Ka maumahara tonu tātou ki a rātou. We will remember them.

ANZAC Assembly

On Friday, we held one of our most important assemblies of the year, our ANZAC Assembly. Each year, we remember the Old Boys of Wellington College who went to war in service of our country.

225 Wellington College students gave their lives during World War 1, and a further 280 students during World War 2. Many others were wounded or carried the burden of their wartime experience for the rest of their lives.

This year, the main feature of our assembly was a speech from Bruno Brown (Y 13) highlighting one of Wellington College’s most prestigious and yet seldom talked about Old Boys, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham:

Sir Arthur Coningham

Arthur enrolled at Wellington College in 1909. He can be seen in the photograph of the college shooting team that won the NZ championship in 1910 (back row, second left). This was a time when being a member of the shooting team had the same prestige as being in a prem sport team or the Jazz Band.

In 1911, Arthur became the champion shot at the college. That year, he left school before the final examinations with no academic or technical qualifications and no obvious talents. He worked as a farmhand from 1911 until the outbreak of World War One. In this time he became an expert horseman. Little did anyone know what impact he was going to make in warfare.

As war began, Arthur immediately enlisted in the 5th Wellington Regiment in August 1914, serving in the Samoan Expeditionary Force that year. In 1915, he transferred to the NZEF Canterbury Mounted Rifles and sailed for Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. There he succumbed to dysentery and typhoid and was eventually shipped home where, in October 1915, he was discharged as medically unfit for further military service. His military career seemed to have come to an undistinguished end.

Undeterred by this setback, Arthur paid his own passage to England and in March 1916 succeeded in getting himself accepted into the Royal Flying Corps as a trainee pilot.

His brilliant military career was about to begin. From December 1916 he served as a fighter pilot with the No. 32 Squadron on the Western Front. He took over six months to achieve his first “kill” but followed it quickly with three more and Captain Coningham, as he was now known, earned the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order.

After recuperating from injuries received in combat, Coningham, now a major, took command of the newly-raised No. 92 Squadron where he achieved success as an aggressive and determined fighter pilot. By war’s end he had notched up 14 victories and was given the Distinguished Flying Cross.

One heroic account of his flying is as follows:

In October, 1917, Coningham was on the Western Front near Hazebrouck, France. At that time there was a definite energy in the air. The average “life” of a British airman was calculated as being only 14 days, and during the ten previous days Coningham had been in sixty air encounters.

On the morning of the 7th he sighted a German plane, which he chased for ten miles over enemy lines and shot down. Suddenly, out of the clouds, swooped a “circus” of seven ’planes, led by fighter pilot Wolff, a German ‘ace’ who had shot and destroyed 40 allied machines.

Coningham made a running fight of it, flying in spirals and zigzags, twisting and turning upside down to evade Wolff’s men, as depicted in this drawing.

Suddenly, his machine-gun jammed, leading to him being hit in the head by two bullets, which rendered him unconscious for a few moments whilst over enemy lines, during which time, his plane began to plummet.

The rush of air brought back consciousness and released the mechanism of the gun. Recovering control, he shot down Wolff and landed safely. For this exploit he was mentioned in despatches, a high level military honour recognising a soldier for distinguished service.

While his WWI record was amazing, it was the inter war period and in the Second World War that he became a legend. Defence analyst Basil Liddell Hart later wrote, “The real hero of the desert war… is the New Zealander, Arthur Coningham.”

In 1925 while posted in Egypt, Coningham was tasked with introducing the first aircraft to Nigeria while undertaking a training exercise at a large scale. The return trip, retracing their outward route, marked the first ever trip across Africa by air from west to east – a 10,500km trip in 80 hours of actual flying time – for which Coningham was awarded the Air Force Cross for the achievement.

At the outbreak of WW2 he was already Air Commodore and was quickly promoted to Air Vice Marshal. In July 1941, he took command of the Desert Air Force. He transformed it into a mobile, responsive force, applying new tactical thinking to support the 8th Army. The climax of this period came in mid-1942; while the 8th Army was in full retreat, Coningham’s air force held off the Luftwaffe, effectively saving the Army for its historic stand at Alamein.

His feats were so significant that he was given a knighthood in 1943, and promoted to Air Marshal. Coningham went on to command the Allied air forces in Sicily and Italy, before leading the 2nd Tactical Air Force for the invasion of Normandy and liberation of Europe in June 1944.

Later that year, he would feature on the front page of TIME Magazine.

Throughout this time, he was widely reported in the British and American press specifically as a New Zealander. He never forgot his roots, despite commanding 1,800 aircraft and 100,000 men by 1945.

His leadership was defined by a unique set of traits that we can still learn from today:

• He led from the front: Choosing to land first into dangerous airfields, often in the middle of war zones, to inspire his front line squadrons.

• He had a youthful spirit: Possessing a vitality that infused those around him with confidence.

• He held a technical mastery: Combining a deep flair for air operations with a ruthless intolerance for inefficiency.

• He recognised excellence: Giving whole-hearted praise for gallantry in his men.

Tragically, in 1948, only five months after he retired, Coningham was a passenger on a commercial airliner which disappeared near Bermuda, lost without trace.

His life and death were remembered at an assembly in the memorial Hall – which stood on the very site where WC students gather in the AGC today. At this assembly his close friend, fellow old boy, His Excellency the Governor-General, Sir Bernard Freyberg addressed the school saying “We must all feel a great sense of National loss today, because there are few people we could afford to lose as Arthur Coningham. But we should also feel a sense of National Pride because there are few people in the British Commonwealth who earned the place he did”.

Freyberg then dedicated an assembly chair – the money for which was raised by the students – which is on stage left empty next to Mr Denham, in memory of this remarkable Old Boy.

For us here at Wellington College, Coningham stands as an ultimate role model. In WWI he helped pioneer army and air cooperation; in the desert he proved the art of joint warfare; and by the end of the war, he had brought that task to perfection. He remains a valuable example of positive leadership – a boy from these grounds who changed the course of history.

We are very grateful to our honorable guests for joined us for this special service:

Colonel Andrew Brown, Class of 1986

LT Colonel Scott Cordwell, Class of 1991

Commander Daniel Wierenga, Class of 2003

Major Harry Fenwick, Class of 2011

LT Benson Oosterbaan, Class of 2013

Colonel Grant Crowley, Relief teacher at Wellington College

Major Albie Rotham, parent

Thank you to our musical performers, presenters, and to the Wellington Girls College members of the Ngā Korimako choir.

ANZAC Memorial Display

You would have noticed the moving display of crosses outside the WC Archives (the old Headmaster’s house) as you came up the driveway. Each of these commemorates a WC Old Boy who died at war. We encourage our community to take a moment and walk alongside them. A big mihi to Mike Pallin, Gary Girvan, and the team for putting this together.

---