Paul Little (1) (1957–)

How to set yourself an impossible task: write an authorized biography of an almost taciturn and certainly highly private and modest individual from an extremely secretive organization. While not quite the cliched "lose-lose" it was never going to be easy. The public have an insatiable demand and even arguably a right to know something of the man identified as a national hero. But no soldier ever sets out to win a VC, nor would a soldier ever believe that such an award belongs to an individual: soldiers are team members, and SAS soldiers exist at the pointy edge of team.

Under those circumstances journalist-author Paul Little has achieved much. VC winner Wilie Apiata is a down to earth bloke who saved a mate because that's what you do. It's also what you're highly trained to do, if you happen to be an SAS (Special Air Services) soldier. But you don't talk about it. Consequently Little has rightly drawn together a skeletal portrait of events that led up to and followed after Apiata's dramatic rescue of an unnamed colleague at an unidentified location on an unspecified date, and one or two even more shadowy glimpses on the impact these events may or may not have had on Apiata's unnamed partner and son. We receive glimpses of a tough and unglamorous childhood that could have led as easily to Black Power camaraderie as to SAS bravery, and which had deer and pigs trembling in the wild country behind relatively remote and isolated Te Kaha.

We receive glimpses of childhood, glimpses of Apiata's early working life, glimpses of Army Territorial training, and hazy glimpses of SAS pre-selection procedures. These glimpses are interspersed with Apiata's own reflections - but Apiata, though insightful and tersely eloquent, is self-confessedly not a man given to speech-making. This is neither watery chicken soup for the soul, nor ornate soap box eloquence. This is Willie Apiata doing what he has to do because he has to do it, and therefore doing it well.

Because of these challenges the book works. Paul Little rightly keeps any sense of authorial presence as far from the picture as is humanly possible. Occasionally there are faint glimpses of the sociological co-existence of two "tanga", European and Maori, in one life, but no more than glimpses: no attempt is made to extrapolate meaning for Aotearoa/New Zealand nor even for being Willie Apiata VC. Nor does Paul Little indulge in pop-psychological analysis of the make-up of a reluctant hero. Certainly there is no waiting-room magazine breathy expose of Apiata's private life. Little tells a story: neither more, nor less.

Occasionally there are glimpses of the world of difference between the experience of the post-award lives of Apiata and his VC predecessors: they were left to sink or swim. Some sank, descending into alcoholic fogs. Others, of course, were killed, as they resumed their lives of bravery, of doing what you have to do. Apiata will not sink, for the SAS are managing his life as carefully as they manage any military detail. Apiata will swim, because that's what you have to do.

The book does its job and does it well, but it presents a paradox. The story is well told, but the story can't really be told at all. In a moment of immeasurable bravery - and stubborn determination - Willie Apiata saved a bloke. Any of Apiata's mates would have done the same for him. Most of us, on the other hand, would not have been there, let alone responded. Bravery in the end is not generally about eloquence or literary endeavour (an Alexander Solzhenitsyn may be an exception), it's about doing something that needs to be done. Willie Apiata did.… (meer)