Charlie Bell
Sergeant 22066 · D Company, 28th (Māori) Battalion · Korea, 1950
Early life
Te Awhitu Charles Bell, known as Charlie, was born in 1916, one of about fourteen children of Te Whareaitu Bell and Ngaraima Hetet of Te Kūiti, and his iwi is Ngāti Maniapoto. He was named for his great-grandfather, Te Awhitu. His grandparents were Alexander Bell, the first Pākehā allowed to settle in Te Rohe Pōtae, and Katarina Te Waihanea, and streets in Taumarunui are named after them. Charlie married Rene Turner, and they lived on Rangitoto Road, Te Kūiti, where he worked as a labourer.
War
Charlie sailed as a corporal with the 5th Reinforcements in 1941 and joined D Company, and he later transferred to the battalion’s mortar platoon. In the winter of 1943–44, at Castel Frentano in Italy, Jim Aperahama took over the platoon with Sergeant Charlie Bell as his second-in-command. Aperahama later wrote of the three-inch mortars dug in and ranged on Orsogna, and of four heavy 4.2-inch mortars that arrived with no sights or range tables, which the platoon fired anyway until Brigade took them over. Charlie’s youngest brother, Richard Nikora Bell, was killed in action at El Alamein on 24 October 1942.
After the war
In December 1950 Charlie went to war again, sailing on the Ormonde as a gunner with Kayforce for the Korean War. He is named on the Ngāti Maniapoto Second World War memorial at Te Kūiti as Sergeant C. Bell.
Sources
Online Cenotaph C117017; Jim Aperahama, ‘I was introduced to mortars’, The Battalion Remembers (1984), on the 28th Māori Battalion website; K-Force nominal roll, December 1950; Te Ara, ‘King Country region’; FamilySearch; Ngāti Maniapoto WW2 memorial, Te Kūiti.
Are you whānau? If you can add to his story, correct anything here or share a photograph, please get in touch.