Dowding Place (Waitara)

Dowding Place was named after the first soldier from Waitara to die in the Second World War.

Leonard Rex Dowding was born on 30 April 1919, the only son of Francis (Frank) Norman Dowding and his wife Mary. Frank had served with the Rifle Brigade during the First World War, enlisting at the age of 38 and losing his left eye after suffering a gunshot wound in France in 1916. He returned to Waitara in October of that year, and was welcomed at the train station by a crowd of people and a band playing the tune “Home sweet home”.

Frank married his sweetheart Mary Margaret Jones soon after his return from Europe. Their son, known as Rex, attended New Plymouth Boys’ High School where he distinguished himself as a long distance runner. He worked at the Lepperton Co-operative Dairy Factory for a year after finishing school before starting an upholstery apprenticeship with the Austin Chair Company in Wellington.

Rex was one of the first young men to enlist in the capital on 12 September 1939, less than a week and a half after New Zealand declared war on Germany. He departed with the First Echelon on 5 January 1940 and served with the 27^th Machine Gun Battalion in Egypt. Mary Dowding was a member of the so-called Machine Gun Club in New Plymouth, for relatives of those in the battalion.

Rex and his company were transported to northern Greece in early 1941 where they were subjected to fierce bombing attacks by the invading Germans. Corporal Dowding died in a bomb blast on 13 April 1941, just a few weeks before his 22^nd birthday. His body was never recovered but his name is commemorated on the Athens Memorial in the Phaleron War Cemetery in the Greek capital, along with nearly 3000 other Commonwealth soldiers.

A condolence letter from Rex’s company commander to his parents in Waitara described the young gunner as “a fine and manly soldier” and “a true leader”.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.