Von Tempsky learned the art of guerrilla warfare from Nicaraguan Indians

Press, 20 July 1979, Page 13

Von Tempsky learned the art of guerrilla warfare from Nicaraguan Indians

Gustavus Ferdinand von Tempsky was born in East Prussia in February, 1828, son of a family of Polish descent. As family tradition dictated, he was educated at a military academy, where he probably had his introduction to the fine arts: in those precamera days, the ability to make a recognisable sketch was required of all officers and gentlemen. After leaving the academy von Tempsky had a brief military career, but apparently found the discipline not to his liking, and left the army after only about six months. Seeking adventure of a less aggressive kind, he joined a group of Prussians who set sail for the British-controlled Mos- > quito Coast of South America, hoping to start a colony near its border with Nicaragua. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, it was there that he had his introduction to the type of irregular warfare that he was later to master in New Zealand — first as an intelligence agent for the British, and then as a member of a hastily assembled force that drove back the Nicaraguan regulars, just as the Sandanista guerrillas are doing in the same area today. That was in 1848. Two years later, the jungle climate and American diplomatic (or not-so-diplo-matic) pressure had achieved what the Nicaraguans had failed to do, and the British military had to leave. Von Tempksy, meantime. had accepted a commission and was teaching his force of Indian troops to be soldiers, in return for which they were teaching him the art of living and fighting in the jungle. He had also met the woman who was to become his wife: Emelia Bell, a daughter of the British agent. When von Tempsky’s usefulness, and welcome, came to an end. he joined the rush to the goldfields of California, where he soon learned that the streets of San Francisco were paved not with gold, but with rubbish. He fell back on his military training, took a job as guard for mule trains, and later joined a private army hired by Jack Sutter, the self-styled “King of California,’’ to keep prospectors off his land. Soon, however, he was a goldminer again. But after various adventures (including being set upon and robbed in San Francisco) and various ventures (including an attempt to set up a transport business taking supplies by mule train to the miners) he decided to shake off the dust of California, and headed south again to Central America. With a friend (a German doctor) and later with another young German who joined them in Durango. he set out to cross Central America. Two years later, having survived a major earthquake, and clashes with bandits, Commanches, ill-dis-ciplined Mexican soldiers and venal officials, he arrived back on the Mosquito Coast. Less than a fortnight after his arrival, he and Emelia were married. One of the few peaceful periods of his adult life began. Emelia’s father and her brother, Charles (who later became engineer of the Lyttelton Harbour Board, and died in Tasmania in 1904) had entered the mahogany export trade, and after a few exploratory prospecting trips von Tempsky joined the family business. In his spare time, he sketched and painted. , By 1857 it was clear

that Emelia’s father, who had been in failing health for some time, needed better care than he could get in the settlement of Bluefields, and the whole family boarded ship for England. In London, von Ternpsky found a publisher for his book, “Mitla,” based on his adventures in Mexico and illustrated with coloured plates from his own paintings, before going north to Glasgow to meet the rest of the Bell family. He also travelled back to Germany for a reunion with his family. But the quiet, settled life could not last; lacking a job, and the qualifications to get one, he was continually short of money, and “homesick” for gold, adventure, and a warmer climate. The death of Emelia’s father, James Bell, on March 10. 1858, released her from her last tie with her homeland, and within weeks von Tempsky was loading his wife and two sons (the older born at Bluefields, the younger only two months old) on board the Sirocco at Liverpool for passage to ..ustralia and the Victorian goldfields. Once again, fortune was elusive, and so was fame. His goldmining ventures failed, and so did his bid for the leadership of the Victoria Exploration Party’s expedition to the interior. Despite von Tempsky’s admirable qualifications, the leadership went to Robert O’Hara Burke, a policeman. Denied the leadership, von Tempsky applied again, this time for the post of artist and naturalist, and once again was rejected. According to an 1889 account, von Tern-. psky tried a third time, joining the 700 applicants for the 10 rank-and-file places, and begging Burke to take him along, but once again he was rejected. Two years later, fed up with Australia, the von Tempskys crossed the Tasman to settle at Coromandel. where a new goldfield was being opened. Fifteen months later, von Tempsky was no nearer to a fortune in gold than he had been in 1850, when he arrived in California. And war was imminent against the Maoris in Auckland province. When it came, von Tempsky believed, it would be a ruthless, hit-and-run campaign like the one he had fought in the jungles of Nicaragua. At that time, therfe was an odd custom that a prospective officer of the militia had to enlist his men before he was granted a commission; so after offering himself to the Government, von Tempsky set about tryt’g to raise a Waikato Corps of 100 men among the miners. He failed. The miners were more interested in the chances of fortunes in gold than in the pay of 2s 6d. a day offered to private soldiers. So von Tempsky, determined to be where the action was, persuaded the “Daily Southern Cross,” for which he had been writing of mining affairs, to appoint him war correspondent. When standard military tactics proved useless against the fast-moving Maoris in the bush, Captain William Jackson was given the task of raising a new kind of irregular force — the Forest Rangers. After tagging along on a rangers foray into the bush, von Tempsky, then aged 35, changed his nationality and his occupation, and enlisted as probably the

oldest ensign in the colonial forces. Within eight months his rank was major. Von Tempsky applied to the campaign in the bush the lessons in jungle warfare that he had been taught by the Indians of the Mosquito Coast, and introduced new techniques of close-quarters fighting. The rangers, by all

accounts a wild and unruly bunch in both behaviour and appearance, were among the best-armed troops of the day. Instead of the muzzle-loading Enfield rifle, the rangers were quipped with breechloading carbines, less accurate at long range but deadly enough up to 100 yards, easier to carry in the bush and, most importantly, having a rate of fire about 15 times that of the muzzle-loader.

Charging a muzzleloader was a long and complicated procedure: bite the end off a cartridge, insert it carefully in the muzzle, unsling the ramrod, ram home the load, sling the ramrod, put the hammer on half-cock, remove the old percussion cap, put a new one on the nipple, cock and fire.

Sometimes, in the heat of the battle, a rifleman forgot to remove the ramrod from the barrel, and fired away his only means of reloading. Sometimes, too, charge after charge was rammed into the barrel and not fired; rifles recovered after the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War had as many as 15 or 20 charges in them.

With the breech-loader, there was no ramrod to fire away, no risk of a double or treble charge blowing up the barrel. It was a simple matter of flipping open the breech, dropping in a cartridge, closing the breech — and being ready to fire. The only mystery about the new weapon was why the British military waited so long to adopt it. At close quarters the carbine, with bayonet attached, became a deadly fighting weapon. Even so, it had its limitations and von Tempsky recognised them. His men were equipped instead with revolvers and bowie knives, the latter a weapon which von Tempsky is said to have introduced to New Zealand. Reputedly, yon Tempsky

had used the bowie knife frequently in California against robbers and Indians. With its heavy blade and double edge, it was a superb fighting weapon.

For all his talents, for all his charismatic ability to inspire loyalty and fearlessness in his troops, and for all his meteoric rise through the ranks, von Tempsky’s military career was a chequered one, marred near the end by clashes with higher authorities.

One of his first forays, a reconnaissance with Thomas McDonnell of a Maori position at Paparata, when they spent a whole day hidden in flax bushes virtually in the middle of a huge enemy encampment, won for von Tempsky promotion ,to captain.

In later actions, he was twice Mentioned in Dispatches (about the highest honour a naturalised Prussian of Polish descent could expect to get in the British Colonial Forces), once for an action near Paterangi in which his fri,end, Captain Charles Heaphy (another rioted artist of colonial days) won a Victoria Cross for rescuing a wounded man. Throughout 1864, von Tempsky’s men ranged the Waikato, taking part in numerous actions, most notably the final assault at Orakau, for which he received his second Mention and his promotion to major.

When the Waikato campaign ended he was offered a block of land near Harapepe as a reward, but the prospect of peace did not appeal, and he offered himself for service in the Wanganui district, where fighting was just beginning. The major’s jungle tactics proved just as effective in this campaign, and one of his ventures, the capture of a Maori position at Kakaramea, was hailed by the Premier, Frederick Weld, who said at a dinner in von Tempsky’s honour in Wellington that the major had done more than any other officer to raise the character of the colonial force, and that he was “the great bulwark of the selfreliant policy, the lion of the hour.” Soon afterwards, von Tempsky ran headlong into a clash with the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial forces, General Cameron, and the Defence Minister, Major Atkinson, over the taking of a strategically important Maori position, the Weraroa Pa. Von Tempsky and McDonnell (then a major commanding a formation of friendly Maoris known as the Native Contingent) exchanged messages with the defenders, and persuaded them to surrender. The plans were obstructed by their immediate superior, Lieutenant-Cokmel Logan, and when Logan arrived with his own messengers the rebels suspected a trap, and withdrew their offer to surrender.

Logan, under Cameron’s orders, then refused the Native Contingent permission to attack, and the whole affair lapsed into a stalemate, “in consequence of which,” von Tempsky ■wrote to the Prime Minister, “I hereby tender my resignation of my command.” This caused a fierce reaction in the corridors of power. The Attorney-Gen-eral declared that the British commander should be court-martialled. The Prime Minister resigned, announcing that a military dictatorship was making the elected representatives of the people powerless.

The Governor himself (Sir George Grey) entered the field, leading in person a force of native and colonial troops that took the pa after the defenders, sensing defeat, slipped away in darkness. Not one life was lost, though Cameron had declared the enemy post too strong to be taken by his entire army.

Cameron resigned, and Weld remained in office. But if the colonials had won a skirmish, they had not won the war, and von Tempsky had made some powerful enemies in the British High Command. He missed the capture of Weraroa because of illness, and while on leave subsequently he was replaced as commander of a rangers mission to the east coast. When he returned from leave he found he had been put under the command of a junior officer, on an expedition to Waiapu. Incensed, he sent his resignation to Atkinson, who responded by changing von Tempsky’s destination to Napier. He refused to obey the order, and when some of his men, too, refused to board the ship that was to take them there, he declined to go to the docks to talk to them, saying they had been enlisted to fight only in the Auckland province, and that if they were to fight elsewhere they would have to volunteer anew.

The response of the Defence Office was to place von Tempsky under close arrest — an act that caused a political upheaval in the colony. Weld resigned, and Atkinson was replaced. Subsequently a court of inquiry cleared von Tempsky, and he returned to the Wanganui campaign, gaining distinction in a number of engagements. In 1866, when there was a lull in the fighting, von Tempsky and his rangers were demobilised.

Von Tempsky, for the moment, had had his fill of fighting. For two years he lived quietly in Auckland with his family, writing a book about his experiences in the war. painting, cultivating his garden, and taking part in Auckland’s musical and social life. But he was always short of money, and when the Thames goldfield opened he one again left his family to seek his fortune; once again gold eluded him. At the beginning of 1868, he received an offer he could not refuse: a position as Inspector of the Fifth Armed Constabulary. In his new role, he was posted first to Wanganui, then to Waikato, then back to Wanganui, where he came under the command of his old friend, Thomas McDonnell. Two months later, in an attack led by McDonnell at Te Ngutu o te Manu, von Tempsky and his men were cut off ' and surrounded. When von Tempsky went to help a wounded man, a bullet struck him in the middle of the forehead, and he fell dead. Under heavy fire, his troops retreated, leaving behind his body, which was later burned by the Maoris who had killed him. Only a few weeks earlier he had, in effect, written his own obituary in a letter to his wife: “. .. The dangers to which I am exposed here are very small compared with those which the soul has to encounter, and to surmount in the most peaceful time ... An honourable death on the battlefield is a gift of God compared with slower death.” ♦

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DERRICK ROONEY