THE GATE PA

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LI, Issue 8274, 28 April 1923, Page 4

THE GATE PA

Captain Mair reminds our readers dial in-morrow will be the fifty-ninth anniversary of die memorable. fight at Pukeliinalii 11a, or Gate Pa. In allusion to which General Sir Andrew Russell, during his last visit- to Tauranga remarked that, the memory of dm Gate Pa was retained more visibly in military and naval circles than any other event in the Dominion. No satisfactory explanation had yet been given how it happened that nearly 2000 men of His Majesty’s I'crocs- the finest troops known, amply provided, as they were with die best artillery and anus of precision in the world - were signally defeated by less than 250 Ngaiterangi warriors, whose only weapons consisted of old flint powder muskets, I’nimmagen double and single barnd shot guns and Jong handled tomahawks. The position assailed, a. p|ain grassy knoll, not thirty feel higher than the surrounding open country, had no natural advantages, and probably, in British military history no plan attack or elaborate meas hits to ensure complete, success were ever more carefully considered and adopted than on this occasion. Dp to the period the possibilities of earth work defences had never been realised till our Royal Engineers were foiled time and again by tho se of a savage race. A few years later, the defence, of Plevna by the Turks against the Russians, was another revelation, till now earthworks have become the paramount features in all military land operations as the recent great war has so amply demonstrated