TOPIC:

Hello,

I am Tom Cutts's great grand daughter. I now live in Australia and have been delving into our family and their histories. I was thoroughly overjoyed with your post. The photograph of Rachel and Tom is exactly how I remember them. My eldest brother remembers the boat and a house that they lived in at Clevedon. I would love to keep in touch if that is okay by you.

Karen Ritchie nee Beaumont

Here's a rather blurry shot of his medals in the Papakura RSA.

Thank you so much for the photo of Tom's medals. He kept a journal through out his war experiences and, even as a young girl I wanted to transcribe it. My brother would like to approach the RSA to find out whether we are able to obtain a copy (in any form) of his journal. I also remember him showing me a German Cross medal he says he was given by a german soldier that he saved - interesting! I also remember small horn that he told me was used in the trenches when mustard gas had been used. I really do appreciate you contacting me with you knowledge and experiences with Tom and Rachel. Please do keep in touch with anything you think might be of interest.

Regards,

Karen Ritchie

Hi Karen

Here is a copy of a Newspaper Article from the 1975 Auckland Star.


Corporal Tom Cutts, MM, reporting. All pockets safely occupied with the mementoes of three wars.
He secures an exposed position each day at the Papakura RSA Club, snooker tables off ahead, bar on the right flank, a devoted body of drinkers at his back.
Concealed, but at the ready, are seven medals, sundry medallions and documents. Soldier-like, he keeps such essential gear about him.
But today Tom Cutts is on parade at the RSA in High St, for the last national reunion of Gallipoli veterans. He may be the oldest. His Boer War papers make him 20 in 1902. That’s 93 this year.
He’ll stick with the programme all the way, tomorrow’s motorcade and civic reception: Friday’s Cenotaph parade and luncheon.
Then next week he’ll be back to musing over his Dominion Bitter, a very old man, with one more warming memory.
Fact is, Tom Cutts is not always sure of the when and where any more. But important things stand out.

QUEEN VICTORIA

Here’s his pocket history. From the inside breast, a plastic wallet of medals, one from the Boer War, four World War I and two World War II.
The first has Queen Victoria’s head on it. “A little one, she was. My father took me to see her in London. She was on horseback. Small women. I got a shock, and I don’t care who knows it.”
Tom Cutts was a coalminer in South Yorkshire at 14. When he went to South Africa, it was in the 28th Imperial Yeomanry.
He remembers the Boer heliographs twinkling on the hilltops. “ I was shot at from a distance. At a Boer farm, a women spat in our officer’s face.”

MOVE TO NZ

Back in Britain he and his wife Rachel, his childhood sweetheart, decided to take their family to New Zealand. Tom came on ahead and got work as a miner at Greymouth. World War I started, and he joined the Canterbury Battalion.
At Gallipoli he was among the one in seven of New Zealand soldiers who were not wounded or killed, “no use saying I wasn’t. Someone has to be.”
In France, where he was already known as a soldier who “tells the truth, and doesn’t give a damn for anyone,” he was made a full corporal.
That’s where he won the Military Medal for bravery. “I don’t know where exactly. I thought of the name the other day.”
Nor is he sure what he did, “I couldn’t say. I did a lot of things. I was not frightened. I’d rush in where angels fear to tread and do these things. I don’t know what the colonel made of it.”
The day came when he was called to a church parade, which he did not normally attend. “They were all in a circle. I was called out and the colonel pinned this medal on me. A battlefield decoration, I was against it.”
He delves in another inside pocket. Out comes a German Iron Cross with 1914 and the initial “W” (for Wilhelm) on it.
“I did a good job for a German in France. This is something people hardly believe. We were advancing. This German was lying in the open, very badly wounded. I carried him out of the way and put him in a safe place. Sympathy, I suppose. So he didn’t get anymore. I’d do it for any man, and I don’t care who knows it. He talked no English. He dipped in his pocket and gave me that Iron Cross. If he’d lived and it’d had a number on it. I’d have sent it back to him after the war. But whether he lived or not I couldn’t say.”

PARCHMENT

Out of another pocket he takes a Boer War discharge document, on yellowed parchment with the writing almost gone. “You don’t get a discharge on parchment now. When you show the truth there’s no disputing.”
Tom Cutts got his second discharge, after World War I, in England too, and brought his wife and three children to New Zealand.
“What did I do between the wars? I suppose I worked. I forget. But when World War II came along I went in to an army recruiting office like everyone else and stripped off and dropped my age about 20 years, and they wouldn’t take me. Funny isn’t it? So I then went to an Air Force recruiting office, dropped my age five years and they took me.”
He spent the war in camp service at Whenuapai.
When he was 63 he bought a 24ft mullet boat and “I said to the wife, ‘Will you come and live on it?’ and she said yes. And we lived on that boat for 10 years, and I’m not frightened to tell anyone. Every month we’d come in to Auckland and draw our money and load up with tucker, then off again. We’d go around the gulf and up north. I’d pull the boat up in the winter at Waiheke. It was a great 10 years and I don’t care who knows it.”
Having done carpentry among other jobs, he was able to raise the cabin-top 18in, because the wife used to bump her head.
Wife Rachel died three years ago, aged 87. “I knew her from birth. We went to school together. In the winter I’d hang on to her hand.”
Later he had the boat moored at Clevedon, and he’d walk to Papakura and back every day.

MIDDLE-AGED

He now lives in a pensioner flat at Papakura, doing for himself, “It’s all right for middle-aged people like me, and I’ve got plenty of time haven’t I?”
He likes walking, and marched to Manurewa and back three times last year.
On his coat he wears a variety of ex-service badges. In another pocket is his Anzac medallion with the picture of Murphy’s donkey on it, on his breast pocket there’s a Gallipoli Pilgrimage patch from 1965, and under his lapel there’s a good strong safety pin, just in case he wants to hoist his full string of medals.
Murphy’s donkey’s on the wall at the Papakura RSA, too. Tom Cutts can’t see it clearly. And as he sits with the memories coming occasionally, like the clink of the snooker balls, so much of it seems like a dream.
But he knows why he carries his relics of war, On Anzac Day we, too, remember why.

Auckland Star, April 23 1975
By Jack Leigh



I had to type it out as the copy of original was very difficult to read.
I live near Papakura, I'm presently trying to find his journal but the RSA are having a bit of trouble finding it.

I am Doug's son (Moumoukai) and he has asked me to keep in contact with you as he is not so good with the "computer"!
Can I have your email will make it a bit easier for me?

This is a recent photo of his medals, they have recently had new ribbons as the old ones were faded. Sorry about reflection off the glass.



Bye for now

Andrew

Hello Karen
Please contact me at [email protected] about your Great Grandfather Tom Cutts. My grandparents were also in the Don Street Pension Flats in Papakura at the same time Tom lived there. I do remember him although to be honest I was very young. My siblings remember him as a very fine upstanding man albeit that he was going blind in the last part of his life. I can remember him walking with a white cane when that was a very new thing and my father painted a walking stick white for Tom. Anyway I would really like to hear from you.

Hello Karen
Please contact me at [email protected] about your Great Grandfather Tom Cutts. My grandparents were also in the Don Street Pension Flats in Papakura at the same time Tom lived there. I do remember him although to be honest I was very young. My siblings remember him as a very fine upstanding man albeit that he was going blind in the last part of his life. I can remember him walking with a white cane when that was a very new thing and my father painted a walking stick white for Tom. Anyway I would really like to hear from you.