Brigadier Pleasants, aged 77, will be honoured in a funeral ceremony with full military honours tomorrow at the Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral in Parnell and then at Purewa Crematorium.

During the Second World War he commanded infantry and armoured units of battalion, division and brigade strength in Greece, Crete, Egypt and Italy.

He earned the Military Cross while a company commander in the 19th battalion in Crete in 1941, having to lead soldiers out of the region to Egypt after his commanding officer and second-in-command were temporarily lost in the battle.

Commission

He won the DSO the following year while in command of the 18th battalion at Orsogna, Italy, where he was wounded twice.

On his return to New Zealand at the end of the war he returned to teaching in Wanganui, but resumed Army life in 1947 when he took up a permanent commission.

Brigadier Pleasants was appointed commandant of Waiouru Military camp in the late 1940s, then commander of the Fiji military forces.

He was made a CBE in 1952 during his term in the islands.

In 1953 he became commander of the northern military district. He went to London in 1964 as Army liaison officer, retiring at the end of the following year."