The New Zealand Army’s Brigadier Esther Harrop has attended 31 Anzac Day services in uniform around the world but this year’s ceremony in Samoa, and the story of sixpence per crate of bananas and her grandfather’s Spitfire, brought her to tears.
Following the service, Brigadier Harrop presented a Second World War photo of her grandfather, then Flight Sergeant Andrew Kronfeld, to the local Returned and Services Association.
The image is of him sitting in the cockpit of the Royal Air Force Spitfire Mark Vb named Western Samoa, which had been bought with the £5,723 Western Samoa’s banana farmers raised by contributing six pence per crate of exported bananas.
The aircraft was gifted to 485 New Zealand Squadron and Flight Sergeant Kronfeld, whose family came from Lotofaga on the south coast of Upolu, was chosen to fly it.
Brigadier Harrop said she loved sharing the “amazing” story of Samoa’s contribution to the Second World War.
“The president of the RSA, Tuala Iosefo Ponifasio, who was formerly the deputy prime minister of Samoa, had not heard this story at all.
“They did not know they had a Samoan Spitfire, let alone that there was a New Zealand-Samoan pilot.
“I was so proud. The reaction from the people who hadn’t heard this story was so cool… they wanted to celebrate this.”
Brigadier Harrop never met her grandfather but found out about the Spitfire and bananas story in about 2015.
Flight Sergeant Kronfeld was one of two Polynesian faces in his tranche when 90 Commonwealth pilots trained in Winnipeg in Canada, and he was the top graduate.
He flew the Spitfire in Europe and shot down a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 over France. He survived the war but the aircraft, which was transferred to an American volunteer unit, was later destroyed.
In 1941 he went to Calcutta, now Kolkata, in India where he met his wife, and their daughter (Brigadier Harrop’s mother Sandy Harrop) was also born there.
Brigadier Harrop said the Spitfire symbolised Samoa’s direct and voluntary contribution to the Allied war effort, and its enduring bond with New Zealand service personnel.
“We are incredibly proud of his service, and it was particularly special to represent the NZDF and my family on Anzac Day in our ancestral home of Samoa.”