“With the Boys Overseas”

From late 1940 until the end of the war, the staff of the Mobile Units recorded hundreds of hours of radio broadcast material in the various theatres of war where New Zealanders were fighting.

There were interviews with men and women about their roles in the war or their recent experiences, such as the evacuations from Greece and Crete, or daring expeditions across the North African desert. Or more mundane but vital work such as nursing in a field hospital, operating an army bakery to keep the thousands of New Zealanders in bread and meat pies, or working in the Army Post Office to make sure the all-important mail from home got delivered.

There were also the voice reports by the unit’s commentators, describing military action (often, as it happened) which were sometimes broadcast via the BBC to New Zealand and the world within 24 hours – a new immediacy in international war reporting.

But for the radio listeners back in New Zealand, the Mobile Unit’s most important role, the one for which it became best-known and remembered, was recording thousands of simple 15-20 second “messages home”, from New Zealanders serving in both the 2NZEF and also in the Royal Navy or Air Force. These began to reach the airwaves back home in late 1940, appearing as part of a programme of various recordings received from the Mobile Unit. However, such was the response that in February 1941, a new dedicated programme was created, called “With the Boys Overseas.”

“So great has been the public interest in the messages from the New Zealand Broadcasting Unit in the Middle East, expressed in telephone calls, letters and telegrams after every broadcast”, ¹ wrote the New Zealand Listener magazine, announcing that from Sunday 09 February 1941, the new programme would run for an hour from 9.00-10.00am, and would be repeated again the following Tuesday evening. At the beginning of the programme, a New Zealand-based announcer would read out a list of the names of men whose messages were coming up, allowing listeners to contact anyone who would be interested – a feature that the Listener felt, would be “of great help to mothers, sisters and sweethearts listening for personal messages.”

In a pre-internet era when even an international telephone call was impossible, these messages took on a significance for families that is almost unimaginable in our modern, hyper-connected world. “With the Boys Overseas” became appointment listening in many homes and its opening theme music, “Sons of the Anzacs” performed by the Trentham Army Camp Military Band, became one of the best-known New Zealand tunes of the war, after “The Māori Battalion March”. (A Mobile Unit recording of the song is not yet available online, but you can hear a slightly slower tempo, modern rendition here.)

In the photo above and in the one below, you can see the men being recorded are holding a small piece of paper, on which their greeting was written. Everything being recorded for broadcast had to be checked first by the military censor, in case a soldier accidentally revealed useful information that could be used by the enemy – no place names could be mentioned and the men could not talk about recent or upcoming action. It was also expected that their message would be cheery and reassuring – the sort of thing worried parents or wives would want to hear.

New Zealand soldiers on the Cassino Front, Italy, record messages to be broadcast home – Photograph taken by George Bull. Ref: DA-05596-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22832174

This meant the contents of the messages tend towards the generic. You can hear Flight Sergeant “Pat” Newman’s message home to Timaru, (which he is recording in the image at top of this page), on Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision’s web catalogue. It follows the standard format: “Hello Mum and family, I am fit and well, ” followed by greetings to various friends and family members.

Wartime broadcaster Peter Harcourt who compiled “With the Boys Overseas” in Wellington from the Mobile Unit discs, explained that for New Zealanders at home by their radios, the content of the message was not so important – it was simply hearing that beloved voice. “It is often not what is said that matters, but merely the sound of the voice itself,” he wrote.²

In an interview recorded in later life, commentator Doug Laurenson reflected on his work with the Mobile Unit and the “With the Boys Overseas” messages. He felt there was an “infinite sadness to the long lines of men stretched out in the blazing desert sun, waiting to record their short messages: ‘Are you there love? Keep your chin up – it won’t be long now’, ‘Hello son. Are you being a good boy and looking after Mummy? That’s the chap, keep it up'”³

Occasionally a man might make reference to receiving a parcel from home – or ask for more mail to be sent – and most memorably, Doug recalled a dairy farmer who sent greetings to “Old Blossom” , the pride of his Jersey herd, urging her to “keep milking on all cylinders.” Sadly, that particular message has not survived in the sound archive.

Speakers of te reo would sometimes record their greeting in Māori – and a surprising number of Pākēha use “Kia ora” in their greetings. (It would be interesting to know if this indicates that the Māori greeting was in more widespread usage by New Zealanders in the 1940s, before dying out and then being revived with recent efforts to revitalise te reo since the 1970s. )

A New Zealand sailor on board H.M.S. Leander records a message home for the Mobile Unit’s microphone, with commentator Doug Laurenson [Detail from the cover of The New Zealand Listener, 07 August 1941.]

By 09 May 1941 the Listener headlines read “Boys Overseas radio feature receives huge mail.” Extra members of staff had to be hired by the NBS to cope with the influx: “No single feature ever presented by radio in New Zealand has been the cause of so many letters to the NBS as the Sunday morning programme “With the Boys Overseas”, the article explained. ⁴

Much of the correspondence was from families who had missed hearing a message from their loved one and wanted it repeated. Or from families who had received mail from their soldier saying he had been recorded, asking when they could expect to hear his message. (In a future post I will explain the delays and logistical nightmare involved in getting the Mobile Unit discs back to New Zealand – and then getting them on air.)

The NBS explained in the May article that repeating an individual’s message, beyond the full repeat programme on Tuesday nights, was impossible in most cases. However, if the soldier’s name was given, then the service would try to notify the family when an upcoming message would be broadcast. The problem of ‘correct names’ and matching them with the men heard in the recordings was already causing headaches, as the article concludes: “There are many thousands of soldiers in the Middle East and many of them have names like Smith or Brown. An inquiry for a message from “John Smith” or “Sergeant D.J. Smith” is almost useless, if the announcer with the unit refers to him [by his nickname] as “Jack Smith.” If inquirers would give the names that their soldier friends would be likely to use, it would save the NBS staff an immense amount of trouble.” ⁵

In another post I will explain how this very same problem is still causing headaches some 80 years later, as we try to verify the identity of all the “Boys Overseas” on the Mobile Unit discs, so their descendants can find them – and hear their messages home once again.

References: 1: The New Zealand Listener, 07 February 1941 p.7; 2: Downes, Peter and Harcourt, Peter, Voices in the Air (1976, Methuen); 3: Doug Laurenson interview, ID30392, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision; 4, 5: The New Zealand Listener, 09 May 1941 p3