Toby Anglem

Corporal 25804 · D Company, 28th (Māori) Battalion · Wounded and invalided home

Early life

John Topi Anglem, known as Toby, was born in 1903 and grew up at Te Waipopo, near Arowhenua and Temuka, the son of Walter Te Maiharanui and Mereana Anglem. He was a well-known singer at Arowhenua. In 1926 he sang at the Temuka farewell for a Māori All Black, and in 1929 he sang a solo at an Arowhenua Māori concert. He also enjoyed a game of cards, and in 1938 he won the euchre at an Arowhenua Māori Women’s Institute evening.

War

Toby enlisted at about 37, one of the older men, and sailed with the reinforcements of 1940–41. Te Waipopo was a small settlement of five families, the Barretts, Anglems, Fowlers, Taipanas and O’Connors, and several of its young men went to war together. Michael O’Connor later named them as Henry and Malta Barrett, Tuki and Laddie Reihana, Toby Anglem and himself, though they ended up in different units. He was wounded and invalided home, and in August 1943 he was welcomed back at the Arowhenua Māori Hall. In his speech he said, “Many a fine New Zealand soldier might be living to-day if he had been able to go into battle with a Bren gun instead of a rifle and bayonet,” and he urged people to support the war loans.

After the war

Toby married Alice Hopkinson. He died in Timaru on 27 June 1973, aged 70, and is buried in the Arowhenua Māori Cemetery at Temuka. His family’s death notice named him “Late 28th Maori Battalion, No. 25804”.

Sources

Online Cenotaph C116572; Timaru Herald, 13 July 1926, 11 December 1941 and 4 August 1943; The Press, 19 November 1938 and 28 June 1973; Ngata’s 1943 nominal roll (Mataia, ‘Odd men from the Pacific’, 2007); Te Karaka, Raumati/Summer 2000 (Michael O’Connor); Find a Grave 209819568.

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