No Better Death Read online

  First published 2014

  This is an updated and corrected edition of a work published by Reed Publishing in 2005.

  Exisle Publishing Limited,

  P.O. Box 60-490, Titirangi, Auckland 0642, New Zealand.

  ‘Moonrising’, Narone Creek Road, Wollombi, NSW 2325, Australia.

  www.exislepublishing.com

  Crown copyright © 2014

  J.A.B. Crawford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. Except for short extracts for the purpose of review, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

  Print ISBN 978-1-77559-128-3

  ePub ISBN 978-1-77559-192-4 Version 1.0

  Text design and production by IslandBridge

  Cover design by Nick Turzynski, redinc.

  Printed in Shenzhen, China, by Ink Asia

  Contents

  Foreword

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  Glossary

  Introduction

  1: Saying goodbye and preparing for war

  2: ‘In the cause of the age’

  3: ‘The world never saw better men or braver’

  4: ‘It was hell’

  5: ‘Steady fighting work’

  6: ‘My candle is all but burnt out’

  Postscript

  Conclusion

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  Foreword

  Lieutenant General Tim Keating

  * * *

  The centenary of the First World War is a time for us to reflect on the achievements and experiences of New Zealanders during that terrible conflict. One of the more than 18,000 New Zealanders to lose their lives in the war was Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone, who was killed on 8 August 1915 leading the epic defence of Chunuk Bair, the highest point seized by the Allies during the Gallipoli campaign. Before he set out on the operation to seize Chunuk Bair, Malone considered that he had little chance of surviving the battle. So it proved. Along with more than 300 of his men, Malone still lies in an unmarked grave on Chunuk Bair.

  For many years after his death, Malone’s achievements and qualities were not widely appreciated. Over the last 30 years, thanks to the work of his grandson, Edmond, and others he has justifiably become a national hero. This new edition of No Better Death: The Great War Diaries and Letters of William G. Malone will foster a greater understanding of this complex man, whose many fine qualities and love of New Zealand shine through his writings. No Better Death also tells us much about the loving relationship Malone had with his wife, Ida, and about the experiences of a family at war.

  Like so many New Zealand families, the Malones have a proud record of serving the nation in wartime. William Malone and four of his sons served in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. One, Lieutenant Edmond Malone MC, was killed, and a fifth son, Captain Barney Malone, was killed in action during the Second World War. Other descendants of William Malone fought in the Second World War. In 2012 his great-great-grandson, Lance Corporal Rory Malone, was mortally wounded in a fierce engagement in Afghanistan.

  Malone was hard-working, intelligent and thoughtful, but was not an easy man to serve under. Throughout his military service he set exacting performance standards for himself and those under his command. He was intent on shaping his battalion into a fine fighting force, and did not seek popularity. Nonetheless, the officers and men of the Wellington Infantry Battalion became devoted to Malone once they realised that he asked nothing of them that he was not prepared to do himself and had their best interests at heart.

  Although it is almost a century since Malone was killed, a great deal of what he says about leadership and courage, both moral and physical, remains highly relevant to the men and women of the New Zealand Defence Force.

  Finally, I am convinced that New Zealanders who read Malone’s account of the heroism and endurance displayed by their countrymen at Gallipoli will be filled with pride, reminded of the debt we owe those who have freely given up their lives in defence of our homeland, and convinced that William Malone was a truly great New Zealander.

  Tim Keating

  Lieutenant General

  Chief of Defence Force

  February 2014

  Acknowledgements

  * * *

  We would like to acknowledge again all those who assisted or supported the production of the first edition of this book, published in 2005. Members of the Malone family played a crucial role in the successful completion of the first edition of the diaries and letters of William George Malone. We would especially like to thank Judy Malone, Tessa Keegan, Clare Lyons and Anita Young for allowing us to make use of their valuable archival collections. We also acknowledge the work of the late Ted Malone who deposited the diaries and letters in the Alexander Turnbull Library and who did a great deal of research into his grandfather’s life.

  The Chief of the Defence Force in 2005, Air Marshal Bruce Ferguson, saw immediately when the proposal for the publication of an edition of Malone’s diaries and letters was presented to him that it would be an appropriate way for the New Zealand Defence Force to mark the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the project and maintained an active interest in its progress throughout. The project director, Warren Inkster, played a significant role in bringing the publication of the Malone diaries and letters to fruition. We especially thank Melissa Ford, Janet Krivan and Mata Parakoti for their many hours of hard work transcribing the diaries and letters.

  We could not have delivered on our tight deadlines without the assistance of many people, including Lea Bellini, Ray Cleaver, Dennis Davidson, Ashley Gould, Boris Halliday, Joan Keate, Des Malone, Andrew Menken, Hilda McDonnell, Murray Moorhead, Anna Rogers, Philip Rankin, Sean Shadbolt, Debbie Sheehy, Mary Slatter, L.J. Smith, Carol Spragg, Gillian Tasker, Kevin Vincent, Derek Weber and Rosalie Whitmore.

  The following institutions and their staff assisted us with our work on the book: Alexander Turnbull Library; National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga O Aotearoa; Kippenberger Military Archive and Research Library, Queen Elizabeth II Army Memorial Museum; Archives New Zealand; Australian War Memorial; Auckland War Memorial Museum; Defence Library, Headquarters New Zealand Defence Force; New Zealand Defence Force Personnel Archives; Puke Ariki and District Libraries, New Plymouth; St Patrick’s College (Wellington); Stratford District Council; Te Papa Museum of New Zealand; Wairarapa Archive; Whanganui Regional Museum; Wanganui District Library; Ministry for Culture and Heritage. We thank especially Margaret Calder, who was in 2005 the Chief Librarian, Alexander Turnbull Library and David Colquhoun, Curator, Manuscripts and Archives, for providing permission for the New Zealand Defence Force to publish the diaries and their enthusiastic support for the project.

  In addition to those thanked in the acknowledgements to the first edition, we would like to acknowledge the valuable assistance we have received during the preparation of this revised edition from Judy Malone. William and Ida Malone’s three British-based granddaughters, Tessa Keegan, Anita Young and Clare Lyons have again been of great assistance. We also acknowledge the part their late sister, Phillida Bassett, had in preserving the Malone family archive in London. Denis Malone freely shared his memories of his late son Rory. Many other people have also been of assistance, inc
luding Matthew Buck, Melissa Ford, Penny and Zane Kidd, John McLeod, Ian Maxwell, Chris Pugsley and Major Craig Wilson. Ian Watt and his highly professional team at Exisle Publishing have done fine work to produce a first-rate book.

  The Chief of Defence Force, Lieutenant General Tim Keating, and his predecessor, Lieutenant General Rhys Jones, could not have been more supportive of the project to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War with a new edition of William Malone’s diaries and letters.

  Finally, we again thank our families for their support and assistance during our work on this book.

  John Crawford

  Peter Cooke

  February 2014

  Preface

  * * *

  During the last year of his life, August 1914 to August 1915, William George Malone wrote a substantial quantity of official, demi-official and private correspondence, kept a detailed diary and took many photographs. Like other soldiers in the Great War, Malone wanted to document his military service both to aid his own memory and to inform his family. The letters he wrote and received were highly important to him as the key way in which he could maintain contact with his family, friends and former life.1 He went to some trouble to ensure that this material was preserved, periodically sending copies of his diary and letters to his wife Ida.2 Malone’s diaries and letters do not simply set out the work of a capable, hard-working officer. They tell us a great deal about his character, his relationship with his wife and children, his values, view of the world and his place in it. He regarded his service at Gallipoli as the high point of his life. On 27 May 1915, for example, he wrote that he was ‘Living as I never lived before’. His wartime experiences led him to reassess his life and made him determined to be a better husband and father in the future.3

  The diaries and letters reproduced in this edition are drawn from the W.G. Malone collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. This collection consists, with a few exceptions, of Malone’s demi-official and private writings. The papers amount to more than 135,000 words, and in this edition it has been necessary to delete some diary entries and letters and sections of others that are repetitious or contain material of limited interest. The great bulk of the deleted material relates to the period before the start of the Gallipoli campaign. The letter books contain copies of correspondence with a large number of people. The correspondence ranges from highly personal letters to his wife to fairly routine correspondence about business or military matters. The books also include copies of a few pieces of official correspondence, but mainly contain material of a personal or demi-official nature. Malone usually wrote up his diary daily, except when he was particularly busy. In general he wrote substantial entries for the great majority of days.4 He illustrated his diaries and letters with many small drawings and sketch maps, some of which are reproduced in this edition.

  Malone’s diaries and letters were deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1988 by a grandson, Edmond Penn (Ted) Malone. He had earlier received them from his uncle, Denis Malone, who had in turn received them from his mother, William Malone’s widow, Ida. Earlier, in 1980, the New Zealand High Commission in London had given the library a copy of a typescript copy of the diary held by Mrs Massey-Stewart, the widow of Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Stewart. She had no idea how her late husband, who was the author of the official history of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force [NZEF] on the Western Front, had come to have the document in his possession. This typescript is most probably a corrected version of a typescript prepared in the 1920s by Ida Malone with the assistance of Denis Malone. A copy of this earlier typescript was given, it appears, to Brian Malone, a son of William Malone, most probably during the 1920s.5 As part of this project, a new complete transcript of the diaries and letters has been prepared and deposited at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

  The diary and letters were written, in pencil, under often difficult circumstances on whatever paper Malone had available. The first group of diaries and letter books [Alexander Turnbull library references, MSX 2541, 42, 43, 48 and 49] are manifold books that Malone had purchased in New Zealand. These books were specially designed so that carbon copies of whatever was written in them could be easily produced. Malone purchased several similar books in Cairo that he used during his stay in Egypt and during the early part of his service at Gallipoli [MSX 2544, 45, 46 and 47]. He then resorted to using official NZEF field service correspondence books (Army Book 152), [MSX 2550, 51, 52 and 53]. When he first landed at Gallipoli[25 April to 14 May 1915] and towards the end of his life, Malone was obliged to use NZEF message and signal form pads (Army Form C2121) for his diaries [MS papers 4130]. These form books were not specifically designed for making copies of material written in them, so if Malone continued to make copies he must have used loose writing and carbon paper. The last few entries in Malone’s diary[2 to 5 Aug 1915] are written in the correspondence book of Lieutenant Douglas Bryan who had earlier been wounded and evacuated from Gallipoli [MSX 2547]. This book and MSX 2546 [diary 10 Apr 1915–25 Apr 1915 and 29 May–1 Aug 1915] contain both the original and carbon copies of the diary, probably because Malone was killed before he had sent these parts of his diary to his wife. The collection at the Alexander Turnbull Library, therefore, consists of a mixture of original diaries and carbon copies.

  On at least one occasion during the Gallipoli campaign Malone made use of paper from the haversack of a dead Turkish soldier that he had found while searching for material with intelligence value. We only know of the existence of this letter because it was published in New Zealand newspapers. It is quite possible that he did not make copies of all his letters or that the copies of some letters have been lost.6 In particular, Malone seems to have written more condolence letters to the next of kin of men from his battalion than are included in the collection.7

  After William Malone was killed, his effects were sent to his widow. It follows, therefore, that Ida Malone should have had both the original and carbon copies of the diaries, the letter books and at least some of the letters Malone received while on active service. The Malone family in London hold a few of the letters received by Malone between August 1914 and August 1915, but none of those sent by Ida. They do not hold the original diaries missing from the Alexander Turnbull’s collection. The missing letters were destroyed by Denis Malone. On her deathbed Ida Malone instructed Denis, who was particularly close to his mother, to destroy her often intimate letters to William Malone and his letters to her. Denis did as his mother asked, but overlooked the carbon copies that William Malone had kept of his letters to Ida.8 The fate of the missing original diaries is unknown.

  The circumstances under which he wrote, Malone’s handwriting, his extensive use of abbreviations and a number of idiosyncratic conventions, combine to make much of the manuscript material reproduced in this volume very difficult to read. Malone, for instance, attached the ampersand [&] he almost always used in place of ‘and’, to the word that followed it. He also often placed question marks in front of the word being referred to. Although considerable effort has gone into deciphering the original letters and diaries, some words are illegible and are marked as such. In cases where there is doubt about what Malone has written, this is indicated by: [?]. In order to make the text more readily understandable, it has been necessary to make a number of editorial decisions. The guiding principle in the editorial process has been to keep the published text as close as possible to what Malone actually wrote in his diaries and letters.

  All material that appears in square brackets is editorial insertion. The most important editorial conventions concern the use of abbreviations, punctuation and spelling. The number of abbreviations used in the material, especially in the diaries, has been reduced. For instance, when Malone uses ‘Sfd’ to refer to the town of Stratford, this edition gives the town’s name in full. Similarly ‘about’ and ‘enough’ are rendered in full, rather than as ‘abt’ and ‘eno’. Malone was not consistent in his use of abbreviations, sometimes giving
a word in full and on other occasions using two or three different abbreviations. In such cases, when a word appears in full it has been left in this form and when it has been abbreviated, the abbreviation most commonly used by Malone is generally used. For instance, the abbreviation Bn for Battalion is used throughout the published text. The list of abbreviations used in the book includes words that are generally abbreviated by Malone, but that appear in full in the published text.

  In his diaries and letters, Malone rarely used apostrophes and where necessary these have been inserted into the text in the interests of clarity. Where Malone repeatedly mis-spelt a word, such as a person’s surname, the mis-spelling is corrected in the first instance and the correct spelling used from then on. The names of ships are referred to in various ways in the letters and diaries, and in the interests of clarity and consistency they have all been rendered in italics in the published text. Italics are also used for non-English words and phrases and the titles of books and other publications. Malone made use of some obscure colloquial expressions, especially in his diaries, and whenever possible the most likely meaning has been noted. The diaries and letters include many short, unnecessary paragraphs and in some cases these have been combined in order to save space. Malone’s idiosyncratic use of commas and capitalisation has not been corrected unless it makes the meaning unclear. The book includes endnotes that identify and give information about people mentioned by Malone and additional material relevant to the text. The biographical notes are set out in the following way: Rank at time of Malone’s mention (highest rank achieved)–Christian name–other initials–surname, regiment or corps (if significant); awards (listed in order of precedence); date of birth–place of birth–date of death; marital status–occupation–place of enlistment; regimental number–subunit–unit; fate; service in South African War (if relevant); later significant details, including service in World War II. The biographical notes and many of the other endnotes were prepared by Peter Cooke, who also did a great deal of work on the transcription of the diaries and letters. In addition, Peter carried out the photographic research for the book and assisted with research on other matters.