Kiwis in full-flight: 28th Maori Battalion, Egypt 1941.

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Kiwis fight.

And we are not talking about the dowdy little flightless birds that scurry about on the forest floor at night.

The Maori are a people who fought their British colonists to a standstill in the early 19^th century and forced upon them the Treaty of Waitangi, which enshrined terms the envy of every indigenous people who ever found themselves at the pointy end of European colonisation.

That fighting spirit is shared by Kiwis of all denominations. A never-say-die spirit exhibited a century ago alongside their Australian cousins on the beaches of Gallipoli, the deserts of the Middle East and in the fields of France, the boys in the lemon-squeezer hats fought like fury as part of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp, creating the enduring and exemplary ANZAC legend. They did it all over again…