OTAPAWA PA

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 11, 14 January 1926, Page 5

OTAPAWA PA

A HISTORIC SPOT

UNIQUE CEREMONY AT OHAWE.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) - HAWERA, 13th January. At Ohawe, a township on the coast some five or six miles from Hawera, there is a little cemetery containing the graves of twenty-four men of tho Imperial and Colonial Forces who died during the Maori War, the majority having been killed in action at the historical Otapawa Pa engagement on the 13th January, 1866. The people of Taranaki hold dear to their hearts the Ohawe Cemetery, and, with the assistance of tho War Graves Division of the Department of Internal Affairs, guard the sacred plot with wholehearted sincerity. To-day, being the sixtieth anniversary of the Otapawa battle, a unique ceremony was arranged for the unveiling of a cairn erected in 1907, to which the names of several more war veterans have recently been added. Tho ceremony, which was performed-by the Hon. R. 11.I 1. Bollard, Minister of" Internal Affairs, to-day, was attended by a representative gathering of the people of Taranaki. Tributes were paid by all the speakers to the struggles of the men who fought in New Zealand's early wars. Addressing the gathering, the Minister, said that tho Maori, now our kith and kin, was a clean but hard fighter, a fighter who won the admiration of our men. At that memorable battle at Otapawa Pa in 1866 the British losses were 11 killed and 20 wounded. The killed are all buried in Ohawe Cemetery. From his reading of the history of the Otapawa engagement, said Mr. Bollard, the scene of it was a farm about five miles from Hawera, and a mile above the bridge across the Tangahoo, on the HaweraMeremere ro£d. Even at the present time it was easy to trace the line of the many-angled front parapets and the trenches b>; the depressions in the ground. Inside the pa there were numerous ruas, or food stores, and the sites of dug-in huts. The place was not fenced or in any way protected from stock, and it was claimed that it was worthy of a little attention as one of Tai-anaki's most historical spots. He understood that a reserve of about one acre would include thp whole of tho ruined fortifications, and that was a matter to which he was giving careful consideration. A SOLE SURVIVOR. War veterans would know that the capture of Otapawa Pa, which immediately preceded General Chute's remarkable march around Mount Egmont, was a severe blow to the enemy. The records showed that the British forces engaged numbered 200 men of the 14th Regiment, 180 of the 57th Regiment, 36 of the Forest Bangers, and 200 of the Native Contingent, besides three Armstrong fieldguns. In the course of the assault on the pa, Lieut.-Colonel Jason Hassard, of the 57th Regiment, received wounds from which he died shortly afterwards.

The Minister remarked that there was to-day but one survivor of that engagement—Sergt.-Major Bezar, of 19, Eintoul street, Wellington. It was due to -the late Mr. James Livingston that the cairn on which the names of the gallant men who fell in the Otapawa engagement was erected.

Mr. Bollard laid at the foot of tho memorial a wreath on behalf of the Government.