Relatives of the only Māori soldier executed for abandoning his unit during WWI are fighting for an apology more than a century on.
Victor Spencer was sentenced to death under orders of the British government, a fate some say was unwarranted and avoidable.
“He was executed for desertion,” lawyer David Stone said.
“Blindfolded, put up against a wall and shot.”
Stone is representing a number of claimants fighting on behalf of Victor Spencer’s whānau for an apology at the Waitangi Tribunal’s Military Inquiry.
“This claim to the Tribunal is all about stigma and it’s all about mana. There was and remains a huge cloud of stigma over his family to this very day,” he said.
Spencer abandoned his unit on two occasions while serving in France in 1916 and 1917, a crime punishable by death under the British Army Act 1881.
In the early hours of February 24, 1918, he was tied to a post and shot by 12 fellow New Zealand soldiers.
Victoria Boult’s distant relative was a priest and the last person Spencer ever spoke to.
“His last words were, ‘are you there Father?’ He was shouting out to padre Parata, who is related to me, and before padre Parata could respond, Victor was shot,” she said.
“Australia refused to execute their soldiers, but our military agreed to it.”
During his trial, Spencer told the court he had been suffering from shell shock.
“While in the trenches at Armentiēres I was blown up by a minenwerfer (mortar) and was in hospital for about a month, suffering from shell shock. Up to this time I had no crimes against me. Since then my health has not been good, and my nerve has been completely destroyed,” Spencer said.
But Stone said his medical history, which could have been a mitigating factor in his sentence, was never considered.
“We’re talking about a person who survived Gallipoli. He survived on the Western Front. He was buried alive for three days, a bomb went off next to him, he was covered in dirt and was unearthed three days later still alive,” he said.
“He had been on rest for 19 days. So the army knew all of this and they were meant to check his medical records and take that into account, but they never did.”
Historian Ian McGibbon said soldiers who said they were suffering from shell shock weren’t always believed.
“Unfortunately the military hierarchy tended to downplay the medical side of shell shock and took the view that a soldier could be using shell shock as a means of avoiding service in the front line,” he said.
“If his commission officer of the Otago Battalion had put in a plea that he was so young, had been a good soldier, had been at Gallilopi and had suffered shell shock, I think that may have saved him from the firing squad.”
Spencer and four other executed New Zealand soldiers were pardoned in 2000.
But some believe this was woefully inadequate.
“When you look at the Pardon Act, there’s no culpability whatsoever on the Crown,” Stone said.
“They place it all on the soldier. We say, hold on, take a look at yourself first, take a look at what you didn’t do. Take a look at what you should have done.”
Boult, who has the blessing of Spencer’s whānau to make a feature film about his story, said the Crown must take some responsibility.
“I don’t think the Crown has taken accountability for what they’ve done. They’ve pardoned the soldiers, but they haven’t actively said not only did the soldiers do nothing wrong, but we did something wrong.
“Even though it happened more than 100 years ago, Victor’s family are still suffering the consequences of that ’til this day.”