nor the attention and praise that comes with being made Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

But Tā Robert Gillies is the last surviving member of the legendary 28th Māori Battalion from World War II.

"I can no longer hide from that," he said, describing the mixed array of emotions that come from accepting the honour. "I am the only one left."

"It's very frightening for me, I'm not used to all this public stuff. I feel that the true people who need this honour, they've all passed on. The others were more deserving of it than me, and there was a lot of them."

Koro Bom, as he's known across Te Arawa, didn't want to be interviewed either, preferring the announcement go under the radar with little attention or comment. He pondered for a few days, before agreeing to a brief chat, on his terms.

He was there at 9am sharp, at the pā at Ōhinemutu, the steaming village on the picturesque shores of Lake Rotorua.

He stood tall at the veterans' cemetery, a small peninsula that juts out into the grey lake, the white tombs of comrades, cousins and friends, and a towering monument to the battalion he said this knighthood was for.

Still an agile figure at 97, he sat on the lake's edge with a handful of Māori journalists and whānau, quietly reminiscing. His blazer pressed to perfection, his row of medals glistening in the summer sun. The gold, black and red of the 28th Māori Battalion emblem sitting proudly on his chest.

This knighthood, he said, is not for him, but the more than 3000 young Māori who went to fight on foreign lands for Aotearoa, who, in the eyes of the one remaining rangatira, never got the recognition or acknowledgement they deserved.

"All the right people for this honour have died," he said. "I agreed to this for my friends who are passed on, that was my reason for agreeing."

Born in Rotorua in February 1925, Robert Gillies (Te Arawa, Ngāti Kahungunu) was 14 years old when World War II broke out. He twice tried to enlist, but was turned away for being too young. In 1942, on his third attempt, a 17-year-old Gillies was enlisted after lying about his age.

"We wanted to go on an adventure. I had never even been as far as Mamaku before I joined the Army," Gillies said, referencing a village about 20km west of Rotorua.

He left for the Northern Hemisphere in 1943, as part of the 10th reinforcements for the Māori Battalion, which by then had fought in brutal and unsuccessful campaigns in Greece and Crete, as well as some of the most ferocious fighting in North Africa.

Gillies arrived in North Africa towards the end of the desert campaign in 1943, and spent the remainder of the war fighting in the advance up Italy, where he was injured before returning to the front lines with the Battalion, including for the infamous battle for Monte Cassino in 1944.

More than 3600 young Māori took up arms for 28 Māori Battalion, 649 of whom would die during the war. The commander of the New Zealand second division, Bernard Freyberg, would later say that no battalion "had a more distinguished record, or saw more fighting, or, alas, had such heavy casualties as the Māori Battalion."

The Battalion returned in 1946 to a rapturous reception, but also a country that was little changed for Māori in terms of policy and equality. Māori had paid a heavy price, what Apirana Ngata described as 'the price of citizenship.'

"A lot of our men, they never got recognised for the work they did. A lot of them did a lot of work in the war. But, you know, they just carried on."

"Sometimes I wonder now what it was all for. We stopped the tyranny of Hitler at the time, I suppose. But I wonder if the world is really a better place for the cost of all our boys."

In the decades since, Gillies has been active in efforts to continue to recognise the Battalion, representing it at events both in Aotearoa and abroad. He has also been an active member of the Te Arawa Returned Services Association and Ngāti Whakaue.

But at these ceremonies, the number of brothers standing up front has fast dwindled, as reunions give way to tangi. For the past few, there has only been one there: Tā Robert Gillies.

In 2019, he was made a Knight of the Order of Merit for the Republic of Italy. Today makes him a knight in two countries.

"It's a huge honour to me, to be in this position and I feel I have to front up for the 3600 men who served in that wonderful unit," he said.

"They said it was for the battalion, and their families, and for the Māori people as a whole."

It took two attempts to convince him to accept it, though. His grandson Taupunga Gillies said it involved much prodding from the family and his wider iwi to get him to accept it.

"He received the letter then he rung me straight away to email them and decline it. Then we done that and maybe a couple of weeks later they persuaded him to do it again," he said at Ōhinemutu.

"I think he'll probably want to keep it quiet, and hopefully just go to Wellington, get it over and done with, and then get on with life."

Māori Development minister Willie Jackson said there was no one more deserving.

"What he's talked about to me in private is that he's very sad about what happened with his friends, he feels too that the battalion were not honoured the way they should have been.

"He said he doesn't feel he's deserving of it. There's thousands who would think otherwise, matua. That's the humility of this wonderful rangatira."

Wandering through Ōhinemutu, the steam bubbling up from drains and winding its way around the pou in front of the marae, the village with its streams and pools and mud bubbling up from beneath the earth, Robert Gillies, nearly 97, was as agile as ever, still setting an athletic pace.

He's still involved with his beloved Waikite Rugby Club, he's fronted a Te Arawa campaign for the Covid-19 vaccine, and just last week he was caught on the roof of his house, where he still lives independently.

"I always catch him on that bloody roof," said Taupunga. "He doesn't listen, that's what I mean. Even the first time we tried to get him to take the knighthood - you know how he is, he's too stubborn." But that stubbornness, Taupunga reckoned, was a secret to his koroua's longevity.

Bom Gillies' voice is faint today, but his wit is acerbic. And while shy of the spotlight, he has no problem laying down the wero. Particularly to the government.

"They'd better start looking after the ordinary people instead of the rich. It's harder now for people to get a house. In our days, you got one for two thousand pounds. It's all about money, it's not about people."

Just don't call him Tā Bom.

"I am scared of that name, it is not for me."