SAMOA ANNIVERSARY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 6 September 1924, Page 14

SAMOA ANNIVERSARY.

LANDING OF TEN YEARS AGO

OFFICIAL HISTORY

Saturday was the tenth anniversary of the landing at Samoa by the New Zealand forces, and the seizure of the town ot Apia ~ and the possessions under the control of Germany. The anniversaiy is of dual significance, for to-day marks also the appearance of the official history of the Samoa Expeditionary Force, compiled by Mr S. J. bmith, of the Department of External Affairs, who was Secretary to the Samoan Administration in Military Occupation from 1915 to 1918. Rear-Admiral Patey, commanding the Australian Fleet, had a compact little naval force standing off Apia at daybreak on the 29th, three-quarters of a mile north of the East Reef. His fleet included the Australia (recently sunk off Sydney Heads), Melbourne, Montcalm, Philomel, Pyramus, aiid i u S^C !rf’ A . sharp look-out was keiit for the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the light cruiser’Nurnberg. The. German Governor decamped fpr the wireless station, but attempts to send messages were stopped by a peremptory order from the AdA cutter from the Psyche went ashore, with a summons to surrender I eople on the waterfront rushed about m. all directions. An hour and a half pasted, and the white flag was lowered from the Psyche, as a signal to the other small cruisers to enter the harbour while the transports stood off to seaward, in breathless expectation of German resistance.

A message in characteristic German style came back: ‘ ‘Though, they could not surrender the territory, no resistance would be offered to the lahding; that orders had been given to the wireless station to be packed up, and that they protested against the threat to bombard the port, such action being prohibited by the Hague Convention ” The Australia's picket boat swept the harbour for mines, troopships took up stations about a mile off" shore, motor launches, surf boats, and ships’ boats were launched, and m.en scrambled down rope ladders into the tossing craft, which w'ere dropped astern, each in charge of a naval officer, and towed in strings through the reef entrance towards the sandy strip . beach off Matatau Point. Public buildings were seized, native police rounded up, and guards mounted. At midnight a small column emerged from the bush into a clearing in which stood the great steel mast of the Telefunken wireless plant, completed only a few weeks before. The plant had been “crocked” and a “booby trap” set on the big Diesel engine, which, had it started, would have connected with a large quantity of explosive placed under the floor of the instrument, battery, and engine-rooms. On the following morning, Sunday, August 30, 1914, .the flag was formally hoisted at the Courthouse, and the occupation proclaimed by Colonel Logan at the head of his troops. For the first time in the history of the Empire a British Dominion overseas had sent an invading force across the ocean and captured a foreign territory.