Long-serving Maori Chief-of-staff retires.

Tu Tangata, Issue 4, 1 February 1982, Page 28

Long-serving Maori Chief-of-staff retires.

TE IWI/People

Major General Brian Poananga retired as Army Chief of the General Staff late last year after many years of army service. The new appointee is Major General R.G. Williams.

Major General Brian Matauru Poananga was born in December 1924. He took up an army career, graduating from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, Australia as a lieutenant in 1946. He served with the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Japan from 1947 until 1948. Following a number of staff and training appointments General Poananga was posted to active service in Korea from 1952 until 1953. He served first as a staff officer on Headquarters of the Commonwealth Division and subsequently with the Third Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. He received a mention in Dispatches for his services in Korea. Return home He returned to New Zealand to become Adjutant of the Ist Battalion,

the Hauraki Regiment and subsequently the Ist Battalion, the Northland Regiment. In 1954 the General was appointed a Grade 2 staff officer with the New Zealand Army Liaison Staff in London, after which he attended the 1957 course at the United Kingdom Staff College, Camberley. He returned to New Zealand in 1958 as the Chief Instructor at the Tactical School, Waiouru. He served in Malaya during the Emergency, with the Second Battalion, New Zealand Regiment as a Company Commander from 1959 until 1961 and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his service there. General Poananga was the CGS Exercise Writer at Army Headquarters from 1962 until 1963 and in 1964 he attended the Joint Services Staff College at Latimer in the United Kingdom.

Borneo service

He was appointed Director of Personnel Administration at Army Headquarters in 1965. Later that year he became Commanding Officer of the lst Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, and commanded the Battalion on active service in Borneo. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and received a Mention in Despatches for the second time for his services in Borneo.

On his return to New Zealand in ,1967 he became Director of Training at Army Headquarters and was subsequently the Director of Service Intelligence at the Minstry of Defence.

He was appointed to command the Army Training Group at Waiouru, the Army’s largest training establishment, in 1970 and remained in this appointment until December 1972. General Poananga attended the 1973 course at the Royal college of Defence Studies in the United Kingdom.

General Poananga returned to New Zealand in January 1974 to command the lst Infantry Brigade Group but in June of that year was seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and appointed New Zealand’s first High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea. He returned to New Zealand in September 1976 and became Deputy Chief of General Staff.

He was promoted in November 1978 when he commenced the appointment of Chief of the General Staff. He was awarded the CBE in the 1978 New Year’s Honours. He is married with a daughter and two sons. The General is now looking forward to enjoying his retirement on his farm at Taupo.