Louis Aspinall

Private 67312 · D Company, 28th (Māori) Battalion · Killed in action, Cassino, 20 March 1944

Early life

Louis Aspinall was from Apia, Samoa, the son of Robert Aspinall and Masae One of Tuanaimato, Lepea. He went to the Marist Brothers’ school in Apia, and before the war he worked as a winch driver. He was married, and his wife lived at Lotopa.

War

Louis was one of 72 Samoans who enlisted directly into the Māori Battalion. He first served with the 2nd Māori Battalion in New Zealand, then sailed in 1943 to join the 28th, where a schoolmate remembered him as one of the Samoans in the battalion’s signals. He was wounded in Italy in December 1943, during the fighting on the Sangro and at Orsogna, and he returned to his unit. Louis was killed in action at Cassino on 20 March 1944, aged 26.

Remembered

Louis is buried in Cassino War Cemetery (grave VI.K.13). A family tribute speaks of a man who fought for “a country you probably had never set foot on before joining the war on our behalf”.

Sources

Online Cenotaph C20482; Commonwealth War Graves Commission; J. F. Cody, 28 (Maori) Battalion (1956); L. M. T. Mataia, ‘Odd men from the Pacific’ (MA thesis, University of Otago, 2007); Evening Post, 7 January 1944.

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