Jack Albert
Corporal 39546 · D Company, 28th (Māori) Battalion · Main Body, 1940
Early life
Jack Albert, known in Māori as Tuhuna Erueti, was born in Wanganui on 21 March 1912, one of the youngest of four children of Erueti Te Rangirunga and Ngapera Matene. He was raised by Hakaraia Te Tiwha and grew up at Karioi, below Ruapehu. He belonged to Ngāti Rangi and Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, and his service record also names Ngāti Rangiteauria, Ngāti Uenukumanawawiri, Ngāti Hine-te-ra and Ngā Paerangi. He went to Kakatahi Native School on the Parapara Road.
Jack was a gifted horseman who rode in rodeos around the country, and in 1940 he was the New Zealand Steer Riding Champion. When he enlisted in January 1940 he was working for the State Forest Service at Karioi, and he gave his brother, R. Albert of Karioi, as his next of kin.
War
Jack sailed for England with the battalion in 1940 and served in D Company, and he is in the front row of the 1940 photograph of the company at Papakura. In January 1941 the battalion moved to Egypt, and Jack was later transferred to Headquarters Company. He was promoted to lance corporal in July 1942, and on 6 August that year he wrote in his hymn book that he was in the Sahara Desert.
He was made temporary corporal in April 1943 and came home on leave in the middle of that year, one of the long-serving men given a furlough. Many of the men who came home on that leave did not go back, but Jack returned overseas for a second tour. He was confirmed as corporal in January 1944 and served in Italy until he came home in February 1945. He was discharged in July with the 1939–45 Star, the Africa Star with the 8th Army clasp, the Italy Star, the Defence Medal, the War Medal and the New Zealand War Service Medal.
After the war
Jack went back to the Parapara and named his farm “Cassino”, after Monte Cassino. He kept training horses and competing at rodeos and race meetings. He later worked at the Pātea freezing works, where in 1955 he met Molly Nuku Tarawhiti, whom he married. In 1962 they moved to Wellington, where Jack was a member of the Wellington RSA. He died in Wellington on 30 October 1987, aged 75, and is buried at Ngā Mōkai urupā, Karioi.
Sources
Online Cenotaph C116075; 28th Māori Battalion website (biography and personnel file summary, supplied by whānau); Te Kauri Marae war memorial; NZ Rodeo Cowboys; 28th Māori Battalion website, D Company at Papakura, 1940 (Palmer family collection).
Are you whānau? If you can add to his story, correct anything here or share a photograph, please get in touch.