Henry Kokoro Barrett
Corporal 25813, DCM · D Company, 28th (Māori) Battalion · Wounded three times
Early life
Henry Kokoro Barrett (Hēnare Kokoro Tiratahi) was born at Temuka on 2 October 1911. His mother was Hīria Kokoro-Barrett, a Ngāi Tahu and Kāti Māmoe leader whose life is told in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, and his father was Francis Barrett. He was a grandson of the chief Hēnare Kokoro Tiratahi of Waipopo. Henry grew up at Te Waipopo, near Temuka, where the Barretts were one of five families, and in 1929 he played in an instrumental duet at an Arowhenua Māori concert. He was married and working as a labourer when he enlisted.
War
Henry sailed with the 4th Reinforcements in November 1940, one of a group of young men from Te Waipopo who went to war together, among them Malta Barrett, Tuki and Laddie Reihana and Toby Anglem. His photograph appeared in the Timaru Herald on 11 December 1941, the same day he was first wounded, in Libya. His mother died in 1943 while he was overseas.
On 7 December 1943, at Pascuccio Ridge in Italy, his platoon was pinned down by machine-gun fire from a steep escarpment about 400 yards short of its objective. Henry climbed the escarpment hand over hand, pulling himself up by the poplar saplings, and knocked out the first machine-gun post. He then led his section through two more, and a bayonet charge took the objective astride the Orsogna–Ortona road. When the men came under fire from a house 400 yards away, he rushed it with six men and destroyed the post. He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. He was wounded again the next day, and a third time on 23 December.
After the war
Henry returned to New Zealand on 1 November 1944 and was discharged in February 1945. He died on 28 March 1985 and is buried at Whareki Cemetery, Temuka.
Sources
Online Cenotaph C116584; London Gazette, 6 April 1944; J. F. Cody, 28 (Maori) Battalion (1956); Timaru Herald, 11 December 1941; Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, ‘Kokoro-Barrett, Hīria’.
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