In 1955 the New Zealand Army picked 133 volunteers to build a unit for jungle warfare against communist insurgents in Malaya: the New Zealand Special Air Service. Lieutenant General Sir John Airth Mace was one of that founding intake, and over what the New Zealand Herald described as a 41-year military career he rose to command the entire New Zealand Defence Force. Mace died on September 22, 2026, at the age of 94, the New Zealand Herald reported.

He was born on June 29, 1932, in Ashburton, on New Zealand's South Island. He was educated at Ashburton High School and Nelson College before entering the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in Australia, graduating into the infantry in 1953.

Mace deployed with the original NZSAS squadron to the Malayan jungle from April 1956 to late 1957, part of the long campaign against communist guerrillas fighting British colonial rule in Malaya, during which two of the New Zealanders on that first deployment were killed. He went on to command the squadron itself from 1960 to 1962, and again in 1965, part of the small cadre that kept the regiment alive between call ups.

In 1966 he commanded a company of the 1st Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, during the Confrontation with Indonesia in Borneo. The following year, as a major, he was given command of Victor One Company, the first New Zealand infantry company sent into the Vietnam War, leading it in combat from May to November 1967, according to the Auckland War Memorial Museum's Online Cenotaph. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for that service.

As commanding officer of 1RNZIR in Singapore from 1971 to 1973, Mace ran a battalion where many soldiers had their families with them overseas. In the years between his return from Vietnam and his 1984 promotion to lead the Army, he also held the senior posts of Director of Infantry and the NZSAS, Commander of New Zealand Force South East Asia, and Deputy Chief of Defence Staff. When Lieutenant Denis Thomas was killed in Malaysia in February 1973, struck by an ammunition box dropped from a helicopter during a training exercise, Mace was, in the recollection of fellow veteran John Hayes, "really shaken by that." Hayes said Mace "showed great compassion" toward Thomas' wife and family, a private side that sat alongside a reputation among his soldiers as demanding, exacting and stern; even so, the men who served under him called him a "good boss."

He became Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the New Zealand Army, in 1984, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath two years later. In 1987 he was promoted to Chief of Defence Staff, the officer commanding all of New Zealand's armed forces, a post he held until his retirement in 1991. He was knighted, becoming a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in 1990. The role of Chief of Defence Staff has since been renamed Chief of Defence Force. His decorations from four decades in uniform also included a Mention in Despatches from that first Malayan tour and campaign medals for Borneo and Vietnam, according to the Online Cenotaph record held by the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Mace returned to formal association with his old battalion in 2006 as Honorary Colonel of 1RNZIR. In 2018, when the remains of NZSAS trooper Adrian "Charlie" Thomas, wounded during the original 1956 deployment to Malaya and cared for through his final night by Mace and fellow soldier Graeme Brighouse, were finally repatriated to New Zealand, Mace attended the ceremony. Witnesses recalled that he stood there with tears running down his face, the New Zealand Herald reported. He was survived by his wife, Margaret, and their two children, and a full military funeral was planned at St Mary's Cathedral in Parnell.

Air Marshal Tony Davies, the current Chief of Defence Force, called him "a distinguished soldier who served New Zealand with professionalism and dedication." Hayes, treasurer of the NZSAS Association, who served under him, said, "He did look after his soldiers all the time. Eighteen months ago he was still doing it." The historian Ron Crosby, author of NZSAS: The First Fifty Years, said of the Originals that "it was their personal determination to achieve excellence ... that is fundamental now to the high standards."

What Mace left in New Zealand's military was not one command but a throughline: from a 133 strong experiment in jungle soldiering in 1955 to a special forces regiment still built on the standards its founders set, and from a young company commander in Vietnam's rice paddies to the office from which he ran the whole of the country's armed forces. The battalion that later named him its honorary colonel, the association of Originals he helped anchor, and the soldiers who remembered him crying at a repatriation ceremony six decades after he first served with them carried those standards on after he handed over command.