Edward Breton Bestic

Born 27 Feb 1941

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Service number: Vietnam 38270 AWMM
Malaya 38270 AWMM
Also known as: Bret AWMM
E. B. Bestic AWMM
Armed force / branch: Army AWMM
Last rank: —
War: Borneo Confrontation, 1963-1966 AWMM
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 AWMM
Indonesian Confrontation 1962-1966 AWMM
Malaya, 1960-1964 AWMM

Edward Breton Bestic — Portrait of Brigadier Edward Bestic X38270. Image kindly provided by Edward Bestic. Image subject to copyright restrictions.

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Biographical information

Brigadier (Retired) Edward Breton “Bret” Bestic (X38270) was born in Whangārei in 1941 and began his military career as a Regular Force Cadet at 16. Selected for the Royal Military College, Duntroon, he graduated in 1962 with the Sword of Honour.

Bret served with 1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (1 RNZIR) in Malaysia and Borneo during the Indonesian Confrontation before deploying to Vietnam in 1971. There he served as an operations officer with the 1st Australian Task Force and later commanded an Australian rifle company, the only New Zealander to do so during the Vietnam War. He also served alongside 4 Troop New Zealand Special Air Service and undertook attachments with United States forces. during which he qualified as a sniper, and survived a helicopter being shot down.

He went on to command 1 RNZIR in Singapore, during which he qualified as a parachutist with the Singapore commandos, leadership roles including Director of Infantry and Special Air Service, Commander Army Training Group, and Commander Land Forces. He retired as a Brigadier after more than three decades of service. As Bret reflected in a 2019 interview with Online Cenotaph, he has remained in close contact with many of those he served alongside. “You make very strong friends,” he said. “It’s quite a bond.”

Following his military career, Bret worked internationally with the United Nations in senior field administration and logistics roles, including peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia and consultancy work with the World Food Programme across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He retired in 2017 after almost 60 years of public service (Profile written for “A Flight to Remember”, an Anzac Day 2026 initiative by Online Cenotaph and Air New Zealand).

1958 Regular Force Cadets
1959-62 Royal Military College Duntroon
1963-64 Regular Force Cadets
1964 1 Bn Depot
1965 1 Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (RNZIR)
1966 HQ Director Borneo CPS
1967-69 Army HQ
1971-71 HQ 1 Australian Task Force, also attached, New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS), US Army, US Marines
1971-72 School of Infantry
1973-1974 1 Royal New Zealand Infrantry Regiment
1975 Malaysian Staff College
1976-79 Army HQ and Home Command
1979-1982 Commanding Officer 1 Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment in Dieppe Barracks Singapore.
1982-83 Director of Infantry and SAS. Army HQ
1984 Joint Services Staff College (JSSC Australia)
1984-85 Colonel Personnel Army HQ.
1985-86 Canadian National Defence College (CNDC), Kingston, Ontario.
1986-87 Commander Army Training Group Waiouru
1987-89 Commander Support Command
1989-1993 Commander Land Forces (Takapuna, Auckland).

Post Military Service Occupations.
1997- 1999 Manager Paremoremo Prison.
United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Yugoslavia Chief Feild Admin.
2001 -2017 United Nations World Food Program - Logistics Consultant

Medals.
General Service Medal from Canada for Service in Afghanistan
Medal from Vietnamese Government for service AWMM

Sources

External links: New Zealand's Vietnam War Veterans. Personal page
http://www.vietnamwar.govt.nz/veteran/capt-eb-bestic
Sources Used
Memories of New Zealand and the Vietnam War. New Zealand History online website.
http://www.vietnamwar.govt.nz/
Further Reference
Australia's Vietnam War
https://web.archive.org/web/20241003003021/https://vietnam.unsw.adfa.edu.au/
Further Reference
Coombe, Sophie. Bret Bestic. Auckland War Memorial Museum - Tāmaki Paenga Hira. First published: 4 October 2019. Updated: 7 April 2020.
https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/features/bestic
Further Reference
References: Subritsky, M. (Ed). (1995). The Vietnam scrapbook: The second ANZAC adventure. Papakura, N.Z.: Three Feathers Publishing Co.
Hall, C. (2014). No front line : inside stories of New Zealand's Vietnam War. Auckland, New Zealand : Penguin Books.
This record was created from data kindly provided by the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage.
Cenotaph data entry form
H.E. Chamberlain, Nominal Roll – 1 RNZIR, 18 May-1 October 1965, in Gurr, Robert. (2009). Voices from a border war: Borneo 1963-1965. 2nd Edition. Christchurch, N.Z.: Wilson Scott Publishing, pp.151-156
Gurr, Robert. (2009). Voices from a border war: Borneo 1963-1965. 2nd Edition. Christchurch, N.Z.: Wilson Scott Publishing
Information kindly provided by family
Fry, P., & New Zealand. Army. Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment. Battalion, 1st. (1983). The First Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment : Journal / [P.J. Fry, editor] (25th anniversary commemorative ed.). Singapore: The Regiment.
FARELF Nominal Roll Part 2 1962-1963- Archives New Zealand, Wellington, CAJN CH189/Box70 41/4/11 (R21234083)
McGibbon, I.C. (2010). New Zealand's Vietnam War: a history of combat, commitment and controversy. Auckland, N.Z.: Exisle
This record was part of “A Flight to Remember”, an Anzac Day 2026 commemorative partnership between Online Cenotaph and Air New Zealand, where service stories were shared onboard a dawn flight from Auckland to Sydney.

The development of the Online Cenotaph is an ongoing process; updates, new images and records are added weekly. In some cases, records have yet to be confirmed by Museum staff, and there could be mistakes or omissions in the information provided.

Online Cenotaph Data by Auckland War Memorial Museum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Edward Breton Bestic