Howard Kippenberger - Dauntless Spirit

Random House New Zealand, Auckland, 2008. Creased spine, foxing to page edges and endpapers, may have inscription on inner title page.

Sir Howard Kippenberger is widely acknowledged as the ideal of a New Zealand citizen-soldier and our foremost soldier-scholar; a country lawyer and provincial intellectual who became a national figure as New Zealanders made the transition from colonials to a forthright nationhood. As a military leader, editor and author he was one of the prime movers in that process. His democratic style of leadership reflected the ethos of a new nation - active, competent and engaged in the world in its own right, no longer a dependency of Britain. A second-generation New Zealander, born in 1897, his military career was probably unique in that he was a 19 year old private soldier in one war and emerged in the next as the commander of choice of what was in effect a national army - the 2nd NZ Division - whenever the British-born (and trained) Bernard Freyberg was absent. Kip was never a regular officer; a part-time Territorial soldier in peacetime, with no formal British staff training, he stood in the line of the New Zealand self-made man. Hard-boiled ordinary New Zealanders at war truly admired and respected him, not only for his mastery of the business of fighting but because he was known for a very real and deep rapport with his soldiers and concern for their welfare; he made men realise that here was one who thought more of them than of himself.'...