Haddon Vivian Donald was born in the Wairarapa on March 20, 1917 and was educated at Nelson College and Wairarapa College.
“Leaving school in 1934, at the height of the Depression, it was not possible to begin a planned law degree, so I worked in the family business. Shooting was a particular passion, and I spent every summer Saturday afternoon at the Masterton-Opaki Rifle Range, competing at the national championships for the first time in 1935. I loved duck shooting, hare drives and fishing, and my father taught me all he knew. A great many ducks and hares paid the ultimate price as I honed my sharpshooting skills.”
By 1937 Donald figured the war’s coming was ‘obvious to everyone but our government’, so he joined the local territorials as much on the rationale that he better be as ‘trained and prepared as possible to survive’ as patriotism and a desire to stand up to Hitler. In August 1939, he passed his infantry commission. At the outbreak of war, he went to the Masterton drill hall at 7.30am on the first day to sign-up, but after waiting an hour-and-a-half he had to accept the local authorities weren’t ready.
“There was no sense of adventure in my mind when I joined up; there was certainly a dread and a loathing of war. But there was also a growing antipathy towards Hitler and his thugs. Who was this upstart who thought he could rule the world?… To hell with him – he must be stopped. I did not want him with his goose-stepping henchmen to rule roughshod over my family and my country. No, he must be stopped, and Britain had set an example which we had to support. I was 22 years old, and with my Territorial training and rifle practice I had done my best to prepare for war.”
After being called up, he arrived at Trentham Camp in December 1939 for a preliminary course, in anticipation of the arrival of the troops in January. They were issued with WWI uniforms and slept in WWI Bell tents that leaked badly. With plenty of discipline, route marching and physical training the men gradually moulded into shape, and the competition between companies helped build esprit-de-corps amongst the men.
“In the months of training at Trentham, there was a competition to determine the most efficient company in the battalion and then the most efficient platoon in that company. As a reward for my platoon winning the competition, I was proud to lead 14 Platoon at the head of the 22nd Battalion in the final march through Wellington prior to embarkation. There was never another platoon like it – though some may dispute that – and I stayed with them till promotion required me to move on.”
Donald and his unit sailed with the Hawkes Bay and West Coast (C) Company of the 22 Battalion aboard the Empress of Britain as part of the Second Echelon – 2NZEF. Soon after arriving in the UK, via South Africa, Haddon bumped into his brother Graeme, who was serving a short service commission in the RAF at the NZ Force Club, precisely a year after they had said their goodbyes back home. They were able to catch up several times in the UK.
“For most of our time in England, we were stationed at a small village in Kent called Hollingbourne, where the local people adopted us. The Vernon family kept open house for our battalion officers, and we all coveted the attention of their daughter Avril, who was a charmer. We were centrally situated there and transported in old London buses ready to be thrown into the fray at any point along the south coast should Jerry attempt an invasion. The Cockney drivers became very popular with our troops. We were sad to leave the good people of Hollingbourne and, when the time eventually came, we held a moving last service in the local church at which our commanding officer presented a New Zealand flag to the vicar. (It has now, with the ravages of time, been replaced twice.)”
Donald and his unit then sailed for Egypt.
“Egypt was full of surprises. Compared with the lush greens of the Nile region, the train journey from Suez to Cairo gave us our first glimpse of the starkness of the desert with its bare hills and rocky plains. We met up too, with a variety of those likeable rascals who had earned the title of WOG or ‘Wily Oriental Gentleman’. Having learned to live off their wits in a poor environment, they were as sharp as razors. Able to tell by the colour of our skin (whether it was tanned/sun-burnt or otherwise) that we were newcomers, the newspaper boys arrived on the platform by arrangement with the train driver, crying ‘Read all about it – good news – ship sunk – British ship’, just as we were pulling out very slowly. The smiling rogues would snatch the five piastres proffered by our gullible troops through the train windows. Then, still clutching the papers, they would run off down the train to find another victim before melting away into the crowd. We soon learned their tricks and appreciated their sense of humour. They were all called ‘George’, and we routinely accused them of being ‘Klefti Wallahs’ or petty thieves.”
The men had barely three months training in the desert before being shipped to Greece to counter an expected German invasion. After arriving in Piraeus near Athens, 22 Battalion went north to block one of the significant German routes of advance, at the foot of Mount Olympus – their baptism of fire:
“From our vantage point, we watched the Germans approaching in an endless column down the main road towards us, preceded by motorcycles with machine gun equipped side-cars. Troop vehicles, tanks and artillery could be seen in close-packed formation, but there was not a plane of our own in sight. They had mostly been taken by surprise and shot up on the ground. A reconnaissance plane hovered overhead, so we did not give our positions away until the last moment. Then, as the Germans approached, our engineers fired a demolition charge in the road ahead of them, and the column came to a halt. Our artillery – mortars and machine guns – then opened up and created havoc. The Germans knew then that they had run into something solid.”
“We held them at bay… The following night the inevitable happened, and we had to withdraw as the Germans had overrun the Greeks on our left flank. For 14 Platoon this entailed a three-hour trek in the dark across the rough, unfamiliar country in the foothills of Mount Olympus. The track was marked on the map, but was difficult to follow. Several times I temporarily lost my way in the dark and progress was slow when out of the gloom behind me came a voice, ‘Stick to the mud, Boss’. Withdrawing with the general retreat, they then formed a defensive position at Thermopylae Pass for about a week, before the final withdrawal to avoid being outflanked, to Porto Rafti, where they were taken by Royal Navy ship to Crete. Before leaving, they sadly had to destroy much of their equipment, including their battalion bagpipes and drums which had played their unit anthem – the ancient Scottish air, The Pibroch of Donald Dhu played since the unit was first formed.”
“We stepped ashore at Suda Bay lucky to be alive and determined to do our share come what may. The sun was shining, the surroundings looked interesting, the locals were friendly, the olive trees provided welcome shade, the oranges were ripe and juicy, and the wine was good – perhaps we should count our blessings.”
Donald’s unit was positioned on the strategically important Maleme airstrip, and in the thick of the fighting after the German attack on May 20th.
“Dawn broke on May 20 and overcame the expected Stukas. We curled up in the bottom of our slit trenches and braced ourselves for the ordeal. After about an hour the onslaught eased off and my runner, Jimmy Christian, who occupied one side of our two-person slit trench, went off to collect our breakfast. While he was away, I heard a dull roar and looked out to sea to see an armada of heavy bombers coming straight at us, wave after wave of menacing monsters all heading for our position. Now we are for it, I thought; this is where it all begins and, perhaps, ends…”
“These were big bombers, and as each bomb screeched down, I curled up into the smallest possible space, knees under my chin, tin hat protecting my head and body. As each bomb zoomed in, tension built up to a crescendo of sheer terror and uncontrollable trembling for the few seconds before impact. There was no time for relief before the next bomb with my name apparently on it followed closely behind. The same process over and over again – would it never stop? Finally, my personal bomb landed 5’ away on my runner’s side of our slit trench, and I passed out with concussion. I came round to find Jimmy Christian shaking my shoulder. ‘Wake up, boss, there are paratroopers and gliders all around us’. I stood up groggily and, looked out but could not see a thing. A heavy pall of dust and smoke obliterated everything. As it slowly dispersed during the next quarter of an hour two smashed gliders and a few abandoned parachutes were revealed. My platoon position and company headquarters were carpeted with bomb craters practically touching one another. Five of my platoon were killed and several wounded in this attack.”
Reflecting on the loss of Crete, Donald was sceptical of some of the ‘armchair criticism’ that he encountered:
“Published records indicate a considerably greater number of Allied than German forces, but make no recognition that the invading troops were all front-line fighting troops, while the majority of ours were support personnel in charge of supplies, aerodromes, parts etc. The crucial part, to my mind, was the complete domination of the air by the Germans and the fact that up until that time Hitler has been victorious in the war and would likely have been unwilling to accept a defeat. Why were we so tragically ill-equipped?”
After time in hospital in Egypt recovering from wounds sustained on Crete, and some leave, Donald fought with his unit through the whole Middle-East/desert campaign including Operation Crusader, Minqa Qaim, and Alamein. He fought all the way through Italy, and took the surrender of the Germans at Trieste in the last action of the European war, as Battalion Commander of the 22nd. The New Zealanders then had to face down the former ally, the Yugoslavs under Tito, who were attempting to take Trieste as ‘war booty’, contrary to an agreement with Churchill, to give their republic an Adriatic coastal port. It was a tense situation that foretold the start of the Cold War.
After the war, Donald returned to farming and family business interests in the Wairarapa, and keen to make up for lost time, applied for and was accepted as the first New Zealander to attend Harvard Business School. On August 30, 1947, he married Ana Beetham, also from the Wairarapa, who had served as a Navy WREN during the war.
Haddon Donald also became the National Party Member of Parliament for Wairarapa and maintained his passion for target shooting, representing New Zealand numerous times at the world championships in Bisley. From 1988 he retired to Taupō then Masterton.
(Some text adapted from Donald’s autobiography In Peace and War: A Civilian Soldier’s Story, (2005), Masterton, Fraser Books, ISBN 09658252165). And video produced by Patrick Bronte)
