Whare Beattie
Private 39046 · B Company, 28th (Māori) Battalion · Died of wounds, El Mreir, 26 August 1942
Whare served in B Company. He is included here with his brothers Moana and Brown, who served in D Company.
Early life
Whare Toi Beattie was born in about 1918, the eldest of the Beattie brothers and a son of Waaka and Heenikui (Kui) Beattie of Wairoa. His whānau is Ngāti Kahungunu. Before the war he was a forestry worker at Kaingaroa, and he was single.
War
Whare sailed with the Second Echelon in 1940 in B Company, probably because he enlisted from Kaingaroa, in B Company’s district. He is in the second row of the 1940 B Company group photograph. On the night of 25–26 August 1942, A and B Companies raided the enemy positions at El Mreir, on the Alamein line. The battalion lost two men killed and two who died of wounds, with sixteen wounded. Whare was one of those who died of wounds, on 26 August 1942, aged 24. He was first reported wounded and missing, and his death was confirmed later.
Remembered
Whare has no known grave and is named on the Alamein Memorial at El Alamein War Cemetery (Column 102). His brother Moana had died eight months earlier.
Sources
Online Cenotaph C18019; Commonwealth War Graves Commission; J. F. Cody, 28 (Maori) Battalion (1956); Northern Advocate, 4 September 1942; Te Papa PA.000048.
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