Mr Roy Spencer Natusch, Military Medal winner,
NZEF - WW2 Reg No:33965

Roy was born in Havelock North in 1918. He attended School from 1932 until 1934. He was a member of the 1st XV and won the Most Improved Player award in his final year. He left school and worked on a farm and played rugby.

He enlisted in the army early in WWII. He was one of the 7000 Allied soldiers who were abandoned at Kalamata in Greece after being surrounded by German troops and became a prisoner of war… for the first time!

Over the next four years, Roy was either planning escapes, actually escaping or assisting local resistance fighters and the allied Special Operations Executive agents fight the Germans in occupied Europe. In total, Roy escaped from prisoner of war camps 9 times! He once even convinced his Gestapo interrogators that he was a Dutch Officer and not the ‘Kiwi spy, Natusch’ they were looking for. He was so convincing, even though he couldn’t speak a word of Dutch, that they sent him to a Dutch Prisoner of war camp… from which he soon escaped!

When first captured in Greece he managed to get clear, but after being in and out of enemy hands in Greece several times, he was recaptured with a group in a motor boat trying to reach Turkey. He was taken to Italy and was one of the few who escaped through a tunnel from Campo PG 57 in October 1942. Shortly after his transfer to Austria he escaped on 26 October 1943 from a working camp at Graz, and with others made his way into Hungary to join the group of escapees there. Recaptured after the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, he was badly injured while jumping from a train, skewering his leg on a metal fence post, and was taken to Breslau hospital. He was later transferred to Austria again, and on 5 September 1944 escaped while on a work detail on a farm at Radkersburg, Austria. Having made contact with some friendly Austrians according to a prearranged plan, he reached a band of partisans north-west of Marburg. He and other escaped prisoners then went into Nazi occupied Yugoslavia and he helped the resistance fight the Germans there.

At the wars end, he was debriefed by the British Secret Service. His escapades seemed too far fetched to be believed, and they sent him back to New Zealand under arrest, the officer in charge saying he must be psychologically disturbed. However, all Roy’s exploits were real and backed up by official records and by those who were there with him. In 1945, Roy was awarded the Military Medal for his determination in escaping and for assisting Special Operations in German occupied Europe. His experiences have been immortalised in a total of 14 books, written by 10 different authors. However, his humbleness was evident when he was asked by the editor of our schools Heretaungan magazine in 1945 about why he won the Military Medal, Roy simply replied ‘ Your guess is as good as mine.’

He returned to Hawke’s Bay and remained here raising his family until his death in 2009. Roy lived his life by our Akina Man values of diligence, empathy (for those living under the yoke of Nazi oppression) and courage. These are the reasons that Roy Natusch is an inductee of our Akina Man Wall of Fame.