TRIBUTE TO SOLDIER

Camp News, Volume 3, Issue 140, 18 September 1942, Page 4

TRIBUTE TO SOLDIER

Lieutenant-Colonel J. J. Russell, D.S.O. » The place of John Russell in the 2nd N.Z.E.F. will be hard to fill. Every attribute that goes to make a great soldier and leader he possessed in full. To have known him was a delight ; to have served under him was a privilege. In work. or play he was outstanding, a hero among soldiers and a sportsman among his friends. He left New Zealand on January b, 1940, as a major commanding a squadron in the divisional cavalry. Life on shipboard is generally a lazy existence, but not so with John Russell. If he were not training his men and _ getting to know each personally and intimately, he was leading us all in sports. Every activity on the ship claimed his participation. . I never knew a man so full of high spirits and common sense. His loud roar of a laugh could be heard all over the ship. His capacity for joking was illimitable. Yet there was not a grain of malice in his composition. His spirit was too robust to be petty. Those of us who travelled with him on that voyage out will remember him first as we think of our companions. Life was his adventure always. Later in Egypt there was no one more determined to have his men well trained. His thoughts and acts were always first directed for the. benefit of the men and for their efficiency. ’ He had a passion for excellence, and how well he succeeded is well known throughout the N.Z.E.F All ranks of his command were infected by his own enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was spread through his command not by grim attention to detail, but rather by John Russell’s buoyant high spirits, his natural optimism, and his sense of the reality of things. It was inevitable that he should be noticed in action. In Greece and in Crete his leadership was outstanding, and his personal bravery supreme. No one who knew him was in the slightest degree surprised to hear that he had been awarded the D.S.O. for great gallantry in the field. That was just John Russell. Only once did I see him angry. He had been sent to the base suffering from some medical complaint affecting his feet. Some of the doctors were contemplating his having to return to New Zealand .as unfit. He was livid with fury and determined" to defeat such a catastrophe. He even went outside the army for advice, but I think that it was really his sheer grit and determination that made him fit once more. A vacancy occurred later for command of one of the Wellington infantry battalions and he was selected to fill the gap. He left his beloved divisional cavalry, and was duly promoted to lieutenantcolonel as he assumed his new command.

It was no surprise to me to hear a month later from one of his men that they would all follow him anywhere. Now he has been killed with his face to the foe. and New Zealand has lost a very gallant officer who would assuredly, had the fates allowed, have risen even higher in the army. He could not have risen higher in the affection of his friends or the men whom he commanded. As I write this I imagine I can see John Russell as he strolls along the Elysian Fields turn and look down and whisper, “Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail or knock the breast, nothing but well and fair,” but it is I who will complete the quotation, “And what may quiet us in a death so noble." — O. A, L. Treadwell, Lieutenant-Colonel, 12/9/42. MINISTER’S TRIBUTE “In the death, on active service in the Middle East, of Lieut.-Colonel J. T. Russell, D. 5.0., the Dominion Bas lost a splendid officer whose high talents had undoubtedly destined him to play an increasingly important role in the leadership of New Zealand troops on the battlefield,” said the Minister of Defence, Mr. Jones, yesterday. “Having already attained the rank of lieut.-colonel at the comparatively early age of . 38, he was carrying on the fine family tradition -established by his distinguished father. Major-General Sir Andrew Russell, K.C.8., K.C.M.G., and his services in the field during the present war were but a continuation of his active interest in the Wellington East Coast Mounted Rifles in the Territorial Force during the years immediately preceding.”