‘The Raw Men’

Te Ao Hou, November 1964, Page 2

‘The Raw Men’ The Editor, ‘Te Ao Hou’ In his letter in your last issue, Mr Pinfold says that Rowley Habib's poem on the Maori Battalion, ‘The Raw Men’, creates an unfair image and is derogatory criticism. I am sure that the poem was not meant as criticism, and I do not think that most readers would regard it in this way. If war were to come again now, and if Mr Habib were to write about a new Maori Battalion, his poem would be very different, for these days there would be many Maori soldiers who would come to the army from occupations such as teaching, the arts, medicine, the regular armed forces, and trades such as carpentry and mechanics. But the majority of men who joined the Maori Battalion 25 years ago, and who fought so heroically, did come from the background that the poem describes. Mr Habib has written a good poem about a true situation. D.M.G. (Tokaanu)