Young American captures stories of Kiwis on the WWII front line

Monday, 15 April 2019

21-year-old American Rishi Sharma interviewed war veteran and Leamington resident James Watson to document his stories of service.

Rishi Sharma is on a mission.

But as his quest to interview as many WWII veterans as he can brings him to New Zealand, time is running out for the 21-year-old American.

A sensitive, intimate scene was set in veteran James Watson's living room in Leamington, where he was interviewed by Rishi Sharma.

Old age is finally catching up on the subjects that were once unstoppable in the face of their wartime enemies.

'I've always been interested in WWII ever since I was a kid,' Sharma said.

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'When I thought of a marine, I thought of an 18-year-old with nothing but the shirt on his back and a rifle in his hand, fighting in the jungles of Guadalcanal or at the sands of Iwo Jima. This good versus evil fight.'

But Sharma soon discovered veterans' stories were a lot more complex, and a lot darker.

During high school, he biked to local retirement homes, sometimes even wagging classes, to interview war veterans out of his own interest.

'I got a video camera, then I went back to interview them properly, and I was learning so much,' he said.

'The local papers did stories about my mission, and people started contacting me to do interviews in my local community, about their dad, or the veterans would contact me directly.'

With an oral history grant, a website and his own not-for-profit called Heroes of the Second World War, Sharma was off.

He has travelled for two and a half years so far, visiting almost all of the states in America, as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand - all for the purpose of speaking to those who served.

Sharma gives every veteran a copy of the interview on DVD.

'Thousands of people had reached out after the national news did stories about my mission, and thousands of people across the US told me about veterans that they know of, and so I just made it my mission that I'm going to meet and interview all the WWII combat veterans.'

Among his latest interviews was former 18th Armoured Battalion and later Armoured Regiment tank gunner James Walter Watson, 96, of Leamington.

When Watson joined the army in New Zealand, he was at first enlisted in the 14th Light Ack-Ack , responsible for reaching for the skies to shoot at enemy planes.

Watson travelled to Maadi Camp in Egypt, via the Suez Canal, with his comrades - but it didn't go as planned.

'When we got there we found out the ack-acks division was disbanded, and we were all transferred to either tanks or scout hounds (armoured cars),' he said.

'We did all our training out there. At night we all had to go out into the desert, into different areas, radio in and that.

'Quite often we used to have to go for a route march in the desert, and eventually we were sent out to the gunnery range.'

He eventually joined the crew of Sherman tank, by then serving with the New Zealand Division in Italy.

Watson was the man who sat behind the sights of its main gun.

The tank commander would advise what the target was, and Watson, looking through a periscope, would line up the cannon.

Sharma is also keen to line up more interview targets and visit more allied nations to record eye witness history of the world's largest conflict.

Information is available from the website heroesofthesecondworldwar.org