Harry Navau Apes

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Portrait of Harry Navau Apes
Imagined portrait. No photograph of Harry is known.

Private 807383 · D Company, 28th (Māori) Battalion · Wounded, Italy 1944

Early life

Harry Navau Apes grew up at Glenavy, near the mouth of the Waitaki River, where his grandmother, Mrs H. Wesley, was his next of kin. He was single and working as a grocery assistant. Harry was also a cricketer, and in December 1937 he was picked for Waimate against an Oamaru side.

War

Harry sailed on the Nieuw Amsterdam in the second half of 1943 and joined the battalion in Italy. He was wounded in March 1944, most likely at Cassino, and his name appeared in a list of nineteen Otago men wounded. His life after the war is still to be traced.

Sources

Online Cenotaph C119934; Timaru Herald, 16 December 1937; Otago casualty list, March 1944.

Are you whānau? If you can add to his story, correct anything here or share a photograph, please get in touch.

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