Post by Dave Homewood on May 5, 2013 10:26:54 GMT 12
Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23, 27 January 1945, Page 6
UNIQUE RECORD
66-YEAR OLD SOLDIER HOME FROM HIS THIRD WAR
If his name weren't Tom he could be called, with the respect due to a record which is unique, New Zealand's "Old Bill." 15468 Private Thomas H. Mockford, veteran of three wars, is home again.
He celebrated his 66th birthday on the way. Among a bunch of young, suntanned Kiwis the old warrior, in his big. droopy, grey-flecked moustache, stood out as distinctively as an oldtime picture of Kitchener of Khartoum. Appropriately he wore the traditional New Zealand felt hat, with infantry pugaree, while all his young mates were in berets. Did Private Tom Mockford seek publicity?
Emphatically he did not. "You're not getting anything—not anything!" he declared in a deep, throaty voice, when reporters approached. "I see you've got the Africa Star up," remarked a reporter pleasantly, tapping the familiar ribbon on Private Mockford's breast. "Where are the others?"
By all the rules, Private Mockford should have been wearing the ribbons of the Queen's and King's South African medals the 1914-15 ribbon and those of the General Service and Victory medals for World War I. but the Africa Star alone was there. "Eh, what's that?" he growled. "What does it matter? Doesn't matter at all." Private Mockford, oldest private in the New Zealand Division, is on his way home to Dunedin. Official papers say: "Next of kin, wife, Cosy Dell, Dunedin."
Reason for return: Rheumatism, muscular, chronic. Private Mockford would get no sympathy—nor would he ask it— on his looks. Of slightly more than average height, he appears to be essentially the self-reliant, enterprising type. One Of Old Brigade "Grizzled, blue-eyed, he is one of the old brigade of soldiers who never die," wrote a Melbourne Herald interviewer. "He looks to-day as though he had just stepped out of Kipling's army.
Private Mockford defied two I attempts at interviewing this afternoon. Asked what prisoner of war camps he had been in he shook his head vigorously, and said no, he wasn't talking. Whereupon his young pals called out almost angrily, "Go away—leave the good old alone! He's one of us!"
So there was no checking up on the stories they have printed about him in Australia, that he enlisted in 1899 in the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, and served in the Boer War Mockford himself confesses that he had more "scrapping" in South Africa in any three months than he has had in the last two wars combined. Once he had his horse shot under him, and his greatcoat ripped by five bullets. But old soldiers never die. In 1914 Mockford enlisted with the Wellington Infantry Battalion and served in France. He. enlisted a third time in 1940. Of course, he gave a false age. With him enlisted his three sons. Private Mockford was in Greece and Crete.
In December, 1941, the Germans captured him in the Western Desert. After 13 months in an Italian prison camp he escaped, to sneak over the border to Marshal Tito's guerillas. He was recaptured by Germans, and escaped again twice. All this is according to Australian reports. The Germans, exasperated by his elusive ways, were more careful when they got him the third time; They sent him off to Wolsburg, in Austria, where prisoners build mountain roads. Apparently the months spent in drainage work in the Lombardy swamps brought on rheumatism. At all events, Private Mockford is home again, en route to Cosy Dell with a war record which few private soldiers in all the world could equal. He has the Africa Star but shouldn t there be a special award for never-too-old" types like Private Mockford?
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=AS19450127.2.49&cl=search&srpos=61&e=01-09-1939--12-1945--10--61-byDA---0new+zealand%27s+oldest+soldier--&st=1
UNIQUE RECORD
66-YEAR OLD SOLDIER HOME FROM HIS THIRD WAR
If his name weren't Tom he could be called, with the respect due to a record which is unique, New Zealand's "Old Bill." 15468 Private Thomas H. Mockford, veteran of three wars, is home again.
He celebrated his 66th birthday on the way. Among a bunch of young, suntanned Kiwis the old warrior, in his big. droopy, grey-flecked moustache, stood out as distinctively as an oldtime picture of Kitchener of Khartoum. Appropriately he wore the traditional New Zealand felt hat, with infantry pugaree, while all his young mates were in berets. Did Private Tom Mockford seek publicity?
Emphatically he did not. "You're not getting anything—not anything!" he declared in a deep, throaty voice, when reporters approached. "I see you've got the Africa Star up," remarked a reporter pleasantly, tapping the familiar ribbon on Private Mockford's breast. "Where are the others?"
By all the rules, Private Mockford should have been wearing the ribbons of the Queen's and King's South African medals the 1914-15 ribbon and those of the General Service and Victory medals for World War I. but the Africa Star alone was there. "Eh, what's that?" he growled. "What does it matter? Doesn't matter at all." Private Mockford, oldest private in the New Zealand Division, is on his way home to Dunedin. Official papers say: "Next of kin, wife, Cosy Dell, Dunedin."
Reason for return: Rheumatism, muscular, chronic. Private Mockford would get no sympathy—nor would he ask it— on his looks. Of slightly more than average height, he appears to be essentially the self-reliant, enterprising type. One Of Old Brigade "Grizzled, blue-eyed, he is one of the old brigade of soldiers who never die," wrote a Melbourne Herald interviewer. "He looks to-day as though he had just stepped out of Kipling's army.
Private Mockford defied two I attempts at interviewing this afternoon. Asked what prisoner of war camps he had been in he shook his head vigorously, and said no, he wasn't talking. Whereupon his young pals called out almost angrily, "Go away—leave the good old alone! He's one of us!"
So there was no checking up on the stories they have printed about him in Australia, that he enlisted in 1899 in the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, and served in the Boer War Mockford himself confesses that he had more "scrapping" in South Africa in any three months than he has had in the last two wars combined. Once he had his horse shot under him, and his greatcoat ripped by five bullets. But old soldiers never die. In 1914 Mockford enlisted with the Wellington Infantry Battalion and served in France. He. enlisted a third time in 1940. Of course, he gave a false age. With him enlisted his three sons. Private Mockford was in Greece and Crete.
In December, 1941, the Germans captured him in the Western Desert. After 13 months in an Italian prison camp he escaped, to sneak over the border to Marshal Tito's guerillas. He was recaptured by Germans, and escaped again twice. All this is according to Australian reports. The Germans, exasperated by his elusive ways, were more careful when they got him the third time; They sent him off to Wolsburg, in Austria, where prisoners build mountain roads. Apparently the months spent in drainage work in the Lombardy swamps brought on rheumatism. At all events, Private Mockford is home again, en route to Cosy Dell with a war record which few private soldiers in all the world could equal. He has the Africa Star but shouldn t there be a special award for never-too-old" types like Private Mockford?
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=AS19450127.2.49&cl=search&srpos=61&e=01-09-1939--12-1945--10--61-byDA---0new+zealand%27s+oldest+soldier--&st=1
