25/04/2026
ANZAC Day 2026 Mt Bruce Hall, northern Wairarapa. Special tribute to Flight Officer Morrie Hunt who left the district to fight in World War 2, never to return home. This is his story:
Like many before him, Maurice (Morrie) Leonard Hunt was a young New Zealander eager to do his bit and join the forces to fight for his country. When World War 2 was declared in August 1939, Morrie was 19 and working on his father’s Mikimiki sheep farm.
A keen deer and pig hunter, he played golf and rugby. He was also an accomplished violinist, playing in his cousin’s band, ‘The Jack Barnes Rhythm Boys.’ This group was known to pack the Wairarapa dance halls of the 1930s.
The minimum age for overseas service was 21. By the summer of 1940, Germany had invaded France and the British expeditionary force was pushed back to Dunkirk. Morrie was inspired by the stories of air battles and decided he wanted to be a fighter pilot.
He joined the Territorial Army in 1941. The Hunt family learned at this stage of the war that Morrie’s cousin Jim Barnes was missing in action in Crete. Jim ended up spending the rest of the war in a German POW camp. Another cousin, Jack Barnes, the leader of the band, was badly wounded at Cassino in March 1944. He managed to survive.
Morrie began pilot training and in December 1941, now aged 21, he signed up for overseas service. After initial training within New Zealand, he sailed for Canada in January 1943 for further air force training. In June of that year, he made his way to New York and onto England, learning in March 1944 that he was being groomed as a bomber pilot. His first raid over Germany with 61 Squadron was on 25 August 1944. Multiple raids followed. Morrie gained a reputation for diligence and strong leadership as well as being a ‘thoroughly nice chap’. On his 27th raid (30 was the allowable maximum) to the Lutzendorf oil refinery on 14 March 1945, he and his crew of 227 Squadron had been given a brand new plane, a mark of respect acknowledging Morrie’s flying experience. After five hours of flying from the Balderton air base in England to their target, the bombs were released. Meantime, German Luftwaffe flying ace, Hauptmann Martin Becker had been alerted to the bombing raid. Flying a night fighter, he and his three-man crew had been tracking the bombers by radar and within minutes of sighting them, had shot down three Lancasters. That night, Becker shot down nine in total. Morrie and his crew were on immediate alert. Once out of the target area, the remaining bomber stream began to spread out, so as not to make an easy target for Becker and his marauding night fighters. They were around 20 kms from Nuremberg settling down for the long flight home, when without warning they were under attack.
German pilot Hauptmann Becker guided his JU88 in underneath Morrie’s Lancaster, trying to fire as he passed, but as his forward facing guns jammed, he immediately ordered his radar operator Karl Ludwig Johanssen to fire the rear gun. The entire starboard wing and fuselage of Morrie’s aircraft was on fire. As he banked away to the right, he screamed for everyone to bail out. Smoke and flames were filling the plane, and after making sure all his surviving crew were out, (two were killed in the attack) and with his clothes on fire, he leapt through the escape hatch and managed to pull his parachute chord. The stricken bomber carried on and crashed in the rural area of Schussbach, approx 5km south east of Bad Windsheim, in the area known as Bayern, Germany.
At 24 years old, Morrie was to meet his slow death at the feet of a group of Hi**er youth. Lying burned and injured from his fall, he was kicked into unconsciousness by the young boys, after they discovered him in a field near their town of Illesheim. Morrie was taken to a jail at the town’s air force base where he met some of his crew, New Zealander Alfred Harvey, the navigator and gunners Jobson and Harrison. They did the best they could to try and care for Morrie but he needed urgent medical attention. This cry fell on deaf ears, and Morrie died four days later on 18 March 1945. His wounds were too serious to survive any treatment, and the beating he received finished him off.
Morrie was buried at Illesheim cemetery. The words on his cross “Heir ruht HUNT, ein New-Zealandischer Fleiger” (here rest Hunt, a New Zealand flier).Tragically, just three weeks later, the US army captured Illesheim and freed the prisoners.
Morrie’s father, Rowlan Brown Hunt received the dreaded telegram stating that his son was missing, after his aircraft did not return to base. Morrie’s fiancée, Joan Rollo, also received a telegram. After the war Morrie’s body was exhumed and re-buried, with three members of his crew, at Durnbach War Cemetery in southern Germany, where a special cemetery was created for members of the Royal Air Force killed during World War Two.
In 2012, Morrie’s bravery was marked with a street being named after him in the Newark and Sherwood district of England. In 2014, the unveiling of the commemorative seat in the grounds of the Mt Bruce Hall remembered Morrie in his home district. We will always remember him.
