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This Anzac Day a new honours board will be dedicated at the former Kariaotahi School near Waiuku. Helena O’Neill speaks with bugler Noel Binns about his Anzac connection to the area.
How long have you been a bugler?
I’ve been playing the trumpet for over 50 years. In the late 1970s, for the civic service in the Waiuku Town Hall [Waiuku War Memorial Hall], I was a member of the Waiuku Stage Band and we played there.
A schoolteacher at Waiuku College, Phillip Lloyd, was playing the Last Post until he moved away. I think it was about the late 1990s when I started being a bugler.
What services have you been a bugler at?
I think I started out at Awhitu in the 1990s as well. I think the service there was 9am when I first started, and now it’s 8.30am. They get quite a good crowd out there, between 100 and 120. It’s well-supported by the locals. I’ve also played at the dawn service in Pukekohe.
Do you have any relatives who served?
My grandfather, Edwin Joseph Binns (Joe), was in the First World War. I never knew him, but he was discharged in 1918 before the end of the war as he was “no longer fit for war service on account of illness contracted on active service.”
He left New Zealand on November 13, 1915, reaching Suez on December 20, 1915. He was in the field at Armentieres and the Somme battlefields.
In 1917, he contracted pleurisy and spent time in a hospital in England. He served 116 days in New Zealand and 2 years and 123 days overseas, a total of 2 years and 239 days. He received the 1914-15 Star, the British Medal, and the Victory Medal.
He had ill health for the rest of his life, and he died in 1945, aged 51.
Was he one of the names on the Kariaotahi ** School Roll of Honour?
Yes, he was. As a relative, I was invited to be the bugler for the rededication service there last year after they restored the honours board. I will be there again this Anzac Day for the dedication of the new Second World War roll of honour.
How many services are you playing this year?
Three – Awhitu, Waiuku, and Kariaotahi Hall.
A new roll of honour
Last year, the Kariaotahi Hall Committee organised the repair and complete restoration of the beautiful but faded and worn First World War Roll of Honour, which has been on the wall in the former Kariaotahi School for over 100 years.
The hall committee has now organised a Second World War Roll of Honour memorial board to match the First World War Roll of Honour that was restored in time for Anzac Day last year.
The board recognises those who served in the Second World War – either in New Zealand or overseas. The school closed in 1968 and is now known as Kariaotahi Hall. A special ceremony will be held at the hall at 2pm this Anzac Day. The hall committee has been busy tracking down relatives of these men to invite them to the ceremony and to gather information and photos to include in a biography on each serviceman.
Hall committee member Kay Vincent said some have family who still live locally, and others have been long forgotten after they moved elsewhere decades ago. Some are remembered on other local boards.
“There could well be names we have inadvertently omitted.”
Of these 31 men who passed through a mostly sole-charge school, four died on active service, which is a huge toll from a small school.
The 31 past pupils who served in the Second World War are:
Alexander BLYTH, Kenneth John BLYTH, Thomas McCall BLYTH, George Herbert BREGMEN, James William BREGMEN, Noel David Edmond BULTE, Albert Delville (Del) CHAPMAN, Harold John CHAPMAN, Erik Sven ERIKSON, Oscar Ole ERIKSON, Franklin Thomas EVANS, Walter GILLATT, Hugh Scott HARKNESS, Anthony Charles John HERROLD, Peter HOLMES, Dennis Henry HONEY, Gordon Desmond HONEY, Leslie Allenby HONEY, Nelson Maxwell HONEY, Frank KNIGHT, Jack Muir KNIGHT*, Robert Baines KNIGHT*, David Churchill MAKGILL, Charles Malcolm McCULLY, Ross Elliot McNAUGHTEN, Clarence Stanley McNAMARA, Frederick George REDFERN*, Ralph Stuart SYKES*, Raymond THOMSON, Thomas Kennedy THOMSON, Sidney John TURNER.
*Denotes died in service.
**Karioitahi is the spelling for the area and the beach, while the spelling Kariaotahi was used for the school which is now a community hall. There have been many variations of these spellings over the years.
