Carving will be shown

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32778, 1 December 1971, Page 20

Carving will be shown

A Maori carving destined for Le Quesnoy, the walled French town captured by the New Zealand Rifle Brigade on November 4, 1918, in the last important battle of the New Zealand Division in the First World War, will be displayed in Christchurch before it is sent to France.

During 1968, Mr J. K. Moloney, who died last week, as chairman of the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade Association, arranged with Mr B. A. Sommerfield to carve a Maori figure to commemorate the fifthieth anniversary of the storming of the ramparts by the New Zealand soldiers. Survivors made a pilgrimage to Le Quesnoy in 1968. Mr Sommerfeld’s carving, named a teko teko, has now been handed over to the New Zealand Rifle Brigade Association, representatives of which at the presentation were Dr L. C. L. Averill, chairman, who, as a subaltern, was the first up a scaling ladder when the town was taken from the Germans, Messrs W. H. Ashworth, H. E. Davis, L. F. Harris, P. A. Lummis, R. C. Matthews, D. H. Murrary, J. S. Shimmin and E. A. Winchester.

Dr Averill said the teko teko showed remarkable skill and strict adherence to Maori traditions, and Mr A. K. Hops, a member of the Maori Council and the Christchurch executive of the Returned Services Association, explained some of its features.