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Malone outside his bivouac at Cape Helles, May 1915, where the NZ Infantry Brigade was effectively destroyed as a fighting unit. Malone Family Collection, Wellington, Alexander Turnbull Library

  | The National Army Museum Literary Fund is committed to financially supporting the publication of works of merit on important aspects of New Zealand's military and related foreign policy history. The National Army Museum is delighted to present this biography of Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone, one of this country's best known and finest soldiers from World War I.
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First published in 2015

Copyright © Jock Vennell 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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Pages 238–251 extracted from _Voices of Gallipoli_ by Maurice Shadbolt reproduced with permission of David Ling Publishing, Auckland, New Zealand. The account by Lt Charles Lepper was printed in _The Daily News_ , 24 April 2004.

Maps by Morag Torrington

Index by Puddingburn

Typeset by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

Contents

Maps

Prologue: 'My candle is all but burnt out'

Introduction

In the Beginning

1 Carved from the Bush

2 Family Man

3 Political Ambitions

4 The Making of a Soldier

5 King and Country

6 The Path to Gallipoli

7 Desert Storm

8 The Force Gathers

9 The Landing: 25 April

10 Helles and Back

11 Holding On

12 'A dilapidated, demoralised and filthy Hell'

13 The Guns of August

14 Once on Chunuk Bair

15 Mission Impossible?

16 'No finer soldier . . .'

17 'A strong man, a true gentleman . . .'

18 'Your husband and lover . . .'

19 'Pro Patria Mori'

20 The Price of War

Postscript

Voices of Gallipoli

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

Prologue

'My candle is all but burnt out'

'In less than 2 hours, we move off to a valley, where we will be up all night and tomorrow, in readiness for a big attack which will start tomorrow night. Everything promises well and victory should rest with us. God grant it so, and that our casualties will not be too heavy. I expect to go thro' all right but, dear wife, if anything untoward happens to me, you must not grieve too much, there are our dear children to be brought up. You know how I love and have loved you, and we have had many years of great happiness together.

'I am prepared for death, and hope that God will have forgiven me all my sins. My desire for life, so that I may see and be with you again, could not be greater, but I have only done what every man was bound to do in our country's need. It has been a great consolation to me that you approved my action. The sacrifice was really yours. May you be consoled and rewarded by our dear Lord . . .

'My candle is all but burnt out and we shall soon be moving. So good night dearest one . . . Your lover and husband XXX'

—From the last letters of Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone, written to his wife Ida on the night of 5 August 1915 as the Wellington Battalion prepared for the assault on Chunuk Bair

By fire and axe. Malone's Taranaki farm looked like this in the early 1880s—a wasteland of blackened stumps and ash in which grass seed would be sown and homes built. Puke Ariki, New Plymouth
Introduction

William George Malone was destined to play many parts in his comparatively short but very active life—pioneering farmer, lawyer, local body administrator, sportsman, family man, aspiring politician and territorial soldier. He was perhaps the best-known New Zealander to serve at Gallipoli, his name forever linked with the epic defence of Chunuk Bair on 8 August 1915.

This biography attempts to place Malone in the context of his time—the conflict with Maori over land in Taranaki, the European settlement of the province in the latter decades of the 19th century, and the clearing of the great rainforests of the interior. It examines his farming, business and military activities and his family relationships in the years leading up to World War I.

Much attention is given to Malone's Volunteer Force activities in the years before the war, the training of the Wellington Battalion he rose to command, the landing at Gallipoli, the fighting at Helles and Quinn's Post, and the final battle for Chunuk Bair. The most controversial feature of Malone's command at Gallipoli—his defence of the heights of Chunuk Bair during the Allied attack on 8 August 1915—is dealt with in some detail. The biography ends with an assessment of Malone as soldier, personality, husband and family man.

As a first attempt at a biography of Malone, this project was a challenging one as few of his pre-war records have survived. In training in New Zealand and on Gallipoli, however, he was a prolific diarist and letter writer, and it is on these writings, on material provided by the National Library and Archives New Zealand, and on family sources that most of this book is based.

A key starting point was _No Better Death: The Great War Diaries and Letters of William G. Malone_ , edited by Defence Force historian John Crawford. A knowledge of World War I in general and of the Gallipoli campaign in particular were an essential background to the book, as they must be for any historian attempting to understand the campaign and the soldiers and politicians who shaped it.

Malone was not to survive Chunuk Bair. Fighting at the head of his men, he would die by 'friendly' fire 36 hours before Mustapha Kemal's Turkish battalions swept the relieving New Army troops off the summit. If there was to be no victory on that hard-assaulted spot, he would have asked for no better death.

'Yes we took Chunuk Bair and, unsupported, (just seventy-six surviving of our seven hundred) lost it A British gunner delivered my death, A gateway in Taranaki remembers my name.'

—The Commanding Officer, C.K. Stead
In the Beginning

William George ('Willie') Malone was not a native-born New Zealander but an immigrant, as were the majority of settlers in this country in the early 1880s. He was born on 24 January 1859 at Rushey Green, Lewisham, in Kent, the third child of Thomas Augustine Malone and his wife Louisa. Both were staunchly Catholic and between them they produced a family of five—three brothers, Edmund, Austin and William, and two sisters, Agnes and Louisa (Louie). Edmund died of unknown causes aged 19 before the family left England for New Zealand.

The Malone family was of mixed English–Irish extraction. William's great-grandfather is believed to have been a native of County Westmeath in the midlands of Ireland, where family sources say he may have been employed as a bailiff or steward on the estate of an Irish nobleman of the period.

William's grandfather and his brothers are thought to have migrated to England in the mid-19th century as a result of the great Irish potato famine that killed an estimated 750,000 of their countrymen and forced another two million to migrate to Britain, Canada and the United States.

Details of Malone's early years are scarce. It is known that he was educated first at St Joseph's College in the London suburb of Clapham. He was then sent as a boarder to a school in Plymouth (possibly St Boniface's Catholic College) staffed by the Marist Brothers, a prominent Roman Catholic teaching order. He spent the last two years of his education at another Marist Brothers school, this time at Lille in France, where he became a fluent French speaker. It is here that he learned to play the piano and developed a lifetime love of classical music.

Four years earlier, Lille was within the sound of Prussian guns and French troops were marching in its streets. At Sedan, 80 kilometres to the south-east, the Prussians had inflicted a crushing defeat on the French army, capturing the Emperor Napoleon the Third, his commanding general and 100,000 of his troops. Lille was to be occupied 44 years later when the German army swept through Belgium and northern France in August 1914—the same year in which William Malone, now a Lieutenant-Colonel in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, set sail for another battlefront in the same world war.

William's father, Thomas Augustine Malone, was a scientist who was closely involved, with Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot, in the early development of photography. He lectured on photography at the Royal Institution of Great Britain and established a photography business in London (Henneman & Malone, Photographers to the Queen). He became a Fellow of the Chemical Society and was apparently well acquainted with other prominent scientists of the day, among them Faraday, Cobbett and Tyndall.

Like many of his mid-Victorian contemporaries, Thomas Malone was driven by a constant need to better himself. A copy of _The Life of Burke_ dated 1857 is heavily annotated with comments on duty to family and country, and the need for self-improvement. Among the notes is a rigid schedule of work and sleep, and an ambitious programme of extra study, all of which had to be fitted into his life as a scientist and photographer.

As his father was in character and personality, in so many respects would his youngest son William become. 'From his father,' wrote family historian Dr Judy Malone, 'he inherited a strong intellect, the habits and convictions of a deeply religious man, and a lifelong commitment to self-discipline and self-improvement.'

The Malones were to lose their father tragically early. Thomas Malone died at the age of 44 of what was described as 'exhaustion and acute melancholia'—overwork and severe depression in today's medical language—but possibly of a brain tumour. His death did more than deprive the family of a husband and father, it left them in financial difficulties if not outright poverty.

An army career was apparently William's first choice on leaving school, but the family was unable to put him through the officer training schools of Sandhurst or Woolwich. Reluctantly, it seems, he took up a clerical position in London, but indulged a growing military interest by joining the City of Westminster Rifle Volunteers.

In 1877, he transferred to the Royal Naval Artillery Volunteers, serving as seaman gunner. Two years later, the young Malone made a fateful decision—he would join his older brother Austin in New Zealand and attempt to remake if not the family fortunes then at least his own.

Carved from the Bush

'Those who arrive in the colony without capital will, if they enjoy good health, are sober and economical in their personal expenses, and are able and willing to work at any one trade, as farm servants, boatmen, shepherds or house servants, soon realize a sufficient capital to invest in land, cattle or sheep, and thus to render themselves and their children independent.'

— _New Zealand Settlers Guide_ , 1857

On 12 August 1880, a 21-year-old city-bred boy stepped ashore in Wellington after a twelve-week voyage from England in the immigrant ship _Western Monarch_. The _Monarch_ was an iron-hulled, three-masted barque of 1315 tons, 'splendidly equipped for the convenience and comfort of passengers'. It was not equipped, however, for the comfort of young William Malone. As an assisted immigrant, he travelled steerage class, the cheapest and most basic accommodation aboard ship.

How the new immigrant occupied himself for the next eight months is unknown, but on 28 March 1881 he arrived by ship at the port of New Plymouth. Always correct, he turned to the lighterman who had rowed him and his luggage ashore and offered him sixpence as a tip. The man looked at the coin for a moment and then handed it back. 'You'll be needing this,' he said. In class-divided England, one only tipped 'inferiors'—coach-drivers, servants, tradesmen and others. Here in the colonies a different set of rules applied and Malone was given an early lesson in the egalitarian spirit of the frontier.

The Malone brothers were part of a wave of assisted immigrants, mostly from the British Isles, that began in the mid-1870s under the settlement schemes fostered by the government of Sir William Fox and Sir Julius Vogel. Malone's earliest impressions of his new country are unknown, but it would have been clear that much was different. Crown and private land purchases, railways, roads and bridges dominated the politics of the new colony. Provinces competed to attract public money and by modern standards there were 'quite unacceptable' links between business and politics.

Taranaki itself was an isolated and undeveloped region that only eight years before had put behind it the worst of the wars with Maori over land. The coastal area of the province had been settled in the 1840s, but the remainder was still covered, as one early settler put it, by 'thick primeval rainforest, almost impenetrable except to a torpedo-shaped wild pig'.

Within a month of his arrival Malone had joined the Armed Constabulary, in which his brother Austin had been serving since 1878. The paramilitary constabulary was the colony's first national police force and had been the mainstay of its defences during the last years of the land wars. When not engaged in active soldiering, it spent much of its time cutting roads, bridging rivers and helping to lay telephone lines.

The force had operated successfully in the rugged bush country of the central North Island, but not without its share of reverses. A contingent was with Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas McDonnell when his force was ambushed at Te Ngutu and its colourful divisional commander, Major Gustavus Von Tempsky, killed. Two months later, the constabulary was part of the force commanded by Colonel George Whitmore that attacked Titokowaru's camp at Moturoa but was repulsed with heavy losses.

For a decade or more after the land wars, the blue-uniformed constabulary protected the borders of European-occupied territory where tensions between Maori and settlers were still high. At the time the Malones joined the force, it was manning redoubts and blockhouses at Opunake, Pungarehu, Manaia, Rahotu and Normanby in Taranaki. In the upper Waikato, it guarded the border between settlers and the hostile Kingite tribes. Everywhere across the frontier its ensigns flew and 'Pakeha law kept watch on the still glowering natives'.

Malone would soon see active service with the Armed Constabulary. In Taranaki, around 500,000 hectares of Maori land had been confiscated during the war of the 1860s. The land west of the confiscation line was compulsorily purchased in blocks for roads, railways and European settlement. East of the line the tribes were free to sell or not as they chose. In this arrangement lay the seeds of future conflict.

By the late 1870s land-hungry settlers were taking an increasing interest in the Waimate Plains region of south Taranaki—land that had already been confiscated from the Taranaki tribes. In 1879, the government began surveying 6500 hectares of the plains without informing local Maori that land would also be set aside for tribal reserves.

Te Whiti and his people had settled at nearby Parihaka and were determined to resist, albeit by peaceful means, any encroachment on what they still saw as their land. Tensions rose as Maori from Parihaka pulled up the surveyors' pegs and ploughed up settler farms from White Cliffs in the north to Hawera in the south.

Fearing that this show of resistance was a prelude to armed conflict, the government accelerated the construction of a road stretching from New Plymouth south to Wanganui and across the North Island to Napier. Its purpose was to link isolated bush settlements across the centre of the island and create strategically important new ones, specifically on the 65-kilometre section that ran through untouched virgin forest behind Mt Taranaki.

By these means, the government aimed to isolate Te Whiti and his followers in western Taranaki and stop any reinforcements from other tribal areas in the North Island reaching Parihaka. A secondary aim was to prevent Te Whiti and his warriors escaping into the forests to the east where they could carry on guerrilla warfare of the type recently engaged in by Te Kooti on the North Island's east coast.

Meanwhile, arms and ammunition were shipped in and volunteer militia units set up in all the new settlements. In Stratford, the military commander for north Taranaki, Major Charles Stapp, enrolled 33 volunteers in the Stratford Rangers Defence Volunteers. Captain T.M. Smith was appointed its commander and Sergeant William Malone its drill instructor.

The Curtis brothers' general store in Stratford was loopholed and lined with iron plates to stop attackers setting fire to the building. A deep trench was dug around the store and a breastwork built up, behind which the defenders could shelter and fire. Provisions to last 50 men for six months were laid in and the railway station converted into a stockade to protect Stratford families, including the Malones, should hostilities break out.

In October 1881, the government moved to put an end to Te Whiti's defiance at Parihaka. By now the settlement was New Zealand's largest Maori community, a place of cultural and spiritual regeneration, a gathering place for Maori worried about the future of their race and lands. Delegations from North Island tribes who looked to Te Whiti as their counsellor and saviour were also living there.

On 5 November, a force of 1600 volunteer militia and Armed Constabulary, led by Native Minister John Bryce and including Constable William Malone, surrounded Parihaka. The advance party that entered the village was met not by armed warriors but by a group of singing, skipping children and a thousand Maori adults sitting peacefully on the marae.

Te Whiti urged his people not to resist and surrendered himself peacefully to the constabulary. Houses were then ransacked in a search for weapons and some were pulled down. Maori from outside tribes were dispersed to their homelands, and Te Whiti and other Maori leaders were charged with sedition and jailed.

In a travesty of Pakeha justice, Te Whiti spent two years in jail without being brought to trial. The government's purpose was clear: to destroy Parihaka as a place where Maori could pose a threat to settler security and to smooth the way for European occupation of the Waimate Plains.

By December, many of the Maori expelled from Parihaka were facing starvation. Bryce offered them a humiliating option—road-making and fencing work in preparation for the subdivision of their land. The government then decreed that 5000 acres (2000 hectares) of the land set aside as reserves for Parihaka Maori would be withheld as compensation for 'the loss sustained by the government in suppressing the Parihaka sedition'. As historian Keith Sinclair put it, 'Te Whiti was locked up, and after inadequate reserves had been made, his lands were unlocked.'

Malone's thoughts about this shabby affair are unknown, but he was young and as a member of the constabulary probably spoiling for a fight. Like most Taranaki settlers at the time, he was unlikely to have had much sympathy for those who were occupying confiscated land, holding up the advance of European settlement and defying Pakeha law. Ironically, if it had not been for Te Whiti's passive resistance to European incursions into what was once tribal land, the North Island frontier would inevitably have erupted again into war.

In April 1882, Malone resigned from the Armed Constabulary and with his brother Austin took a job crewing the government surf boats that ferried passengers and cargo to and from the ships anchored off Opunake Beach. It was a job for risk-takers, requiring skill, judgement and good teamwork. For two city-bred boys from London, it would have been a useful preparation for the physical challenges ahead.

Meanwhile, forest had been cleared for the new settlements of Inglewood, Stratford and Midhirst, and new immigrants encouraged to take up land in and around them. In 1882, the Malones' widowed mother and their two sisters, Agnes and Louisa, followed the brothers to New Zealand. Together the family purchased a small block of Crown-owned forest land five kilometres outside Stratford on the Opunake road. The land was bought on the deferred payment system, which allowed settlers with limited capital to occupy and develop their selections until they were in a position to buy them outright.

For families of limited means, as the Malones almost certainly were, Taranaki bush land was a better proposition than open country elsewhere in the North Island. It could often be bought for a quarter of the price and required only an axe, saw, slasher and some grass seed to get a first crop under way. The forest provided all the materials needed for a home, farm buildings, fences and furniture, plus unlimited fuel for fires.

The Stratford the Malones came to was a raw frontier village sited on forest land that the settler government had confiscated from the Maori tribes during the land wars of the 1860s. Once the site had been established, the surveyors and bush-felling gangs moved in. Flames from the massive burn-offs that followed were reported to have risen over 30 metres into the air and great columns of smoke from what was once dense virgin forest could be seen as far away as New Plymouth.

By the time the Malones arrived, the village had taken root. Amongst the stumps and fallen logs squatted a general store, a butchery and bakery, a post office, a police station, and a hotel selling 'spirituous liquors' where hundreds of men from the railway and roading gangs brawled and drank. Over the settlement brooded fire-blackened rata trees, left standing after the bush had been burnt off and new grass sown. Stratford, like the other forest settlements along the mountain road, was forged in fire.

Close to the Malones' bush selection ran the strategic road connecting New Plymouth in the north of the province to Hawera in the south. Driven by gangs of newly arrived immigrants in the early 1870s, it roughly followed the old Whaka-ahurangi track, which in pre-European times had linked the tribes of northern and southern Taranaki. During the Taranaki campaign of 1866, General Chute and his force of British regulars, Forest Rangers, and 'friendly' Maori had made a gruelling ten-day march across the track from Waitotara to New Plymouth, destroying Maori villages, fortified pa and crops as they went.

By the late 1870s, the track had been transformed into a mostly passable road—at least in dry weather—taking cattle north from Patea to the river port of Waitara, and a new wave of settlers, including the Malones, south to their bush farms under the mountain. In 1879, Charles Chavannes drove his coach from Inglewood to Hawera in ten hours, uncoupling his horses at steep cuttings while road gangs lowered the coach, minus its passengers, on ropes.

Having taken up their selection, the Malones began the work of converting virgin forest into productive farmland. Like most of Taranaki's earlier settlers, they first cleared enough land for a small cottage of ponga logs with a tramped-earth floor, a large garden, perhaps an orchard, and a few cows to provide milk, home-made butter and cheese. Wooden fences were built to protect the garden and keep in the livestock. Bread was made in a camp oven and wild cattle, pigs and native pigeons were hunted for meat.

Used to a comfortable middle-class life in suburban London, the Malone brothers would have had little in the way of farming knowledge or hunting skills. In the early years at least, they would have had to rely heavily on the know-how of neighbouring farmers, carpenters and bushmen, many of them former rural labourers from England with several years of frontier experience now behind them.

Over the next year, a home of pit-sawn timber was built while more of the forest on their land was cleared, burnt off and grass seed sown in the ashes. The stumps of trees were steadily cleared with axes, timber jacks and blasting powder—a long and tedious job. A year later, the _Hawera & Normanby Star_ reported, with no hint of mockery, that Messrs Malone had completed 'one of the handsomest dwellings in the district'.

Two years later, the Malones bought a larger bush farm, also on the Opunake road, and shifted the house they had built to it, piece by piece, by bullock wagon. Progress on their new selection in the following years, however, was not quick enough for the authorities. They were reprimanded by the Lands Board for not clearing the forest felled on their land and sowing it in grass seed within the time required by their licence-to-occupy. As defaulters, they were required to show why their small holding should not now be forfeited—a serious threat that had to be countered and obviously was.

The Malones had not timed their arrival in New Zealand well. The colony was in the grip of a long depression and times were tough. Most settlers who had taken up land in Taranaki were reduced to little more than subsistence farming, their only income coming from local sales of grass seed, butter and 'Taranaki wool'—the edible fungus that grew on the stumps of fallen logs. Many were working on road and railway gangs to earn enough to pay off their loans and leases and develop their small holdings.

All of this was to change with the introduction of refrigerated shipping in 1882, which dramatically improved the economics of colonial farming. Meat and dairy products could now be produced efficiently on small holdings and shipped halfway across the world to the British market. Other new technology and infrastructure in the form of cooperative dairy factories, freezing works and coolstores transformed farming in Taranaki in the 1880s and 1890s as it did elsewhere in the country.

By 1891, the Malones had combined with twenty other dairy farmers in the Cardiff district to build a small dairy factory, along with a school and a Methodist church. For these families, and others across the province, the raw subsistence farming of the 1880s was steadily giving way to farming for profit. In 1891, the Malones sent 44 sacks of potatoes by ship to Auckland in company with 40 cattle, 3000 feet of timber, 7 kegs of butter, 35 animal hides, 40 sacks of bran and 5 tons of scrap iron.

In the meantime, the unrelenting work of farm development went on—bush clearing and crop sowing, building fences, raising pigs and milking dairy herds—and avoiding where possible the ever-present hazards of frontier life. Death by sickness, drowning or being crushed under falling trees was common in colonial New Zealand. Men, women and children straying from settlement or farm clearing could sometimes be lost for days in the surrounding forests.

The lives of children could be cut short by diphtheria, scarlet fever, polio and whooping cough, and the adults by tuberculosis also. Cures for illness frequently bordered on quackery. Sander & Sons Eucalypti Extract, for example, offered its victims effective treatment for everything from coughs, colds and influenza to diseases of the kidneys and urinary organs. In short, an all-purpose remedy, immortality in a bottle.

Proper medical care often involved a long ride to the nearest settlement if a family member fell ill or was injured. In 1900, with a dying newborn baby in a sling around her neck, sixteen-year-old Nellie Gatton and a young neighbour rode the 43 kilometres from Puniwhakau to Stratford for the emergency bowel operation that would save the child's life.

Unsurprisingly, support for one's neighbour was a guiding principle of settler life, and the Malones were as generous with it as any. Joseph Richardson, whose bush farm bordered that of the Malones, recalled that he and William Malone had done many a day's work together with axe and spade, and that Malone had done him many a good turn. 'I always found him ready to help in any difficulty that might turn up,' he wrote to the _Taranaki Herald_ , 'and we had some pretty tough ones in those days.'

The Richardsons and Malones were both to be caught up in the great Central Taranaki fire of January 1886. Born of the worst drought the country's settlers had so far experienced, the fire originated in several burn-offs to the west of Stratford. Driven by strong winds, these combined into a firestorm that swept over thousands of hectares of forest and farmland, through Stratford and on to the small settlement of Midhirst.

Directly in its path stood the farms of the Malones, Marchants, Richardsons, Johnsons, Lehmanns and other bush settlers on the Opunake road and around the small village of Cardiff. Stumps, logs, dead trees, crops, fences, houses and outbuildings caught fire; burning green bush sent black smoke billowing into the sky, turning daylight into darkness.

The Malones lost no buildings or stock, but a large area of pasture, crops and orchard was razed. On the adjoining farm, Joseph Richardson's ten-year-old son saved the family home by pulling down fencing and covering the walls of the house with wet blankets. His mother saved her other children and several more by sheltering them in a tunnel driven into the bank of a creek where the family stored their meat and butter. On Brookes Road, the Lehmann family saved themselves by retreating to their garden and covering themselves with green potato tops.

On the north side of town, the Pitts were forced to run for their lives after their cottage was engulfed by fire—the husband with one child on his back, one under each arm, and his barefooted wife and another child beside him. Jane Capper and her four children, the youngest a baby in arms, fled 8 kilometres down East Road as the flames took their home and cattle.

In Stratford, the residents stood and fought for their homes and businesses until driven back by heat, smoke and exhaustion into the ravine of the Patea River, into creek beds, or out into the surrounding forest. In their eyes, stinging, blinding smoke; in their ears, roaring, crackling fire driven by the wind, the crash of falling trees and branches, the whinnying and bellowing of frightened horses and cattle.

Apart from the loss of the town hall and some twenty outbuildings, Stratford itself was left mostly intact. Trains brought in teams of firefighters and volunteers to protect it and neighbouring townships, and to take the homeless away to New Plymouth and Hawera. A few days later rain began to fall throughout central Taranaki and the crisis was effectively over. The Malones and other settlers counted their losses and set to work to rebuild their homes, fences and outbuildings, sow new crops and restock their pastures.

The fire, however, had brought some unforeseen benefits to the district's bush farmers. In the Cardiff district alone the fire was reported to have cleared more land in a few hours than its few families had been able to do in the previous five years. 'The weather continues very dry and warm,' observed the _Hawera & Normanby Star_, 'and everyone one sees at work is as black as a chimney sweep. What with the dust, the ashes, and the smut from the timber, one gets into an awful mess.'

In New Plymouth, voluntary committees were set up to fight the fires, care for the homeless and raise relief funds. Malone was appointed to a five-man local commission tasked with assessing individual losses and the type and level of assistance that might be required. The commission decided that relief would be in kind rather than in cash—roofing iron, fencing wire, timber and grass seed. It also secured a thousand pound grant from central government to give settlers prepared to work on the Opunake road an interim income.

Miraculously, no one died in the great Central Taranaki fire of 1886, but its terror and loss would be vividly recalled by the settlers most affected for years afterwards. As surveyor Edward Tregear, later to become one of the colony's most outstanding civil servants, put it: 'This year, they [the settlers] have met a new and more insatiate foe—unsparing fire. The earnings of years, the result of heroic self-denial, the fruit of their patient courage, lies in ashes, and they must commence life anew.'

By this time, Stratford was a village of about 230 people with another 400, including the Malones, working on surrounding bush farms. As a community, it was typical of many others throughout colonial New Zealand—a two-storey hotel, several stores, a small school, a town hall and a railway station. Scattered amongst the stumps and logs were large gardens, paddocks of hay and pens of pigs and poultry. In wet weather, the main street (Broadway) was a sea of mud crossed by a pathway of planks. As late as the 1890s, cattle and horses grazed along it and in other village streets.

Close neighbours of the Malones, the Marchants, had built a large loft above their cowshed and here settlers would gather for parties or dance waltzes and quadrilles to the music of the concertina. On Cardiff Road, William Johnson, a well-educated man, taught 30 local children while waiting for his first house to be built. His wife then turned the family dining room into a schoolroom for the qualified teacher from Hawera who eventually took his place. The Malone children may have been taught here before moving on to Stratford's convent school and then to boarding schools in Wellington.

Isolation did not appear to be a major problem for the district's early settlers. Most of them, including the Malones, thought nothing of travelling long distances to stock sales and to agricultural and horticultural shows. They would socialise at school, church and temperance society meetings; at concerts, musical evenings and drama productions; in hunting and shooting parties, and on steamer and railway excursions to New Plymouth.

Colonial life, however, offered no perfect solutions. The landscape was wild, rugged and primitive, the culture materialistic and often narrowly parochial. Even the most successful families felt the isolation from their far distant homeland and a growing nostalgia for its familiar colours, shapes and sounds. Nostalgia's roots, wrote Rollo Arnold, lay in 'the schismatic incompleteness of colonial life'.

Family Man

'Shall I compare to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.'

—William Shakespeare, _Sonnet 18_

In November 1886—the year of the great fire—William Malone and Elinor Penn (Nellie), a daughter of prominent Stratford settlers Thomas and Henrietta Penn, were married in New Plymouth's Catholic church. She was the sister of Walter Penn, editor of the _Taranaki Herald_ , and local accountants Harry and Charles Penn. William and Elinor were to have five children—Edmond, Terence (Terry), Brian, Maurice and Norah—all born between 1888 and 1897.

Elinor was in delicate health, and perhaps because of that her life was destined to be tragically short. In their eighteen years together, however, William and Elinor enjoyed an active family, social and cultural life. William had inherited a love of the piano from his mother who was reputed to be the best pianist in the Taranaki province. At musical evenings or drama productions arranged by the Stratford Dramatic Club, the couple would sing, act or play the piano.

At a concert in February 1889, Elinor played a piano solo while William sang _The Pedlar_. In August, he performed in a comedy called _Boots at the Swan_. The _Taranaki Herald_ 's arts correspondent wrote next day: 'Mr W. Malone, as Higgins, fully sustained the reputation he had previously gained in _The Two Bonnycastles_ , and it is to be regretted that this gentleman cannot be oftener induced to grace the footlights with his presence.'

Malone the thespian was also a dedicated sporting man, with an ongoing interest in rugby, hockey, billiards, bowling, tennis, swimming, horse-racing, homing pigeons and even the breeding of deer. In 1892, as a member of the local Acclimatisation Society, he released two deer sent from Nelson onto the slopes of Mt Taranaki, presumably to provide the nucleus of a sporting herd. By 1914, the year he departed for Gallipoli, Malone was president, vice-president or a committee member of over twenty sporting clubs in and around Stratford and New Plymouth, along with several other community and church organisations.

In 1889, Malone joined a group of social rugby players, including Harry Liardet—soon to become Stratford's first mayor—to found the Manganui Rugby Club. A club jersey was chosen and a rough piece of turf in the town's King Edward Park selected as a rugby ground. The publican of the Stratford Hotel offered free beer for players and supporters who were prepared to spend their weekends clearing the ground of logs and stumps.

In 1892, the club won the provincial competition, beating Clifton, Waimate, Eltham and Hawera. Malone played in the forward pack for all games, and for two years running was picked for the Taranaki representative rugby team—in recognition no doubt of his impressive physique and aggressive style of play.

A competent horseman, Malone was also a vice-president of the Taranaki Hunt Club, of which a number of women were active members. At one such hunt, Malone rode to the hounds alongside Miss Sole, perched side-saddle on Rongonui, Miss O'Neill on Whataroa, Miss Quigley on Tony, and six other 'ladies' who apparently shared Tess and Primrose. Elinor, it appeared, drove the wagon that carried the refreshments. The hounds, however, failed to throw up a hare, mainly because the huntsman had been thrown off his horse early in the day.

By now Malone was also an active member of the Taranaki Hospital and Charitable Aid Board. In 1886, the board had provided practical aid to the fire-stricken settlers of Taranaki. In the years before any functioning welfare state, it dispensed low-level support to the province's poor, sick and desperate—excluding local Maori.

In February 1889, the board confirmed its opposition to 'relief and free medical aid to natives', approved a food grant of three shillings a week for Joseph Alexander, and resolved to ask the government to pay for the maintenance, treatment and funeral expenses of a man known as John the Baptist.

It noted that it had made unsuccessful efforts to put a destitute man, James Devine, into the old men's refuge, and reduced an allowance to the Jones family by 50 per cent. Although Mr Jones suffered from 'hip disease' and occasional fits, the board ruled, somewhat severely, that this was no reason why he should not be able to work.

The board was prepared to take action against miscreants who had failed to provide adequate support for family members. Mr A. O'Brien, formerly of Hawera, was summoned for allegedly defaulting on the maintenance of his wife and family. Legal action was also taken against the sons of Mr W. King of Waitara to compel them to support their father. At the same meeting, Malone opposed a proposal to cut board payments to recipients of charitable aid by 10 per cent. He was overruled.

Local politics in the 1880s and 1890s, however, were dominated not by charity but by roads and railways—the lifeline of Taranaki towns and bush communities—and the settlement of undeveloped Crown and Maori land. Malone played a vigorous part in all of these issues—as chairman of the Ngaire Road Board, as a member of the Hawera County Council, as clerk of the newly formed Stratford County Council, and as a landowner and ratepayer himself.

The function of Taranaki's 26 road boards was to fund, build and maintain all roads in the province. Because of the province's high rainfall, these were frequently in a very bad state, rutted by coach and wagon wheels and the hooves of horses, bullocks and mobs of cattle. New bush settlements could be virtually isolated from the outside world by heavy slips and washouts. As a result, the boards were under constant pressure to convert bullock-wagon tracks that cut up badly in bad weather into metalled roads with proper drains and culverts.

One of these was the Opunake road, which had been driven through from Stratford to the coast at the time of the Parihaka troubles, and on which the Malones had their farm. Its 36 kilometres crossed 95 streams or rivers requiring bridges, culverts or fords. Originally known as Hursthouse's or Bayley's Track, it was reputed to be a good place to hunt wild cattle.

Malone's involvement in road and railway construction started early, no doubt because as a new settler in the district he was closely affected by both. In February 1884, he was appointed to a 'Vigilance Committee' to promote Taranaki's interest in bringing the northern main trunk railway through Stratford and then on to join the Auckland line at Te Awamutu.

At a meeting in June 1890, Malone and mayor Harry Liardet lobbied for a more efficient way of coordinating roading and bridging works in the district. The current system, the meeting heard, divided control between two counties, two town boards, and eight road boards. The result was that the roads many bush settlers were compelled to use were in a disgraceful state, causing much frustration and anger—'miles of slush, trouble, bogholes and hooftraps', as one disgruntled small farmer put it.

Malone told the meeting that a single authority would manage local roads more efficiently, extend East Road and so open up the bush country inland from Stratford to further settlement. He was appointed to a committee to promote an appropriate bill through Parliament and by the end of the year the new Stratford County Council had been established. Malone was elected its first clerk, registrar of dogs and collector of dog tax, on a salary of 52 pounds a year.

A grand ball, which drew people from as far away as Inglewood and Normanby, celebrated the formation of the new entity, after which a local newspaper commented: 'It seems somewhat remarkable that so democratic [a] community as that of Stratford should be the first to acclimatise so essentially aristocratic an Old Country production as the County Ball.'

The East Road issue, however, still had to be resolved. The road, which ran east from Stratford into the vast bushlands of east Taranaki, was important because it would open up undeveloped areas for farming and provide access to the King Country. Malone told a large public meeting that government assistance was likely to be granted for the road as part of a 'main trunk' route linking Taranaki with Auckland. A heated debate followed, with some speakers arguing that rather than assisting genuine settlers, government funding would only help speculators to open up big blocks of land in the interior for resale.

The road was being promoted, said one prominent settler, 'by gentlemen who proposed to enrich themselves at the public expense' and had no intention of living on the land. If 'those money-bags' wanted a road, argued another, 'let them pay for it or agree to hand over the extra value that would be given their land to the government.'

Their complaints had substance. In the 1880s and 90s, land speculators—including two local MPs, Walter Symes and Felix McGuire—were carving out large estates from the virgin bushlands of Taranaki. The Liberal Government of the 1890s reversed this trend by encouraging—or compelling—speculators and other landowners to sell undeveloped land privately or to the Crown. As a result, Taranaki was to become the domain not of the big runholder but the small farmer.

Despite the protests, however, the meeting resolved to ask the government for the money needed to extend East Road, and a deputation, including Malone, set off for Wellington to lobby the appropriate minister. It expected to return with an agreement that a road would be constructed to two Crown-owned blocks, with a bridle track beyond them to the terminus of the railway to Auckland. It returned with no more than a government promise to cut up the two blocks for settlement and to provide 19 kilometres of connecting road.

A clearly frustrated Malone told the settlers that the delegates had been 'fooled', and those who had paid their expenses for the trip to Wellington had wasted their money. Had he not been 'tricked' into not attending the final negotiations, the ministry in Wellington would not have got rid of the deputation so easily. The government had 'wronged' the province already in refusing to purchase enough land for small settlements, and to delay the long-promised road to Auckland would simply add another wrong.

Malone's short stay in Wellington brought him further disillusion. After listening to the Financial Statement being read in the House, he noted sourly: 'After all its statements about "getting the people on the land", "opening the country", "roads and bridges", "increasing the producing power of the colony" etc—statements cheered to the echo on both sides of the House—all that has been achieved by the Government is 20,000 pounds for the whole of New Zealand!'

Meanwhile, Thomas Penn, Malone's father-in-law and a prominent Stratford citizen, complained that the government had produced glowing advertisements to induce people to buy land in Stratford, the future 'Chicago of the south'. Here, they were promised, the railway would 'junction' en route to Auckland, and main roads would branch out east and west. But as soon as the land was sold the government had struck the East and Opunake roads off its list of main roads and 'swindled' the district over the main trunk railway.

By 1892, the situation seemed no better and again Malone was in the front line. At a public meeting to discuss progress with a road link to Auckland he contrasted the readiness with which public money was being found for 'schools and lunatic asylums' with the grudging way it was doled out for 'the most important duty of the government of a young country—the settlement of the land'.

In this matter all political parties were alike, Malone told the crowd—one minister vying with another to make promises which were never carried out. The want of road and railway communication between Auckland and Taranaki was 'a disgrace to the colony'. The people of the province should never rest, he said grandly, until they had removed 'this stigma on our 19th Century civilisation'.

By 1893, the province's land purchase and settlement issues were still in the doldrums. The local MP, Felix McGuire, assured a public meeting that the Minister of Lands was doing his best to put families on the land. He himself had urged the government to purchase Maori lands for settlement, and had been assured that it would take the matter up with vigour. Moving the vote of thanks, Malone told McGuire that he personally had no confidence in the government the member represented. Most of those now governing New Zealand, he said, should be 'blown sky-high'.

Meanwhile, Malone's life had not been without incident. En route to a meeting of the Hawera County Council in November 1882, his horse ran down a small boy near the old Ketemarae Hotel. Malone dismounted, 'applied restoratives', and sent for a doctor to treat the unconscious victim. Local newspapers appear not to have recorded whether the unfortunate child survived or if Malone had any further involvement in the affair.

By now Malone was a Justice of the Peace, a position which required him to be both an acting magistrate and a district coroner. In December 1893, he adjudicated in the case of a man charged with embezzlement by his employer, a local sawmiller.

A year later, Malone held an inquest into the death of a man who had been killed by a train at Manganui railway station, and another who had died when a 12-metre branch fell on his tent during a high wind. Another had been thrown from his horse and killed when his head hit a stump. The verdict in all cases was accidental death.

Malone, however, had higher ambitions—a professional qualification in law and then perhaps a career in national politics. Working as a farmer and local land agent by day and studying legal texts by night, he reached the first step of his goal in April 1894. The _Taranaki Herald_ noted that month that Mr William Malone—'erstwhile one of our pioneer settlers, conversant with the axe and milking stool'—had been admitted to the ranks of the legal profession. Malone now gave up active farming and moved into an office in Stratford's main street.

The new venture, however, began badly. Five months later, Malone's office and those of the Stratford County Council were destroyed by a fire that swept through several buildings on the main street. Malone also lost 100 pounds worth of legal texts, client records and much else besides.

A day later the _Taranaki Herald_ 's correspondent scolded the town's citizens for their neglect of basic fire prevention. For a town of 1000 people to have no effective means of coping with fire, he wrote, 'was surely carrying recklessness to a pitch truly sublime'. As it was, the blaze could easily have destroyed the whole town.

Malone responded by buying the premises of the old Ngaire Road Board—the local body he used to chair—as temporary office space, and giving part of the building over to the burnt-out Stratford County Council. The building was shifted to its new site, the _Taranaki Herald_ noted, by 'a score of bullocks under the guidance of that renowned teamster, Mr Jimmy Sharrock'.

In 1899, Malone qualified as a barrister of the Supreme Court and began a legal business that would grow to be one of the largest in Taranaki. It was a profitable time to be a lawyer in the province—new land was being opened up and subdivided, and Taranaki's dairy industry was expanding. Among his clients were local farmers, businessmen, local bodies and dairy companies.

Not all were cases of substance. In July 1896, he acted for the Stratford Town Board following a threat from a Mr Hancock to take legal action unless the board remedied the 'slippery' state of the log on which children were crossing the Hamlet Street swamp. In a rare criminal law case, Malone acted for John Farrell who was accused of stealing 248 pounds from his son-in-law Owen Cullen Cowen. In another case, Malone defended a Maori boy called Kupe, charged with stealing a cheque for a small sum of money at Waitara. In mitigation, Malone told the court that the offence had been committed 'on the suggestion of a white man', and he was able to secure an appropriately mild sentence for his client.

In 1900, as his legal business expanded, Malone resigned as clerk of the Stratford County Council. Speakers at a farewell dinner warmly praised his ten years of service, one councillor declaring that the council's books were a credit to both the council and the colony. 'Everything,' he said, 'was exact to a farthing.'

In May that year, the Malone family hosted Archbishop Francis Redwood, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wellington, during his visit to Taranaki. Redwood stayed overnight with the Malones, celebrated Mass in the town's Catholic church the next morning, and confirmed 30 local children. While the Malones were no doubt honoured by his presence, it would have deepened the anti-Catholic prejudices of many of their Stratford neighbours. Though gradually weakening, the currents of religious bigotry still ran strong in colonial society and would work to Malone's disadvantage when he attempted to break into national politics six years later.

That year also Malone went into partnership with another local farmer, Henry Worthington, and bought the 600-hectare Waipapa station at Puniwhakau, 43 kilometres east of Stratford and in some of the most rugged bush country in the province. Malone was the 'sleeping partner' in the enterprise, which meant that the day-today management of the property was left to Worthington. He was, however, a crack shot and would ride out to the station for the shooting season, bringing home 'swags' of wild ducks and other game.

Their close neighbours at Puniwhakau were the Gatton family who had arrived at their bush farm on Christmas Day 1896. The family's early experiences were similar to those of the Malones and other settlers over a decade earlier—a rough 32-kilometre ride from Stratford by bullock wagon and then a long walk over the steep Taihore Saddle, each of their seven children carrying a load or leading an animal. For the first two-and-a-half years the Gattons lived in tents and a shelter built of manuka logs while carving their farm out of the forest.

In 1903, Malone formed a law partnership with James McVeagh and William Anderson and within a few years there were branches of the firm in New Plymouth, Inglewood, Eltham and Kaponga. The Malones now moved to New Plymouth where they built the first of two grand homes that would be called _The Farlands_ in what is today the city's Coronation Road.

Tragically, Nellie died the following year giving birth to what would have been the sixth Malone child. Her husband is said to have borne the loss bravely but at great personal cost. 'The iron entered into his heart,' wrote a close friend, 'and it was a long time before he was his old self again.' The knowledge that his wife, a woman in delicate health, had to endure childbirth again six years after their fifth child had been born would have been a painful burden to carry.

Malone had now to cope with a family of five motherless children, including two teenage boys and a girl of six. Just over a year later, he married a woman already well known to him—Nellie's live-in housekeeper and companion, the 'strikingly attractive' and well-educated Ida Katherine Withers.

She was sixteen years younger than William and the daughter of Wanganui flour-millers Edward and Agnes Withers. Except for the difference in age, there was nothing unusual in this. At the time it was seen as desirable that widowers with family responsibilities should remarry. Ida, known to the family as 'Mater', was to deliver him another three children—Denis, Bernard (Barney) and Molly.

Ida's early life had also been crossed by tragedy. She had lost two sisters and then her mother—two of them since the family had arrived in New Zealand in 1884—and now had no close female relatives. The transition from housekeeper and companion to the wife of a prominent Taranaki lawyer and landowner would have been difficult for Ida. She was now mistress of the Malone household and stepmother to her husband's five children, although the three older boys were by now boarding at St Patrick's College in Wellington.

As the daughter of a flour-miller, she was of a lower social class than her husband. This counted in Taranaki, despite the fact that the class system in colonial New Zealand was much looser than in the England from which most settlers came. According to her granddaughter, Mary Clare Lyons, Ida never really felt accepted by the Stratford community because of a perception she believed others had that she had taken advantage of her position within the Malone household to 'hook' the recently bereaved William Malone as a husband.

The relationship with her stepchildren may also have been difficult in the early years. Terry Malone, then in his teens, described Ida as 'hard', claiming that she made life so difficult for him and his brothers during one school holidays that they rode off to a cottage on the Taranaki coast and stayed there until brought back home by their father. Their sister Norah, however, insisted that the stepchildren were all very fond of Ida, and Terry himself regularly kept in contact with her until her death in 1946.

Ida taught the younger Malone children at home in their early years and gave piano lessons both to them and to their neighbours' children. As a student, Edith Rogers remembered accompanying Ida, her husband and their son Barney as they sang popular songs of the day, among them _My Ain Folk_ , _My Old Shako_ and _Soldiers of the Queen_. Along with music, the new Malone household was well stocked with books, and according to family sources it was a well-educated and happy family.

In 1906, Malone threw himself into organising a Taranaki presence at the New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch. The _Taranaki Herald_ acknowledged his efforts in an editorial: 'Thanks largely to the energy and self-sacrifice displayed by Mr W.G. Malone, it may now be taken as a certainty that Taranaki will be fittingly represented at the approaching exhibition at Christchurch.' It was expected, said the _Herald_ , that the event would attract great numbers of people from beyond the colony and promote Taranaki as a desirable place to visit and settle in.

According to a former editor of the _Taranaki Herald_ , it was now exactly that. Fifty years before, Taranaki from Waitara to Opunake had been the scene of 'battles, sieges, bloodshed, murders, devastation . . . as thrilling as the Sikh wars or the Matabele rebellion'.

If no longer thrilling in the military sense, Taranaki was at last peaceful, increasingly prosperous and safe—and for William Malone increasingly unsatisfying. The following year, he would strike out in an entirely new direction—one for which his 25 years as a pioneering farmer, lawyer, local body administrator and political lobbyist had well prepared him.

Political Ambitions

'We have one of the finest countries on the face of the earth, and in the people we have the making of one of the finest nations. If you look for an ancestry, you could have no greater ancestors than the pioneers of this country. Those people were the pick and flower of the Old World, and it should be a source of great pride to young New Zealanders to be descended from them.'

—Malone addresses a Taranaki audience during his campaign in 1907 for a seat in Parliament

By now, Malone's wide-ranging community activities and organisational skills had come to the notice of Liberal Party officials in Wellington. In 1906, he was approached by party leader and prime minister Sir Joseph Ward to stand for Parliament in a by-election for the Taranaki seat. Fifteen years earlier, the party of trade unions, small farmers, 'the hungry and the land-hungry' had swept away the alliance of big landholders, merchants and speculators that had ruled the colony for over twenty years.

In office, the Liberals delivered a radical legislative programme that would establish New Zealand for a time as the social laboratory of the world—votes for women, old age pensions for the deserving poor, new labour laws, and legislation to break up the big estates and give thousands of unemployed men and their families the chance to go farming. As historian Keith Sinclair put it, the 1891 election was one of the momentous elections in New Zealand's political history.

Although a supporter of the Liberal Party's social and land settlement policies, Malone had previously voted for the opposition Conservative Party, largely because of its support for conscription and the freehold tenure of land. He told Ward, however, that he would stand for the Liberals, but insisted that he be free to vote according to his conscience, even if this conflicted with party policy.

Malone's particular problem was the Liberal Party's policy on land tenure. In its purest form, this was that those who occupied the land held it in trust for future generations and that it should never be sold into private hands. Malone and other fervent freeholders argued that those who worked the land should have the right to buy it outright from the Crown or private owners. Ward, however, would not agree to this condition and so Malone opted to contest the seat as an Independent Liberal, committing himself to be a 'friend of the Liberal Party Government but not a slave to it'.

His campaign opened in New Plymouth in May 1907, and according to the _Taranaki Herald_ , to a large and enthusiastic crowd. Opposing him was the official Government candidate, Mr E. Dockrill, with Henry Okey standing for the Conservative Party. Malone was introduced to the meeting as a prominent Taranaki settler, soldier and lawyer—'hard-working, energetic and a thorough gentleman'. He cut a handsome figure on the platform and was alleged to have been a favourite with the female voters.

Malone described himself as a 'liberal of long standing of democratic tendencies who does most of his own thinking'. He had been 'yarded by the branders', he said, who wanted him to be the official candidate of the Government party, but had escaped, probably because he was 'too frisky a colt for their liking'. He stood before them not as the Government or opposition representative but as 'the Taranaki champion'. He pledged himself to run a clean campaign with no hostility towards his opponents or 'hitting below the belt'.

At the age of 21, he told his audience, he had sailed from the London docks for New Zealand as a lowly steerage passenger and he was not ashamed of it. He spoke of his service in the Armed Constabulary in the early 1880s and of his time with the government surf boat service at Opunake. After farming for some ten years, he had made a deliberate decision to qualify as a lawyer and then enter politics.

Malone admitted to having been a supporter of the opposition Conservative Party and a follower of its leader, 'the great Taranaki soldier and statesman' Sir Harry Atkinson. However, he had been one of the first to complain to the Atkinson Government about the lack of a roading policy for Taranaki, and was disgusted by the unfounded charges his party had levelled against the Liberal Government of the day.

He was a liberal and a supporter of the party in power because he believed that government must govern equally for 'all classes, conditions and creeds', and that the poor and weak should be given more attention than the rich and strong. As long as the Government espoused true liberal policies he would support it. If it did not, he would vote against it on those measures he did not agree with.

However, Malone admitted to being strongly opposed to party politics in principle, saying the early settlers should have left them behind when they migrated to New Zealand. 'If the London County Council, servicing five million people, could do without party government,' he said, 'surely a small country like New Zealand with fewer than a million people could do without it.'

Those, like himself, who sought political office needed certain qualifications—'physical and moral courage, maturity of age, freedom from self-interest and seeking after financial gain'. An aspiring MP should be aware of the needs of all classes of the community and have proven business ability. He should have the capability and determination to devote his life to the advancement of New Zealand and the British Empire generally, and to Taranaki in particular.

Malone told the meeting he had been attacked for being both a lawyer—'a very wicked person'—and a Catholic. A man's creed, he said, was between himself and his God, and those who told others not to vote for him on account of his religion were not real Christians. On a practical level, however, he was not in favour of state aid for Roman Catholic schools. Education should be free, secular and equal for all classes, creeds and conditions.

Charges of dishonesty and corruption had also been made against the present government. He personally did not believe them. But if on being elected he found they did exist, he would be one of the first 'to tumble them [the offenders] out of office and back to private life or into gaol'. He himself had led 'a straight and honest life', and trickery, dishonesty and corruption had no attraction for him.

The present government, however, had been guilty of extravagance and he had told both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Lands that this was so. If elected, he would see it as his duty to clear 'the weeds of extravagance and want of thrift' from the hull of the good Liberal ship.

The key point of difference between Malone and his adopted party—freehold land tenure versus leasehold—now became clear. A Land Bill then before Parliament, proposing that all land tenure in the colony should in future be based on lease-in-perpetuity, was 'a crude and impolitic measure'. He himself had held land on deferred payment, lease-in-perpetuity and optional tenures, but if elected he would oppose the bill 'so long as he had breath to speak and muscle to fight'.

Every man, said Malone, had 'a divine or natural right' to occupy and use land if he so wished. The state had a right to the return on the fruits of the land, but this could be secured by a rent or a tax. Leasehold put a premium on thriftlessness; freehold was what made a man 'patriotic, industrious, and a good citizen'.

Successive Liberal premiers had argued that the land belonged to the people and should not be sacrificed for the sake of individual landholders. All of them had wanted to keep the colony's remaining Crown lands in public ownership, but all had been forced to accept the principle of freehold tenure. Prime Minister Seddon, for example, had pledged to protect the leasehold, but was compelled to accept legislation that gave the lease-in-perpetuity tenant the option of freeholding his land at its original value.

However, Malone conceded that there were limits to a 'divine or natural' right to the freehold. The state also had the right to require the private owner who occupied more land than his fellows, or any land that he was not using, to give it up. The state should then take the excess land, pay for it, and sell it to those wanting to go farming. This process should go on 'until every man had the right to stand on God's earth and not have to sit on the shoulders of another man'.

On this point at least Malone was articulating the bedrock policy of the party. The Liberal Government came to power in 1891 determined to promote closer settlement, which meant moving thousands of unemployed men and their families onto small farms of their own. To achieve this it had introduced legislation to encourage, and if necessary compel, the colony's big runholders to sell undeveloped land to the Crown for subdivision. Its instruments were a land tax that penalised absentee owners of property in New Zealand and a progressive tax on the unimproved value of land.

In Taranaki, big landowners complied by subdividing their holdings and selling land privately or to the Crown. The government then made large blocks of Crown land available to small farmers on the basis of a 999-year lease. Unlike Hawke's Bay, Wairarapa and Canterbury, Taranaki was not to become the domain of the big graziers.

Malone concluded his election speech with a broadside against colonial governments in general. All of them, he said, had failed to provide a proper land settlement policy for the colony and for Taranaki in particular. While Auckland and Wellington were going ahead in leaps and bounds, Taranaki had a population of only 40,000. New Plymouth itself was little more than a village when it should now be a town of 20,000 or 30,000 people. The province had a million acres of unoccupied land but still lacked good roads and railways into the interior.

The _Taranaki Herald_ , which reported the speech in detail, was not impressed. It doubted if Malone's friends and supporters would have approved either his exposition of the political situation or his attitude towards the present government. Malone's condemnation of the Land Bill meant that the people of Taranaki were being asked to vote for a candidate who generally supported the government of the day but not its principal policy. In short, he was supporting the Liberal Party while denouncing its main policy, finding major fault with its administration, and accusing it of failing in its duty to the development of Taranaki.

Malone was also being unrealistic, said the _Herald_ , in assuming that he would bring new blood into the Liberal Government and therefore a much-improved administration. Experience had shown that independent Members of Parliament carried very little weight or influence. In the words of former prime minister Dick Seddon, an independent party supporter in the House was 'an independent nuisance'.

Malone, however, possessed the qualities which might have made him an ideal MP—'energy, ability, absolute honesty and high ideals'. The courage he had shown in telling ministers that he opposed their Land Bill and would be a very candid critic of their administration 'compels the admiration of all who love truth and outspokenness, but only made his support of the Government the more inexplicable'.

Ten days later, Malone spoke to a packed meeting, again in New Plymouth. The _Taranaki Herald_ noted that his performance this time was much more confident—in marked contrast to the nervous manner of his first campaign speech. He also silenced hecklers so effectively that they became wary of interrupting him again.

Malone focused again on the development problems faced by Taranaki, which had occurred because no government had had a real land settlement policy. To secure a grant to fix a bad piece of road under the current system, the local MP had to 'go up the back stairs' and plead with the minister. In place of a broad policy for land settlement, there were a huge number of small votes which, on the face of it, were bribes. Votes for public works, he told his audience, should be granted as a right not a favour.

After land settlement, there was no issue more important than education, Malone told his audience. It should involve moral instruction as well as book learning, and the message 'The Future is to the Abstainer' should be written on every school wall—a clear warning against the perils of excessive drink. Malone had supported women's suffrage in the early 1900s and now backed their right to receive equal pay for equal work and even to stand for Parliament. Ideally, however, women should be with their families in homes of their own and certainly not working in hotel bars.

On 12 May, the Minister of Native Affairs, Sir James Carroll, spoke to a huge crowd in New Plymouth's Theatre Royal. The minister told his audience that although he admired Malone, the Liberal Party could not afford to run two horses in the electoral race. By not getting behind the official Liberal candidate, the party would lose the by-election and the opposition would take the seat.

Malone, said Sir James, was a young man, the general election was only eighteen months away, and his preliminary form had shown him to have a remarkable fund of ability and capacity for hard work. As 'a young colt' he could very well be held back for the greater struggle to come. The _Taranaki Herald_ reported, however, that the crowd seemed more interested in Malone than Sir James, giving him 'a loud and prolonged ovation' as he entered the theatre and many shouts of 'Malone! Malone!' when he rose to speak.

To what extent Carroll's speech swung the balance against Malone is unknown, but in the poll that followed he lost by 981 votes to the opposition Conservative Party candidate Henry Okey. Malone had split the Liberal vote and the opposition retained the seat. Ironically, Okey not only shared Malone's views on freehold and conscription, but was a previous commander of the Taranaki Rifles, the volunteer unit in which Malone had been serving since 1901.

By now Malone was a senior officer in the 4th Battalion Wellington (Taranaki) Rifle Volunteers, and to his military activities and his legal work he now returned. In September 1907, he was asked to deliver a lecture on 'work' at the New Plymouth Technical School. It was a tour de force of Victorian attitudes and morality, focusing for the most part on the virtues of hard work and the evils of idleness.

Men who were not honest workmen, who kept an eye on the clock and did as little as possible, were fools and would soon have no work to do, Malone told his audience. Idleness would lead to 'a fatness and self-indulgence that caused physical, mental and moral trouble'. The few very poor people in New Zealand, he said, were often poor from 'habits of intemperance or idleness'.

Malone finished with a call to end existing divisions between 'manual' and 'head' workers. Without the former, society could not survive; without the latter society would stand still. The division of the country into 'working' and 'upper' classes—which the politicians had failed to address—would only perpetuate industrial unrest. Every worker, he told his audience, should be paid at a level that gave him and his family 'decent comfort and reasonable recreation'.

In the 1908 general election, Malone chose to stand again for the Taranaki seat, and again as an Independent Liberal. His focus this time was on the 'supremity' of New Zealand, of Taranaki, and of the Taranaki man—a platform, as the _Taranaki Daily News_ put it, 'calculated to appeal vaguely to patriotism and parochialism'. Opposing him again was the sitting member, Henry Okey, and the official Liberal candidate, C.E. Bellringer. Like Malone, both were former or serving officers in the Taranaki Rifles.

Malone opened his campaign with an attack on the candidate selection system. In a democratic country, he told his audience, candidates should be selected freely by the people and not by 'a cabal of intriguers' who claimed to represent the whole party. Taranaki had suffered in the past from ill-selected representatives, but that ground could be recovered if it now elected 'a practical and progressive man' like himself. He denied causing a split in the Liberal Party in the by-election or 'creating bad blood', as his critics had claimed. If elected this time, he would be a strong friend of the Government but never a slave to it.

This was followed by a vigorous defence of the Liberal Party's seventeen-year tenure in office. No government, Malone said, had done more for the colony than the Liberal Government. Before it took office in 1891, the colony was bedevilled by unemployment and low wages—'soup kitchens and shelter sheds'. It was also on the verge of ruin and the Bank of New Zealand was about to collapse, which would have spelt disaster for many thousands of settlers.

Under the former 'conservative' regime, huge areas of the country had been secured by capitalists who in many cases had never set foot in the colony. The Liberal Government had remedied this by requiring them to sell unused land to the Crown so that thousands of small men could at last get on the land. The Advances to Settlers Act had helped them further by reducing the interest payable on borrowed money.

What followed was a vision of racial regeneration rooted in New Zealand's pioneering origins. The early settlers of this country, Malone told his audience, gave it the very best foundation for becoming a great people. These were the folk who sailed across the seas in small ships, not knowing what they would find, to a country peopled by 'a savage race of cannibals'.

The 'very pick and flower' of Great Britain was in that migration, and if this country built on it, there was no reason why it should not grow to be one of the greatest countries on earth and the New Zealander 'one of the greatest of men'. In this vision of a new Jerusalem, the country's indigenous Maori population had no obvious place.

As for the future, land settlement should be encouraged in every way—'not for the making of towns but for the making of a nation'. World history had shown that the nation's strong and sturdy people came from the country not the towns. All 'native' lands, except those actually required by Maori, should be acquired by the Crown and opened up for settlement by white people.

Immigration should also be encouraged, but direct assistance should only be given to farmers, farm labourers and a few skilled artisans. New Zealand already had too many of the average town worker and did not need the physically unfit or those who 'could not get along in the Old Country'. It was on the country people that the power of every nation was built up, and it was they who made the best immigrants. Britain, for example, could never have been the country she was but for her sturdy yeomanry and peasantry.

So who should come? 'Cold-blooded' northern European peoples—mostly from the British Isles and Scandinavia—because they made industrious settlers. These people should be given free passage to New Zealand and required to work on road-making and railway construction on the understanding that they could later take up land in their new country. Such a policy would bring prosperity to every tradesman, merchant, farmer, manufacturer and worker in Taranaki. It would also attract people to settle in the province and prevent its young men moving to other parts of the country.

Asiatics should definitely not be encouraged. As a Christian, Malone said he could admit that Chinamen and Japanese were his brothers, but he was sure that none of his audience were looking for a family relationship with 'a Chinaman or a Jap'. He himself would not want a Chinese son-in-law or any 'oblique-eyed' grandchildren. 'Purity of race and healthiness of race' should be the basis of migration to this country.

Appropriately given his military interests, the defence of New Zealand featured strongly in Malone's speech. If Britain should be fully engaged in another war, he told his audience, the Chinese and Japanese would have 'a splendid opportunity' to come and take New Zealand's land. He was not advocating a standing army but a 'nation in arms', which meant that every man in the country should be trained to defend it.

A maximum period of six months' universal military training would make the men of New Zealand into efficient soldiers, Malone insisted. It would enhance their sense of civic duty and improve the health of the nation. It would train the workforce in discipline, cooperation, punctuality and orderliness, and strengthen the national fibre. Something like the Swiss system of national defence would work well in this country, and its suitability for New Zealand should be assessed.

As for the needs of Taranaki itself, a deep-water harbour should be built at Moturoa, a railway connection from New Plymouth to Opunake constructed, and all waste lands in the province opened up, including Maori land now being leased. Mineral prospecting in the Kaitake ranges and the Mt Egmont reserve should be encouraged and deep-sea fisheries developed.

Malone stumped the rural areas of Taranaki in search of votes, giving 'alfresco' political talks to dairy farmers and workmen, and to a full house at Warea. Again he asked his listeners to reject appeals to anti-Catholic prejudice and bigotry, and by selecting him to support the principle of equality 'for all classes, conditions and creeds'.

In mid-November, Malone spoke to his last meeting before election day, and again began with a vision of national regeneration. It was an historical fact, he said, that nations rose and fell and in that respect 'our grand old mother country' was decaying. The proof of this was a recent intake for army service in Manchester, England, in which 91 of 100 potential recruits were declared unfit.

These were town-bred men, and a town-bred population—as 75 per cent of the British population now was—became degenerate in three generations. Such a country was doomed, Malone told his audience, and another nation had to rise to take its place. Because of its isolation and immigrant population, New Zealand was ideally placed to be that country.

His vision complete, Malone returned again to the freehold issue. Freehold tenure meant freedom from 'landlordism', whether European or Maori. As an Irishman—and therefore an historical victim of landlordism—and also a practical farmer, he knew that no tenure produced greater good for the country or the individual. At the same time, he believed that the poor man should be given the opportunity to acquire land and therefore he favoured 'occupation with the right of purchase'.

At the time of the 1907 by-election there had been a proposal to turn New Zealand into a leasehold country, Malone said, but this had been defeated with the help of a large section of the Liberal Party itself. Maori ownership of large areas of unused land, however, would create a 'native aristocracy' that could rack-rent white settlers leasing land from the tribes. The 'natives', he said, should retain no more land than they could use in a bona fide manner.

Again Malone regretted that religion had been brought into the campaign. 'Don't vote for Malone, he is a Catholic!' was an abominable thing to say. Most of his audience had Catholics among their friends and knew that there was no difference between them and followers of any other creed, he said. 'Most broad-minded and right-thinking people' would resent attempts to discredit him because he was a Catholic.

There had been allegations that the country's civil service was 'stuffed with Catholics'. In fact, Catholics made up 14 per cent of the population but only 10 per cent of the civil service and were usually found in the lower-paid branches. He had no wish to complain about the treatment of Catholics, but it was a 'nefarious' thing to say that the Government was stuffing the service with them.

It was also foolish in the extreme, he told his audience, to object to him because he was a lawyer. This prejudice appeared to be based on a claim that lawyers deliberately 'tangled up' the country's laws so that they could earn fees for untangling them again. This was an insult to an honourable profession as no lawyer would so debase his ability.

Meanwhile, the _Taranaki Herald_ had published a letter from Joseph Richardson, a close farming neighbour, testifying to Malone's qualities as a man:

I had been looking all day for a lost animal and at last, about 11 o'clock at night, found her standing in a waterhole with her back and head just out of the water. I immediately went to Mr Malone for assistance, and found him and his brother comfortable in bed. They both turned out without a murmur, and we were soon all three of us up to our armpits in the water. It was a cold winter's night, and we were fully two hours in that water working with all our might and at last landed the poor creature on solid ground. Now that, Sir, is the kind of stuff that Mr Malone is made of.

Malone addressed his last election meeting in New Plymouth, and again played up provincial grievances. Taranaki ought by now, he said, to be the leading New Zealand province or at least equal to Auckland or Wellington. Instead, Wellington on one side and Auckland on the other were making the beautiful dairying country of Taranaki their 'milch cow'. These two provinces had always taken Taranaki's trade and had thus held it back. A good example of this was the central railway which should have been routed through Taranaki to Auckland but now went via Marton. Taranaki had been 'tricked, and even swindled,' out of this rail connection.

A deep-sea port was important for the development of Taranaki, but it first required an active public works policy and the development of the whole of the province's back-country. If the 700,000 acres of Taranaki land that were still lying waste could be cut up and settled, an immense increase in trade would follow. This would be supported by efficient roads and railways and a larger number of 'the right class of settler'.

For the first time in his campaign, Malone raised the issue of alcoholic liquor sales. He himself had been an abstainer from tobacco and alcohol for the past seven years, he told the meeting, but he had no right to say to another man that these things were bad for him. However, he yielded to no one in his abhorrence of 'the physical and moral degradation caused by the abuse of strong drink', and in his desire to remove that evil. Malone appeared to rule out prohibition while supporting legislation that would put control of all liquor sales in the hands of the state. Any decision on the issue, however, should be made by public referendum.

Defence was again on the agenda. Malone told his audience that he disagreed with the Liberal prime minister, Sir Joseph Ward, that New Zealand would never be invaded. New Zealand was one of the finest countries on earth, capable of supporting 30 or 40 million people. China and Japan were hugely overcrowded and their people were 'dying in their thousands' from famine.

If Britain should be distracted from New Zealand's defence by another war, this country would face a determined invasion by one or other of these nations, and with a defence force of just 13,000 volunteers it could do nothing to avoid being overrun. A 'nation under arms', perhaps along the lines of the Swiss system, was the obvious answer to such a threat.

Malone finished with his by-now familiar pledge of loyalty to the Liberal Government as long as he believed that it was acting in the best interests of the people, and its policies squared with his own 'judgement, opinion or conscience'. If not, he would offer his resignation. At the end of this speech, someone in the crowd of mostly women threw a golden horseshoe at his feet. Malone was unable to identify the donor but said he would 'kiss his hand anyway' to whoever it was.

The election result was again a win for the opposition Conservative Party with Henry Okey on 2729 votes, Malone (Independent) on 1542 votes, and C.E. Bellringer (Liberal) on 845. In spite of his popularity on the hustings, a critical number of voters may have concluded, like the _Taranaki Herald_ , that an independent MP carried little weight in Parliament and therefore was unlikely to be an effective representative of his province.

Another factor in Malone's defeat would have been the virulent, if slowly declining, anti-Catholicism of the frontier. 'The British abroad,' argued historian James Belich, 'tended to drop their narrow ethnic identities (English, Scots, Welsh) to form a new "Us" while confronting a shared "Them", who in New Zealand were Maori and Catholic Irish.' Twice beaten now, Malone would not attempt to enter Parliament again.

In 1911, Malone sold his share of the legal practice in New Plymouth and moved his family back to Stratford so as to give more time to his farming and military interests. Here he would start a smaller firm, Malone and King, which again would act for many of the town's leading businesses.

Here he also built another grand home, also called _The Farlands_. It came with seven bedrooms, stables for horses, a gig house, a large garden and a fine view over Mt Taranaki. Inside, the family employed a cook, two maids, and a governess for the three youngest children. Outside, a gardener and a cowman managed their 25-hectare dairy property.

With the hard labour of dairy farming now in other hands, Malone could be seen working in his garden before changing into his town clothes and striding the five kilometres to his office in Stratford. By now, however, farming, legal practice and even family were taking second place to territorial soldiering, and to an intensive study of the theory of war.

The Making of a Soldier

'If he is to lead efficiently, a commanding officer must have thought out for himself the problems of modern fighting, the difficulties of command, of maintaining discipline, and ensuring good leading amongst his subordinates . . . It is upon his own judgement, on his knowledge of war, on his common sense, that he must rely, not on a mere mechanical obedience to the precepts of a drill book.'

—G. Henderson, _The Science of War_

Malone played no active part in Taranaki's Volunteer Force in the two decades following the Parihaka incident, but as a good horseman and a crack shot he was an obvious candidate for service in the South African War that began in 1899. That he apparently did not volunteer was most likely due to his heavy farming, business and family responsibilities at this time. The war, however, was to be the catalyst for the revival of Malone's interest in soldiering.

It began one night in August 1901 when popular support for the war was at its height. He was met at the railway station by a deputation of local businessmen who had all enlisted in the newly formed Stratford Company of the 4th Battalion Wellington (Taranaki) Rifle Volunteers, and they had come to ask him to command the new unit.

At first, Malone refused. He was engaged, he told the group, in important business that was occupying all his time and attention. For twenty minutes or more he gave a determined 'no' to every argument raised, until he was told that there would be no Stratford Company in the 4th Battalion if he refused.

This finally broke down Malone's opposition, but he warned the group that they could expect 'a very strenuous time' as he intended, by strict discipline and constant drill, to make the company the best in the battalion. In accepting the offer, he may also have been thinking of the advantage that command of a Volunteer Force unit would give him in any future bid for political office.

By September that year Malone had been elected captain of the Stratford Rifle Volunteers and commissioned after passing the necessary examination. It was a unit with an already distinguished history. Under Captain Harry Atkinson (later premier of New Zealand) it had fought at Waireka in March 1860 and become the first Volunteer Force unit to engage an enemy on the battlefield. It was now one of nearly a hundred new volunteer units set up as a result of the patriotic enthusiasm generated by the South African War.

The Volunteer Force Malone joined in 1901 was the main component of New Zealand's defence forces. In the 1860s and 70s it was a counter-insurgency force trained in bush fighting and focused on internal threats to the security of the colony. Its focus was now external—protecting New Zealand's ports and hinterland from any threat of attack or invasion from the sea.

Members of the force came mostly from the higher-status occupations—self-employed farmers and professional men, white-collar workers and tradesmen. For those of officer rank, the force provided both social status and recognition that they had risen in the world. For the aspiring politician—as Malone was at this time—command of a Volunteer Force corps could be a useful stepping stone to a seat in Parliament.

For the young and active, the force provided all-important social, sporting and other recreational opportunities—in compensation for the time many felt they had given up to the service of their country. Volunteer Force bands provided music for balls, concerts and stage shows. Its ceremonial drills provided the background to many civic occasions; its marching displays and 'sham fights', all in colourful uniforms, were popular with a settler population hungry for entertainment.

Typical of the period was a mock attack on the port of Oamaru by 'enemy raiders' from a visiting British warship and a 'bombardment' of the town by other ships of the fleet. The attackers were driven off by artillery and rifle fire and their flagship 'destroyed' by a mine. According to the local newspaper, the 10,000 spectators who turned out to watch were treated to 'all the glories of a military show—gay uniforms, resounding bands, and artillery dashing along in clouds of dust'.

In spite of its surface glitter, the Volunteer Force was poorly equipped to meet New Zealand's defence needs. The size of the force tended to rise and fall according to whatever external threats New Zealand and the Empire were perceived to be facing, discipline was slack and the calibre of its serving officers generally poor. The force's infantry weapons were worn out and mostly unserviceable, its artillery obsolete and in some cases unsafe to fire.

Weekly parades involved much repetitious drill, which was quite useless in preparing volunteers for active service. Annual Easter camps tended to be as much about sports and socialising as improving military efficiency. Swimming, sailing, rowing and rifle shooting were popular; off-duty drinking was widespread.

Fault for the low quality of Volunteer Force officers lay with the selection system by which officers were not appointed by higher authority but elected by the rank and file. As a result they tended to be those who were popular within their units, wealthy enough to afford the expense of maintaining the position, and of high social status—typically lawyers, school teachers, businessmen and landowners.

By these criteria, Malone was a perfect fit—a wealthy landowner and lawyer who was well respected by the men who had elected him. In his case, the system secured the services of a man with the potential to become a first-class officer; in too many others it discriminated against men who lacked income and social position but who would otherwise have made excellent commanding officers.

The system was deficient in other important ways. It undermined discipline by making officers beholden to the men who elected them, and by not making volunteers subject to military law. Commanding officers had no power to enforce obedience to orders, and discipline depended largely on the respect the men had for them as individuals. In many cases, volunteer officers were unable, or unwilling, to control their men.

Some changes had been made to make the Volunteer Force more effective. Existing units had been disbanded and volunteer numbers severely cut. A School of Military Instruction had been set up, and all officers were required to pass a commissioning examination. Fortifications were built in the 1880s and 1890s to deter possible naval raids on the country's ports, and some improvements made to the training and equipment of the force.

In the minds of the professionals, it was not enough. Since the mid-1880s a succession of defence force commandants had warned the Liberal Government that the country's forces were ill-prepared to meet any external military threat. At both political and community level, however, apathy and procrastination ruled. It was assumed that the battleships and cruisers of the Royal Navy would be enough to deter any serious aggressor.

With the South African War of 1899–1901 a wave of 'Imperial enthusiasm' swept the country, boosting membership of the Volunteer Force to over 17,000. Over 10,000 volunteers and cadets paraded in Christchurch for the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York in 1901, and a contingent was dispatched to London for the coronation of King Edward VII. At a promenade concert in New Plymouth the same year, Elinor Malone was presented with a handsome shield depicting her husband surrounded by 47 members of his unit.

For the reformers, however, the South African War was a setback. The lightly trained mounted contingents sent from New Zealand had shown themselves adaptable and skilled with horse and rifle. Their opponents, a few thousand Boer farmers, had for several years defied the military might of Britain. Why then should the government spend money on developing a properly trained and disciplined defence force when a few battalions of 'amateur' soldiers like these might suffice?

By 1906, however, political attitudes to defence were changing. A year before, a Japanese fleet of battleships under Admiral Togo had annihilated the Russian fleet in the Straits of Tsushima. The strategic implications of this were not lost on New Zealand's leaders and defence planners. For 50 years, Russian ambitions in the Pacific had been seen as the main threat to New Zealand's security. Now Japan, not Russia or even Britain, was the strongest naval power in the region and there were fears at the highest levels of government that it might have expansionist ambitions of its own.

In 1907, Prime Minister Ward warned the Colonial Conference in London that eastern nations—by implication China and Japan—were seeking outlets for their 'teeming millions' and might be tempted to find new homes for them in the South Pacific. On this issue at least, Malone was of one mind with Ward.

A Defence Council now took control of the country's defence forces with a mission to improve their organisation, equipment and training. Its aim, amongst others, was to make field exercises better organised and more realistic, starting with a series of simulated land and sea raids upon the country's major ports.

In one of these raids a 'Blue Force' composed of Taranaki, Wanganui and Manawatu volunteers was to land at Paremata, north of Wellington, in an attempt to seize and occupy the capital. As chief staff officer of the attacking force, Malone carefully reconnoitred the rugged country north of the city and with his commanding officer devised a plan to outflank the defending 'Red Force'.

Attacking at night, Malone guided his troops through the screen of outposts posted by the defending force and into the capital. The attack was widely praised by senior army officers as a model of sound planning, good tactics and disciplined effort. Malone was one of the officers singled out for particular praise.

A military ball in New Plymouth that year, attended by nearly 200 couples, marked the changing nature of New Zealand's defence preparations—Malone and his Taranaki Volunteer Force were in full dress uniform, and the venue decorated with artillery pieces, rifles and flags.

Bigger changes, however, were in the wind. By 1906, a new political force, the National Defence League, had emerged. The league damned the volunteer system as hopelessly inadequate for the defence of the colony and campaigned strongly for the introduction of compulsory military training (CMT).

Unofficially supporting the league's efforts were the government's own military advisers, who argued that the Volunteer Force had outlived its usefulness. Membership numbers were down and turnover high, attendance at Easter camps was low, the time given to training was too short and was producing only rudimentary military skills. Officers were not learning to handle their units effectively on exercises or to interact with other arms—a potentially disastrous situation in wartime. Reform of the system, argued the advisers, could only be achieved by some form of compulsion.

In December 1909, a Defence Act was passed through Parliament bringing in compulsory military training and abolishing the Volunteer Force. In place of an organisation that had served New Zealand for over fifty years would be a Territorial Force (TF) of 20,000 men. All fit men between the ages of 18 and 25 were required to serve in the force, after which they would be transferred to the Reserve for another three years. Old unit titles and brightly coloured uniforms were consigned to history, and men outside the new age range for service retired. All existing officers, including Malone, were confirmed in their ranks, but the elective system was abolished.

A year later, Colonel Alexander Godley and a group of British Regular Army officers, warrant officers and NCOs were invited to New Zealand to reorganise its defence forces. Godley would prove to be a brilliant trainer and administrator but a poor field commander. The New Zealand troops who trained in Egypt and fought under his command at Gallipoli disliked him intensely.

Godley's first task was to create an effective national army out of the mass of independent squadrons, batteries and companies that had made up the old Volunteer Force. Under his energetic direction a new staff corps was created and the country divided into four military districts. By the time Godley had finished four years later, New Zealand was equipped with a field army of two mounted rifle brigades and two divisions of infantry—one in each island—along with reserves and coastal and support troops.

Malone himself had been steadily promoted up the chain of command. By 1905 he had reached the rank of major and was now second-in-command of the 4th Battalion Wellington (Taranaki) Rifle Volunteers. By 1910 he was an acting lieutenant-colonel and the battalion's commanding officer. That same year he was appointed to command the 11th Regiment (Taranaki Rifles), a unit based on the age-old traditions of a British rifle regiment. In a coup of sorts, Malone persuaded the Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, a former British Rifle Brigade officer, to become honorary colonel of the regiment.

Meanwhile, the emergence of Japan as a first-class military power, together with growing tension between Britain and Germany, had jolted the country from its lethargy at last. Germany had ambitions for an empire to match its growing military and industrial power and had embarked on a massive naval ship-building programme. Britain saw this as a threat to the supremacy of the Royal Navy at sea and had responded with a naval build-up of its own. Imperial rivalries fanned by a major arms race were setting the stage for war.

For his part, Malone considered war between the two countries to be inevitable and he was determined to be ready for it. Every weekday he marched the 5 kilometres to his office in Stratford at the regulation rifles pace of 140 paces a minute. He had given up smoking and alcohol and was sleeping on a camp stretcher to accustom himself to hard living. Whether Ida was upset by this denial of conjugal rights or simply joined him on the stretcher are details forever lost to history.

In his Stratford office, shelves of legal books shared space with photographs from various annual camps. In the corner of the room hung an old Snider carbine, a large early-model revolver, and a sword. As a fellow volunteer of the time put it: 'It was the office of a man who was a lawyer by profession, and who was at heart a soldier.'

By now Malone was reading widely on the science and practice of war, at a time when officers' reading rarely extended beyond the basic manuals required for promotion examinations. Prominent in his bookshelf were Burde's _Tactical Principles_ , Henderson's _The Science of War_ , General Sir Ian Hamilton's first-hand account of the Russo-Japanese War, and Count Von Sternberg's personal experiences of the Boer (South African) War.

Major conflicts of the past 100 years were closely studied, among them Wellington's campaigns against the French in Portugal and Spain, the campaigns of generals Grant, Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the American Civil War, Moltke in the Franco-Prussian War, and the British and Boer generals in the South African War.

Malone paid particular attention to the tactics used by both sides in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05—the first major military victory of an Asian power over a European nation in modern times, and the first war in which entrenched positions defended by machine guns and artillery became tactically important.

Transcribed into his Field Notebook were descriptions of key battles—Albuera and Fuentes de'Onoro in the Peninsular War, Nanshan and Mukden in the Russo-Japanese War. There were transcriptions of maps, drawings, and notes on everything from the supply of food and ammunition to camp organisation. Significantly, there were comments on the tactical effectiveness of night operations and surprise attacks, and the need for close cooperation between artillery and infantry.

Among the ideas Malone absorbed from the military theorists was that intellect and education ultimately played a more prominent part in war than courage, endurance and even skill at arms. The Prussians were the first to recognise this fact, wrote Henderson, and in 1870 its generals were educated for war in a way that their French and Austrian enemies were not—in strategy, tactics, organisation and leadership.

The revolution in military technology that had occurred since the late 19th century, observed Henderson, had increased the responsibility of officers in the field, and now demanded a higher level of intellectual capability. All officers should therefore have an understanding of strategic principles and be able to act on them, he wrote. 'Other things being equal, 'it is the superior intelligence of the officers that wins the battle.'

General Sir Ian Hamilton's description of the qualities required in a good officer appears to have struck a particular chord with Malone. Along with a good eye for country, imaginative flair, and quickness in seizing tactical opportunities, senior commanders should possess 'the iron character that brushes all objections aside, an engaging personality, and a philosophy which enables him to be calm under any circumstances'.

Officers at all levels, wrote Hamilton, should also possess 'energy, tact, erudition, industry, health and horsemanship'. To which Malone had added 'punctuality, early rising, physical fitness and abstemiousness ("little alcohol and tobacco—better none at all"), loyalty, fortitude and moral courage'.

In mid-1910, Malone gave a series of lectures in New Plymouth which encapsulated much of what he had learned about the mobilisation of military forces, tactics, logistics and field communications. They included a brief but intriguing hint of his view of the role of war in the life of nations, both old and new: 'War, dire necessity for,' noted a synopsis. 'Peace and vice. War and virtue.'

By now Malone had a new tactical doctrine to work with. In 1905, the British high command had taken heed of the lessons of the Franco-Prussian and South African wars and introduced a new doctrine that was to revolutionise British Army tactics and its approach to war fighting for the rest of the twentieth century. Under the Field Service Regulations, troops would now be trained in the tactics of 'fire and manoeuvre'. Infantry once trained to fight in line or column could now advance by rushes, select their own targets, fire independently and take cover as needed.

As modern warfare demanded speed and mobility, subordinate commanders now had greater scope to exercise their initiative and judgement, even to the point of ignoring original orders should battlefield conditions require it. A combined arms approach to combat was to be encouraged—infantry cooperating closely with artillery and cavalry—and the British Army itself completely reorganised, equipped and trained to reflect the new doctrine.

The Easter camps held annually in Hawke's Bay, southern Taranaki and near Wellington gave Malone the opportunity to combine these principles with ideas of his own. It would start with the basics—drill and discipline. Drill, wrote his mentor Burde, imparted 'soldierly bearing, developed physique and mental alertness'. Most importantly, it instilled the habit of automatic obedience in part-time soldiers who were used to thinking for themselves and making their own decisions.

At all camps Malone demonstrated a flair for organisation and a keen understanding of the problems associated with handling large groups of men. At a camp near Wellington during the visit of the Duke of York in 1901, he constantly did the rounds to check that his men were getting plenty of good, well-cooked food. As he would in Egypt and on the Gallipoli peninsula, Malone took a particular interest in sanitation. The drainage system he devised at a camp at Takapau, near Dannevirke, in May 1914, recalled Cecil Lovegrove, 'could not have been much improved by an engineer'.

Volunteer rifleman Jack Moller recalled an Easter territorial camp at Takapau the year before. With eight men to a tent and constant rain, sanitation became a serious problem. 'Hygiene was a pet thing with Malone—"Cultivate the habits of a cat," he told us.'

Imposing discipline on high-spirited and often unruly colonials, however, was to test Malone's developing powers of command. En route to an Easter camp in Hawke's Bay in February 1901, drunken volunteers from a Taranaki unit had ransacked the tearooms at the Woodville railway station, stealing alcohol, tobacco and food.

In April 1913, some 250 men from the battalion were given leave to go into Dannevirke from their camp at Oringi, about 10 kilometres outside the town. A number of them—perhaps a dozen—got drunk and misbehaved. Rifleman Packard, who in civilian life was a journalist, witnessed the offences and described them in some detail in an article that appeared in the town's newspaper the next morning.

The offenders, Packard wrote, had made the town's main street 'hideous with coarse, ribald songs', invading shops in search of cigarettes, and breaking railway carriage windows. According to one townsman he interviewed, a barbed-wire cage would have been a better place for these men than the streets of a country town.

Fearing grievous bodily harm from a group of his angry mates, Packard fled the camp. The brigade's commanding officer, Colonel Tate, paraded the men and stopped all leave. Godley, who was on a visit to the camp at the time, promised an inquiry and Malone was called to account for the incident.

In a written response, Malone argued that his regiment did not deserve the reflection cast on it by the actions of a few. In fact, he wrote, there was no better disciplined or better working regiment in the New Zealand Army. Tate issued a statement to local newspapers claiming that the report was much exaggerated, and Packard escaped being thrown into the river or worse as a punishment for his 'disloyalty'.

Malone's troubles, however, were not yet over. A few days later, 50 men from the regiment broke out of the camp and marched towards Dannevirke for a night on the town. They were stopped by their officers and turned back, but the incident was well reported by Wellington's _Evening Post_ newspaper.

More serious was a riot during a divisional camp at Takapau in May 1914, which had to be forcibly subdued by the camp police—in this case, Colonel Andrew Russell's Mounted Rifles Brigade. At the core of the disturbance, the official inquiry found, was an administrative oversight by which the men had been kept in camp beyond the statutory period and not paid for the extra days.

Some of the troublemakers were 'bad characters' who had come to camp determined to cause trouble; others were men of socialist or trade union backgrounds ('Red Fedders') with political agendas to push. One man, identified only as 'Dyke', was seen inciting the men to violence: 'You are only serving the monied class,' he told the crowd. 'Don't do it. Go back to your tents and get your bayonets and go for the buggers!'

Malone moved into the mob and grabbed several of them by their collars in an attempt to identify their regiments. He found no Taranaki soldiers among them, but ordered the few who had followed the crowd to return to their tents. His men, he told the inquiry, were not involved in the riot and were generally 'disgusted with the whole thing'.

Malone's soldiers now had a different look to them. At one very wet annual camp in 1911, Malone tipped out the water that had collected in the top of his slouch hat and pressed it into a peak so as to better shed the rain. His men followed suit, and so was born the 'lemon squeezer'. By the end of the Gallipoli campaign, it had become the standard headwear for the New Zealand infantry, leaving the mounted rifles brigade with its distinctive slouch hats.

By 1913, Malone's performance as a territorial commander had come to the notice of Godley as Commander-in-Chief, New Zealand Forces. Godley admitted to having been drawn to Malone by the fact that they were both of Anglo-Irish extraction, and also by his 'attractive personality and obvious keenness'. The result was promotion to full lieutenant-colonel and command of one of the new Territorial Force battalions, the 11th Regiment (Taranaki Rifles).

Godley's confidence was quickly justified. Colonel Edward Chaytor, commanding officer of the Wellington Military District, reported the new battalion to be in excellent condition. Its commanding officer was 'very capable and ably backed up by excellent company commanders'. The battalion's field work was also good, although discipline needed to be improved. Chaytor was confident, however, that this would be achieved once the regiment's officers had gained experience.

Malone's immediate superior, the commander of the Wellington Infantry Brigade, Colonel Tate, had judged Malone to be a hardworking if somewhat 'headstrong' officer who took the greatest pride in his regiment and looked after his men thoroughly.

In May 1914, the Inspector-General of Forces, General Sir Ian Hamilton—later to command the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at Gallipoli—came to New Zealand, as Kitchener had done four years earlier, to report on the country's fledgling territorial army. Hamilton's report described the force as 'Well-equipped and well-armed. The human material is second to none in the world.' It suffered as a fighting machine, Hamilton commented, only from want of field work and an ingrained habit of discipline.

During his visit, Sir Ian was the guest of honour at a dinner in New Plymouth attended by the Minister of Defence, Colonel James Allen, General Godley, Colonel Chaytor and Malone himself. Ironically, in the light of what was to come, the menu featured _Roast Turkey a la Bulgaria_ followed by _Charlotte Russe_.

King and Country

'I found, in brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word, and strength of thought, in war; that they were nourished in war, and wasted by peace; taught by war, and deceived by peace; trained by war, and betrayed by peace—in a word, that they were born in war, and expired in peace.'

—From _Crown of Wild Olive_ by John Ruskin, a Victorian social thinker, philanthropist and art critic much quoted by Malone

A major European war was now fast approaching. Its roots lay in the conflicting interests and ambitions of two opposing European alliances—the Triple Entente of Russia, France and Britain, and the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary—and an arms race between Britain and Germany. Ambitious for an empire that would match its growing military and industrial power, Germany was constructing a battle fleet large enough to challenge the naval dominance of the British Royal Navy.

The French nursed historic grievances against Germany as a result of their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71 and the loss of the coal- and iron-rich region of Alsace-Lorraine. Added to this was Germany's fear of encirclement by the three Entente powers, and Britain's fear that German domination of Europe would threaten its own security.

On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was assassinated by Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo. The Austro-Hungarians, backed by Germany, declared war against Serbia, ostensibly in retaliation for the murder of the Austrian archduke. Russia then mobilised her forces in support of her fellow Slavs, the Serbs.

Germany saw this as a hostile act against Austria-Hungary and immediately declared war on Russia. The German Army then invaded neutral Belgium and northern France in an attempt to defeat the French before turning against the Russians in the east. Britain, and by association its dominions, was drawn into the conflict both by its alliance with France and Russia, and as guarantor of the neutrality of Belgium.

On 5 August 1914, Britain and its Empire declared war on Germany. In New Zealand the Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, announced the news to an enthusiastic crowd of 15,000 from the steps of the old Parliament Buildings in Wellington. Prime Minister Massey immediately cabled London with the offer of an expeditionary force of an infantry brigade, a mounted rifles brigade, an artillery brigade and support units—the first such pledge from all of Britain's dominions. The offer was accepted and immediately the call went out for volunteers.

The response was instantaneous. Men from all trades and professions flooded the recruiting offices—14,000 in the first week alone—and were dispatched to training camps around the country. Under the terms of enlistment they had to be aged between 20 and 35, at least a second-class shot and have a military background. Preference was given to serving territorials, men of the old volunteer force, and those who had already served in the armies of the Empire.

Like the great majority of soldiers in World War I, they enlisted for a multiplicity of reasons—some for abstractions like duty to King and country or loyalty to Britain and its Empire; most for the chance of travel and adventure, to escape monotonous jobs and bad marriages, or simply to prove themselves in battle.

At a political level, the decision to fight rested on a bedrock of self-interest—in particular, fears of Germany's growing naval strength and Japan's expanding power in the Asia-Pacific region. Britain, and particularly its sea power, was seen as the guarantor of both New Zealand's independence as a nation and the security of its trade routes. For that protection, the government of William Massey was willing to send troops to fight wherever the vital interests of Britain and its Empire were engaged.

Massey suggested to the British Government that a New Zealand expeditionary force might be used in Egypt to protect the Suez Canal, elsewhere in the Empire, or on the European continent. British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and his Cabinet decided that New Zealand troops, along with the larger Australian contingents, would fight the German armies alongside the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in Europe.

Meanwhile, Malone had offered his services 'for work in New Zealand or abroad'. The offer was accepted almost immediately and he was formally appointed commander of the Wellington Infantry Battalion. Encouraged no doubt by their father, three of his sons had enlisted at the same time. Edmond and Terry would go to Egypt with him as troopers in the NZ Mounted Rifles Brigade under Brigadier-General Andrew Russell. Brian, the youngest of the three, was soon to see service with the force that sailed on 15 August to seize German Samoa.

Although the oldest man in the battalion at 55, Malone was fit, strong and in good health, 1.8 metres tall and 72.6 kg in weight. A medical report attached to his application for active service showed him to have scars on a big toe and forefinger—mementos no doubt of his pioneering days in the 1880s.

The men of his new battalion, Malone noted in his diary, came from all occupations and classes—'sons of wealthy run-holders, farmers, schoolmasters, scholars, MAs, BAs, musicians, tradesmen, mechanics, lawyers and all sorts'—a true cross-section of New Zealand society. In this, it mirrored the armies that had fought on both sides in the American Civil War half a century earlier. Here 'men of the best breeding and culture in America, of high education and great wealth' marched shoulder to shoulder with small farmers and clerks, mechanics and labourers.

Malone's battalion was just over 1000 strong and based on four existing companies—the 11th Taranaki Rifles, 7th Wellington West Coast, 9th Hawke's Bay and 17th Ruahine. Each company was permitted to retain its regimental badge—a far-sighted move which fostered both esprit de corps and a healthy inter-company rivalry. Malone was confident that they would make good soldiers, and that under his command the Wellington Infantry Battalion would be the best in the New Zealand Infantry Brigade.

On 13 August 1914, Stratford town turned out in force to farewell Malone and his men as they boarded the train for their mobilisation camp at Palmerston North's Awapuni racecourse and two months of rigorous training. The men marched to the station in column of fours led by Malone mounted on his big horse Don, which would go with him to Egypt. The crowd on the platform waved and shouted, men and women wept, and the band played _Until We Meet Again_.

By now, Malone was ready to take on the task of organising and training his battalion with a confidence born of experience. Some of his officers had served in the South African War, but most were newcomers to active soldiering. Some of the rank and file had a few weeks of territorial training, others had none at all. The Wellington West Coast company, for example, had just 90 evening drills to its credit, 36 daily parades, 30 days in camp and three musketry courses.

Malone would start at the beginning with physical exercises, drill, musketry and long route marches to make the men fit and strong. Those who wanted to be selected for overseas service, he warned at the first battalion parade, would have to show a marked improvement in drill and deportment, and strict discipline would be enforced at all times.

Men would march, not walk, when off duty and at the regulation pace; dress standards would be strictly enforced. Those who broke the camp rules, such as being late back from leave, would be excluded from final selection. Malone finished with a lecture on sanitation and the collection of rubbish, always a subject of keen personal interest.

The training at Awapuni was typical of all New Zealand camps during World War I. Bugles sounded reveille at 5.30 a.m. Mess orderlies went to the cookhouse for dixies of coffee, other orderlies visited battalion tents to see if anyone was sick. At 6.00 a.m. there was a brisk run for all troops, followed by ten minutes of drill. Between 6.30 and 8.00 a.m. 'interior economy' took over—wash and shave, clean rifles, brass, boots, fold up blankets and arrange the tent for inspection.

At 8.30 a.m. the men marched to their training areas for squad drill, musketry and battalion attack exercises. In their haversacks they carried bread, butter, jam, cheese and perhaps a raw onion; in their water bottles cold tea. At 4 p.m. the bugler sounded 'dismiss' and the troops marched back to their parade grounds where they dispersed. At sunset, the massed bugles of the battalion sounded the retreat and the men everywhere stood to attention. At 10 p.m. came the last bugle call of the day—the ever poignant _Last Post_.

In camp, wrote one of Malone's officers, the men soon found that he meant to make soldiers of them.

They at first disliked him, but later learned to respect him, and finally came to love him for a man who could be relied on, although they knew he was determined to try out every man who came under him and remove the soft spots from them. He knew war would be a hard business, and made up his mind that the regiment would be fit when it had to take its part.

So far Malone was satisfied with the material he had to work with. The officers, with the exception of his adjutant, Major Robinson, were 'good and fair'. The men were shaking down well and when 'weeded over' would do New Zealand credit. Robinson was sacked and replaced with Captain ('Hellfire Mac') McDonnell—an officer with a parade-ground bark that reputedly put sergeant-majors to shame.

'No battalion adjutant was like "Hellfire Mac",' wrote another officer. 'He was an old campaigner and knew something about everything and everybody. So busy was he seeing others did their job that he must have found it difficult to do his own.' Malone would soon clash with 'Hellfire Mac'.

On 8 September, the battalion marched 25 kilometres to Highden and camped overnight in the bush: 'A beautiful spot,' recalled Malone's second-in-command, Major Herbert Hart. 'Native bush provided splendid shelter for 1100 men; the camp being lit up by over 20 huge camp fires surrounded by happy singing soldiers provided a memorable sight.'

Friday 11 September was another day to be remembered. The battalion marched 20 kilometres to Feilding where the men were guests of the citizens of the town and its surrounding district. The marching of the troops was fine and their equipment glittered and shone as it was seldom to do on active service. Three bands, including a pipe band, came out to meet them. The mayor and the chairmen of the county councils gave speeches, and the battalion swung on through a town lined with people to bivouac at the racecourse. The next day they marched back to Palmerston North where a battalion rugby team beat the Manawatu province's best.

By now Malone had made contact with Brigadier Earl Johnston, the regular British Army officer who had been appointed to command the New Zealand Infantry Brigade. Johnston was the son of a former mayor of Wellington, who had been sent to England for his schooling. He had been trained at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, commissioned into the North Staffordshire Regiment, and was now on Godley's staff. 'A fine fellow, a New Zealander born,' Malone wrote in his diary—a judgement that was not to survive the brigade's training in Egypt or active service on Gallipoli.

By now also the battalion had received its orders to embark for overseas service. The Wellington Battalion was allocated to the transport _Arawa_ and Malone appointed commanding officer of all troops aboard, including the headquarters of the NZ Mounted Rifles Brigade. On 24 September, the battalion entrained for Wellington en route, as they thought, to England or France for further training and then to fight with British forces now facing the Germans on the Western Front.

Malone had hoped to march his men the 130 kilometres to Wellington as part of the toughening up process. The men were no doubt grateful for the reprieve, but once aboard their troopship there was no relaxation. Disgusted with the filth and general chaos he found aboard ship, Malone put them to work to clean up, grumbling all the while about the lack of deck scrapers, sand-soap and tea towels. There was pleasure, however, in knowing that three of his sons had now volunteered 'without hesitation' to fight for their country. 'Maurice will come too next May when he is 20—if the war is not over then. I don't think it will be.'

An official farewell to the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) followed at Wellington's Newtown Park. The Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, accompanied by Prime Minister Massey, Major-General Godley, and Colonel Robin, Commandant of the New Zealand Defence Forces, inspected the long lines of departing troops. His Excellency read a message from the King while a huge crowd watched the parade from the slopes.

If Malone was impressed, he was not about to admit it—'too much speechifying and praying', he complained to his diary. Infantry officer Spencer Westmacott went closer to the spirit of the day: 'The men were a fine looking lot in their uniforms, armed and fully equipped. Young, they most of them were, which only goes to prove that youth is a man's fighting age, for better soldiers never went to war, as they were soon to show.'

On 25 September, the ten ships of the convoy drew out into the harbour stream. Ferries crowded with passengers circled the transports, those on board calling out for sons, husbands and friends. Messages tied to stones, packets of cigarettes and tobacco were thrown aboard.

It was to be a false start. A powerful German naval squadron under Admiral Von Spee was known to be cruising somewhere in the Pacific, but no one knew quite where. Massey's Cabinet had at first agreed, albeit reluctantly, to dispatch the expeditionary force across the Tasman with only a weak escort of two light cruisers. The plan was quickly changed when a cable arrived from Australia warning that the convoy could be in serious danger if it proceeded as planned. There would be a delay of at least three weeks, Massey decided, until a more powerful escort could be arranged.

Animals, artillery and stores were now unloaded and hasty camps set up around Wellington. The city took on the look of a garrison town as soldiers thronged the streets, refreshment rooms, places of amusement and hotels. The general conduct of the men was reported to be good as no soldier wanted to be left behind on the eve of departure. Malone took the chance to buy some sheet music for the ship's piano—Schumann, Brahms and Chopin—to be shared with veterinary surgeon Captain Walker, another lover of classical music.

For Johnston's brigade, rigorous training was now the order of the day—route marches, musketry courses, attack and defence exercises over the steep Karori hills and the Miramar flats. Malone set his standards high. After one attack exercise, he scolded his company commanders both for their general performance and for their failure to arrange clothes-washing facilities for their men. After another, he noted: 'Not well done. Officers don't rise to the occasion. Must peg away at them until they do.'

October 7 was rated the most gruelling day in the battalion's training ashore. Malone pushed the men up the steep slopes of Tinakori Hill and then across several high ridges beyond it. According to an NCO attached to battalion headquarters, staff there thought he could have found much easier places to climb.

Some days later, 5000 men of the NZEF—infantry, mounted rifles and artillery—marched and rode the 16 kilometres to Lower Hutt to be inspected by Lord Liverpool and Major-General Godley. The day was 'vile', Malone wrote, with wind speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour. The road was dusty, and sweating men in full kit arrived with a coating of mud on both face and body. The reputation the New Zealanders developed in France as the 'Silent Division' had its roots in marches like these. There was no singing, only the steady tramp of marching feet as the troops took the long road back to the ships.

Malone's training, however, was producing good results. Adjutant-General Colonel Ted Chaytor congratulated the Wellington Battalion on its march discipline and told Malone that it was easily the best in the brigade. In his opinion, the regiment would 'create a sensation' when it arrived in England. Field Artillery commander Colonel Napier Johnston was similarly complimentary, rating the Wellington Battalion the best in the brigade for drill, discipline and overall performance. 'I felt rewarded for all my growling and work,' Malone confided to his diary.

By 14 October the naval escorts had arrived and the horses, guns and equipment were re-embarked. The ten-ship convoy would sail first for Albany in Western Australia and join troops of the 1st Australian Division who had been similarly delayed. The voyage would be something of a family affair, with Malone's sons Edmond and Terry accommodated with him on the _Arawa_ as troopers in the NZ Mounted Rifles Brigade. Among the 3818 horses aboard would be Malone's two horses, Don and Billy.

Malone and Ida had their last hours together on 10 October. They attended a dinner for senior NZEF officers and their wives hosted by the Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, after which they retired for the night to the Hotel Cecil. Two weeks earlier Malone had written to Ida:

You are a brave woman and I know you will bear yourself as a brave woman . . . You know that it is as duty calls that I am leaving you and home and that I am in God's good hands and will be as safe abroad as at home. Teach the children the doctrine of work and duty—duty to themselves, their fellows and above all to their country!

On a last trip ashore, Malone observed Japanese officers from the heavy cruiser _Ibuki_ buying maps of New Zealand in a Wellington bookshop for what he assumed were intelligence purposes. 'I suppose we shall be at war with them within 10 years,' he noted in his diary—a reflection, no doubt, of his long-held fears of New Zealand's vulnerability to an Asian invasion.

From what he knew of them, however, the Japanese people were to be admired: 'They appear to be patriotic—abstemious, industrious, brave and clean. They would make, I believe, A1 Christians.' Expecting soon to fight the Germans in France, Malone bought two dozen French novels to help him brush up his French language skills.

On 15 October, thousands of soldiers and their relatives and friends began arriving at the Wellington wharves. The men boarded ship, the crowds below cheered, bands played, and hundreds of last-minute notes floated down as the transports drew out into the stream. 'It won't be long now!' Malone wrote in his diary. 'Poor Mater—broke down but is a brave woman and will soon be all right.' That night, the force commander, Major-General Godley, entertained Prime Minister Massey, the Leader of the Opposition, the Minister of Defence and senior officers of the escorting warships to a final dinner aboard the _Maunganui_. The captain of the British heavy cruiser _Minotaur_ , in command of the fleet, had ensured that all ships in the convoy understood their departure instructions. All was ready to go.

Malone had planned for departure overseas with his usual care. The Stratford dairy farm had been leased to the neighbouring Clemows, and his law clerk, Bill Jones, had been put in charge of the Stratford office of his legal firm. He had prepared a list of his assets and liabilities and drawn up a new will. Its execution, should he not return, was in the hands of his former brothers-in-law, Stratford accountants Charles and Harry Penn. Ida had been left an annual income of 750 pounds—about $90,000 in today's currency.

As for himself, he had no regrets: 'I leave a lucrative practice, a good and very happy home, a brave wife and children, without any hesitation. I feel I am just beginning to live. Stodging away moneymaking was no man's game. The old country, and its dependencies, have almost their existence at stake and it is no time for those qualified to act to stand by.'

At daybreak on 16 October, the escorting warships _Minotaur_ and _Ibuki_ moved out, followed by the troop transports _Maunganui_ , _Star of India_ , _Hawke's Bay_ , _Limerick_ , _Tahiti_ , _Arawa_ , _Athenic_ , _Orari_ , _Ruapehu_ and _Waimana_ , and the light cruisers _Philomel_ and _Psyche_. 'A most impressive sight, grim but harmonious,' Malone recorded in his diary.

Hundreds gathered on Mount Victoria, Oriental Bay and other vantage points around the harbour to wave and cheer as the ships carrying the 8454 men of the first New Zealand Expeditionary Force steamed slowly past the Wellington Heads and out into the Tasman.

Some days earlier, Malone told a fellow officer: 'The Germans have perfected as terrible an engine of war as it is efficient, and it may be that they will overwhelm us before we are ready. If the war is over inside a year, as many people here think, the British as an empire will cease to exist. If we can stave off the trial of strength, well and good. British tenacity and resource will win through.'

In his diary he wrote: 'This life suits me, mind and body. It is a man's life. I wonder if I shall come back or leave my bones in Europe, but I am content. I am in God's hands and no death can be better.'

The Path to Gallipoli

'Nearly all men have a desire to serve great ends, to match themselves with circumstances, to dare the risks of great adventures. Pleasure and security can never finally satisfy. There are always horizons that must be reached, hills that must be climbed, a fleece of gold to be snatched even from the dark wood of the War God.'

—O.E. Burton, _The Silent Division_

At dusk on the evening of 16 October, the flashing of a lighthouse off South Westland gave the troops their last sight of New Zealand. Ship routines now took over, with reveille at 5.45 a.m. when the deck hoses were turned on and the men stood under a blast of cold water. Then came physical exercises and drill, rifle shooting at towed targets, signalling and first aid.

Malone wasted no time making his authority felt. While the Wellington shoreline was still in sight he refused to excuse his men from physical drill so that they could have a last sight of Wellington Heads. He then lambasted his adjutant, 'Hellfire Mac' McDonnell, for allowing the ship's band to play as _Arawa_ left the harbour.

The band had played what Malone regarded as a suggestive tune ('Everybody's Doing It, Doing It . . .') and he immediately closed it down. 'Too cheap for anything,' he wrote, 'an offence to any right thinking soldier.' His regiment should be doing its work 'grimly and quietly without any beating of its chest or banging of drums'.

For the Wellington Battalion it was a taste of things to come. McDonnell came under fire again for questioning Malone's order that all officers should wear their Sam Browne belts while on duty. Sergeant Southam was sacked for not ensuring that his deck-cleaning team was doing its job ('12 men @ 5/- per day to do nothing is wicked'). Quartermaster Sergeant Dallinger was reprimanded for leaving the caustic soda deck-cleaner behind in Wellington.

As for McDonnell, he would be put in his place and not be allowed to try and run the regiment again. 'He is not loyal. He is spoilt,' Malone confided to his diary. 'Partly my fault too—you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and you can't make an "officer" in the best sense out of a sergeant major.' If McDonnell did not change his ways, Malone decided, he would be left behind at the base when the battalion was deployed to the front line.

But now it was down to work. Malone set up schools for officers and NCOs in interior economy, military law and regulations. There were lectures on 'efficiency' and tactics, for which he drew on his studies of the American Civil War, the South African War, and particularly the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. Quotations on war from Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington were put up on noticeboards for the education of his officers.

His officers were told to cultivate cleanliness and abstemiousness, order and industry. Early rising and physical fitness were vital, as was absolute loyalty to superiors. Relationships with equals should be based on cooperation and loyalty; those with inferiors on firmness, civility and 'camaraderie without intimacy'. Officers should be self-critical and be prepared to ask 'Have I done my duty?' Above all, they should be a good example to their men and concerned always for their health, comfort and care.

At night, Malone would read his officers extracts from Ruskin's _Crown of Wild Olive_ , including the latter's thoughts on the debilitating effects of peace on nations and the rejuvenating power of war. They seemed puzzled by his choice, thinking him 'too much a man of blood and iron to read Ruskin!'

To Ida, he wrote expressing the hope that they would soon meet in England: 'I carry with me a lovely picture of you, or a series of lovely pictures, going to Government House . . . You looked so bonny I was quite proud of you . . .' The letter finished: 'I think of you all, you especially, every night before I go to sleep and pray that all may be well with all of us. This is a great change in our lives, but it was to be and we are doing our duty.' By now, Ida had moved out of the bedroom they shared at _The Farlands_ and into the spare room. She had also placed two photographs of her husband in her prayer book.

On 21 October, the coast of Tasmania and its capital Hobart came into sight. When the troops discovered that there was to be no shore leave, General Godley was roundly abused and several men broke ship. Hobart, however, had farewelled the Tasmanian troops just the day before and its citizens showered the marching men with apples, bunches of flowers and cigarettes as they swung through the streets on a route march to Newton.

'The Hobart people, I believe, put us a long way before their own troops, bigger and steadier and better every way,' Malone recorded somewhat optimistically. Much taken with the beautiful flowers growing along the route, he picked some roses for himself.

At sea again, Malone insisted that all of his men parade in proper uniform, including sidearms. 'I make my officers wear boots now when on duty and thus be completely properly dressed . . . deck shoes, no belts, etc, leads to slackness and demoralisation.' At his direction, the Wellington Infantry Battalion challenged the other battalions in the brigade to a competition in physical drill, squad drill, rifle-firing exercises, and semaphore signalling.

He was having some difficulty, however, in getting his officers to do what he wanted done. 'They each want their own way and have some of them a supercilious air when I am telling them what I want and mean to have done.' He had tried consulting his officers on any new proposals, but this was not a success. 'You ask their opinion and 9 times out of 10 can't accept it. It is a big job the breaking in of a new regiment. Over 1100 men to handle.' The best option, he concluded, was simply to issue orders.

Two of his company commanders in particular, Brunt and Saunders, had failed to please. 'I am convinced that an officer must be a gentleman bred. The lack of education is a great misfortune. Brunt I think is a Boer with Negro blood. Saunders is too small in the head. Neither of them are gentlemen.' In the meantime, he was 'cultivating' the younger officers and would not hesitate to get rid of incompetents.

Ten days out from New Zealand, Malone appeared better satisfied with the state of things aboard. 'Bar the dirt, everything is going well. My officers are knuckling down. Perhaps I have been thinking too hardly of them. I set a high standard I believe, but no other is of any use.' He was unhappy, however, with the poor physique of some of his men, most of them recent immigrants from Britain who, he felt, should not have been accepted into New Zealand. 'A queer sorry lot, undersized, weak jawed, ill formed, yet the fathers of future New Zealanders!'

Malone kept aloof from most of his officers, but found pleasure in the company of artillery brigade commander Colonel Napier Johnston, one of several senior officers—including General Godley—who had their wives with them aboard ship. 'He is a real good fellow,' Malone noted. 'His wife seems nice and sensible. I was pleased to hear her voice Mater's feelings as to "society" women golfing and "bridging". She too, like Mater, prefers to be at home to receive her husband and look after him and her family.'

He confessed, however, to missing Ida sorely and to often picturing them together aboard the _Arawa_. 'Some day ere long we will journey together,' he wrote, 'and I will be able to look back on this voyage with equanimity.' In the meantime, he felt very fit and was working hard to learn all he could about his job. Others aboard ship had marvelled that he was indeed 55 years old.

In the Australian Bight, the weather worsened. All hatches were covered, all portholes closed, which made the atmosphere down on the troop decks quite suffocating. On 26 October, Lance Corporal John Gilchrist of the Otago Battalion died, the first soldier of the NZEF to die on active service. All ships in the convoy came to a standstill, flags were lowered, bands played the _Dead March_ , and troops stood to attention as his body was committed to the sea.

On 29 October, the convoy entered the great landlocked harbour of King George Sound, Albany, where 26 Australian troopships lay at anchor. The escorts _Philomel_ and _Psyche_ left the convoy here and returned to New Zealand, being replaced by the Australian cruisers _Sydney_ and _Melbourne_. Drawing heavily on Henderson and Burde, Malone lectured his officers that night on the evolution of tactical doctrine since the early 19th century, and the revolution brought about by rifled, breech-loading weapons and smokeless powder.

On 1 November, the flagship of the Australian fleet led the convoy out of King George Sound into the Indian Ocean and north-west towards Colombo. On board now were 30,000 officers and men of the two Anzac divisions and some 10,000 horses. 'It was a magnificent sight,' recalled one of Malone's senior officers. 'Here on that bright, sunny morning were the great ocean liners, black with troops, quietly taking their place in a long line of ships making for the open sea.'

The heat now became almost unbearable and the space below decks was an inferno. Malone appeared more concerned about the failure of the Australian transports to dowse their lights at night, endangering the other ships in the fleet. By contrast, he noted, the New Zealand ships had followed convoy orders to the letter.

While the convoy was still at sea, a Boer rebellion had broken out in South Africa and the two Anzac divisions were ordered to proceed to Durban where they would be put at the disposal of the South African Government. Within days, however, Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers and was now seen to pose a threat to British control of the Suez Canal. The convoy was ordered to divert to Egypt where the Australians and New Zealanders would assist in the defence of the canal. Here, they were told, they would train together before being deployed to the Western Front in the spring of 1915.

News of the British naval defeat at Coronel off the coast of Chile now reached the convoy. On 1 November, a German squadron under Admiral Von Spee had intercepted and sunk the armoured cruisers _Monmouth_ and _Good Hope_ with the loss of 1600 officers and men, including their commander, Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock. Special precautions were now taken as the ships approached the Cocos-Keeling Islands, including extra lookouts and a complete blackout across the fleet.

On 9 November, the convoy missed crossing paths with the German raider _Emden_ by just two hours. The _Emden_ had separated from Von Spee's squadron and had so far sunk or captured 23 British merchant ships, a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. Godley speculated that had the raider intercepted the convoy at night, it could have sunk half a dozen troopships as the convoy's naval escorts could not have retaliated without hitting their own ships. Malone, however, regretted that the _Emden_ had not made the attempt. 'How the _Emden_ would have enjoyed a fling amongst us. I had been hoping that she would strike us.'

Meanwhile, he refused to postpone an inspection parade because of the heat—typically 34 degrees Celsius—and let his officers go about in shirt sleeves like the mounted rifles and artillery brigade officers. They would be properly uniformed at all times, he told them, until the doctor advised him that this was unhealthy. 'I told them to eat less! That 3 full meat meals a day in the tropics was absurd.'

Sunsets in the Indian Ocean were now a dramatic study in pinks and greys. 'I look forward to them,' Malone wrote in his diary, 'but how I wish Mater was here to enjoy them too. Nelson was the last place where we saw them together.'

The following Sunday, Malone took offence at 'off colour' material to be used in a shipboard concert and asked Napier Johnston if it could be censored. Johnston, however, didn't think censorship feasible and Malone decided to 'have a go' at the concert directors himself. He was uncomfortable also with the 'bun and treacle' race planned for the upcoming regimental sports. It was degrading, he wrote, and encouraged competitors 'to act like animals'.

That day, two ships in the convoy intercepted a wireless message from Cocos Island, 90 kilometres to the east. The signal, received at 6.30 a.m. and repeated about fifty times, read: 'Strange man-of-war entering the harbour.' The light cruiser _Sydney_ steamed off at full speed westward, battle flags flying, and found the _Emden_.

At 11 a.m. the _Sydney_ signalled that the _Emden_ , with her foremast and three funnels down, was 'done for' and had beached to save itself from sinking. Men aboard all ships in the convoy broke into cheers; Lady Godley claimed to have heard the guns while lying in her bath.

In spite of the near brush with the _Emden_ , the Australian troopships were lit up again the next night and again Malone was annoyed. 'They seem a slack lot. Perhaps it is my prejudice against Australians. I have it I know but cannot say why. I must be juster—and only judge on 1st hand evidence.'

Four days later, a strange ship was sighted on the _Arawa_ 's starboard bow. She turned out to be the armed merchantman _Empress of Russia_ , en route to Cocos Island to pick up prisoners and wounded from the _Emden_. The next day, another ship was sighted and the _Ibuki_ steamed off to intercept. It was the British cruiser _Hampshire_ coming at full speed to join the convoy. 'Another lovely sunset last night,' Malone wrote in his diary. 'Greys and golds and yellow pinks. If only I could paint.'

Malone now arranged for all troops aboard the _Arawa_ to be supplied with hammocks, only to find that he was 70 hammocks short because Quartermaster Sergeant Dallinger had failed to put them aboard in Wellington. 'That is the last straw—when he takes up his Regimental duties again I shall sack him from that job. Another of McDonnell's bad picks.' McDonnell ('Hellfire Mac'), he noted, was now very cooperative but was still not to be trusted. 'I can easily run the Reg't without him and really would prefer to do so.'

Meanwhile, his Wellington Battalion competed by sections in various training exercises. The men from Hawke's Bay prevailed overall and Malone decided that provincial origins were the decisive factor—'they coming from a drier, harder country beat the mud plodders from moist, soft Taranaki. Australia can play cricket and New Zealand cannot for the same reason.'

Malone was pleased to record that his waistline had shrunk and he was now very fit—the result of half an hour's daily exercises in temperatures of 29–31 degrees Celsius. 'The campaign in front of me is bound to be one of hardship,' he wrote. 'The fit man is going to do the best work.' A large number of his officers, however, had dropped out of the gruelling exercise programme and seemed to resent those who had 'stuck it out'.

On 13 November came the traditional Crossing of the Line ceremony and an opportunity for some boisterous but good-natured fun. King Neptune and his bride were welcomed aboard and all the officers, excluding Malone, Napier Johnston and one or two majors, were thrown into a metre-deep canvas bath set up on deck. Surgeon Lieutenant Webb, however, broke free from his captors, dived head first into the shallow water and broke his neck. 'A really good able fellow,' Malone wrote. 'I liked him and we often took a walk together. We are all very sad . . . Had he been shot in action it would have been so different. Still, it was to be.'

On 15 November, the convoy finally reached Colombo where the ships would fill their water tanks and take on coal. Hundreds of small craft swarmed around the _Arawa_ selling goods of all kinds and soliciting passengers for the trip from ship to shore. The Anzacs watched in silence as the victorious _Sydney_ steamed in through the breakwater, her decks covered with wounded German sailors from the defeated raider _Emden_.

Thirty German prisoners from the _Emden_ were now put aboard the _Arawa_ , which moved Malone to write: 'Poor devils, they have had an awful experience. The _Sydney_ smashed the _Emden_ killing 130 and wounding seriously some 50 out of about 230. The killing was too horrible. The ship was a shambles, men literally blown to pieces.' Seeing the prisoners herded together under guard on the boat deck brought home to him for the first time the grim reality of war.

The troops were now given shore leave and for most it was their first taste of the 'Magic East'. Here they were assailed by long-robed 'natives' selling everything from flowers and cigarettes to fruit and rickshaw rides. 'Silks, embroidery, beads, curios, ivory elephants and odds and ends of all sorts readily changed hands. Men wandered through green fields and fine parks, through Buddhist temples and native quarters, thronging Colombo's best hotels for a rare good dinner.'

That evening there was a riot ashore, involving New Zealanders and Australians, British and Indian troops of the local garrison, native boatmen and sailors. How it started was unclear, but many of the soldiers were drunk and a good many were from Malone's battalion. By nightfall, over a hundred men were still missing from the _Arawa_ and probably well over a thousand from the whole convoy. Those who had failed to report in on time got seven days' pack drill and continuous 'fatigues' until disembarkation.

Malone himself visited a local jail and the government radio station, and gave money to child beggars. He admitted, however, to having committed 'an awful sin according to White Ceylon ethics'—socialising while ashore with a local Ceylonese official and his Anglo-Indian wife. They were 'very gentle, civil people', he wrote, and he felt no guilt in doing so. He also made time to visit Lieutenant Webb, who was now lying in hospital paralysed from the shoulders down. Webb died the day the convoy sailed from Colombo for the Suez Canal.

With landfall in Egypt approaching, Malone arranged for the mass inoculation of his men against typhoid. Twenty-four of them refused to take the injections, along with sergeant-majors Dallinger and Foster. To Malone's annoyance, the jabs were not compulsory, but he made his feelings about the objectors clear: any men who persisted in refusing the inoculations would be made the 'scavengers' and 'shoeshiners' of the regiment and would not be taken to the front.

Most of the objectors, Malone noted, were recent immigrants to New Zealand and some should never have been accepted for active service. The immigration agents in England and the government were to blame for allowing such 'inferior stock' into the country. Meanwhile, those suffering the side effects of the inoculations—pain, swelling and general 'malaise'—were excused morning parades for three days. Malone, a fellow sufferer, stayed in bed on the morning of the next day reading French novels.

The port city of Aden, at the entrance to the Red Sea, was in sight when reveille sounded on 25 November. As a result no doubt of the riot at Colombo, no leave was granted. The news that 100,000 imperial troops had already passed through Aden and that another 40 transports were due from India, however, stirred Malone's patriotism to life.

'The resources of the British Empire are wonderful and all men have risen to the proper sense of their responsibilities to the Empire. As Lloyd George said, we must finish things now and not leave our children to the German menace. This war is the redemption of England and will leave the Empire better and greater in every sense . . .'

Meanwhile, he complained about the lack of water aboard ship for washing and its effects on the cleanliness of his men. So different, he wrote, were conditions aboard the Japanese heavy cruiser _Ibuki_ where lines of washing covered the ship day by day. 'Our arrangements are so bad that our men, white men, some of whom call the Jap a brown monkey, cannot wash clothes for 3 weeks . . . Truly the European race is a dirty one.' Of the 24 of his officers aboard the _Arawa_ , Malone estimated that no more than four were naturally clean.

On 28 November, the convoy was joined in the Red Sea by the 40 transports bringing troops from India. Malone marvelled again at the power and scale of the Empire's response to the German threat. The Germans, he wrote, had done their worst and had not succeeded; they would now face the military might of the Empire, supported by Britain's command of the seas.'Well done those British statesmen who have, in spite of active opposition of Little Englanders . . . persisted in maintaining British supremacy at sea.'

The Australian and New Zealand force commanders were now formally told that they would not be going to England, but would probably land at Suez to fight the Turks. Malone was surprised but not overly disappointed. Suez, he wrote, would be a much better place than England for the Anzac troops and their horses to winter in. 'We have no doubt that in due time we will go to France and then on thro' Germany. We want to see and be in the big fighting.'

In the hottest part of the Red Sea—31 degrees Celsius in the shade—Malone paraded his men for over an hour in full marching order in spite of the reservations of the battalion medical officer. 'It was an act of fortitude . . . They stood like rocks, the perspiration running down their faces in streams . . . I am proud of my men.' None of them, he felt, was really the worse off physically for the ordeal and all were better off 'morally'.

As for himself, he wrote to Ida, regular physical drill and his escape from the sedentary life of legal practice were having very positive effects. 'I am one of the fittest men on the ship. No fat now.' The letter ended: 'I pray that God may keep you strong, well and happy and safe to welcome me on my return or to join me at this end of the world when the war is over. I look forward so much to that joyful day.'

On 30 November, the convoy entered the Suez Canal, which with Turkey's entry into the war was now guarded by Indian troops. On the _Arawa,_ an 18-pounder field gun and two machine guns were mounted in case of attack. As a protection against snipers, Malone organised an armed guard of 30 men and 'entrenched' them along the deck behind sacks of potatoes.

At the port of Suez he sent a postcard to his eight-year-old son Denis who was about to be sent to a Catholic school in Nelson as a boarder. The message was brief and admonished him in terms worthy of Nelson himself: 'You have to be a man now and do your duty.' Malone spent the evening playing Schumann on the ship's piano, and particularly 'Arabesque', which he remembered his grandmother playing perfectly. It was a piece, he confided to his diary, that awakened 'many memories of long, long ago'.

On 1 December, the fleet dropped anchor at Port Said where the German prisoners were transferred to the cruiser _Hampshire_ to be taken to England. As the convoy sailed for Alexandria it was cheered by ship after ship of the ten British and French warships anchored in the harbour. The Anzacs returned the salute in kind. 'A particularly stirring scene,' recalled Malone's second-in-command, Major Herbert Hart.

With Alexandria approaching, Godley warned the troops against any familiarity with the inhabitants. 'The natives of Egypt have nothing in common with the Maoris. They belong to races lower on the human scale, and cannot be treated in the same manner. The slightest familiarity with them will breed contempt which is certain to have far-reaching consequences.' The order also warned of the 'extreme danger' of intercourse with native women, due to the prevalence of syphilis in Egyptian cities.

Alexandria harbour was full of barques, brigs, schooners, and captured German merchant ships. Malone's first impressions of the city were of filth, dirt and bad smells, and the few unveiled Arab women he saw 'the reverse of attractive or beautiful'. Hart recalled 'narrow dirty streets, squalid little shops, with the stink of oil, dirt and niggers permeating the atmosphere everywhere'.

At first, there was no shore leave for the troops, officially to protect them from the grog shops and brothels of Alexandria. 'This is a dangerous place to turn a lot of men loose as the drink is poisonous,' Malone wrote approvingly. 'After total abstinence for seven weeks [it] would have bowled them over at sight.'

The result was a mass breakout. At six that evening 130 men from the Wellington Battalion rushed down the horse ramps, evaded the guards and made for the city. Two pickets went after them and by 10 p.m. all had been rounded up and handed over to the guard. Perhaps reluctant to admit any indiscipline in his battalion, Malone made no mention of the incident in his diary.

On the evening of 3 December, to the delight of the troops, Godley granted general shore leave in Alexandria. 'What a night it was!' recalled infantryman O.E. Burton.

In one evening they had seen Aladdin's cave, the Forty Thieves, and the houris of the Thousand and One Nights; veiled women, and others whose draperies were of the most diaphanous sort; French, Greeks, Russians and Italians, with the brown-skinned Egyptians and the black Nubians from the south—all of these they had seen, and the spell of Egypt had taken hold of them. They were lured by the sensuous, riotous beauty of the land.

The next morning, the men boarded the trains that would take them to Cairo and on to their camp at Zeitoun, 10 kilometres outside the city. En route, the trains stopped at palm-fringed stations where the carriages were besieged by throngs of Egyptians selling tomatoes, 'orangies' and 'eggs-a-cook'.

Their route ran through the Nile delta and parallel to a highway that had felt the tread of marching men down through history, among them the army of Alexander, the legions of Rome, Napoleon and the army of Egypt. Beside it now moved an army from another time, another hemisphere, and into a very different kind of war.

Desert Storm

'Seemingly endless marches over the burning sands of the desert; attacks, advanced and flank guards over the monotonous ridges of sand, eternal carrying of heavy packs and ammunition with heavy punishment for the man who soothed his parched throat from his water-bottle, followed day after day. The men cursed and swore; cursed him for a martinet who kept them toiling like the coolies of the land.'

—A young infantry officer remembers Malone's training in Egypt

The Wellingtons detrained in the dark at Helmiah Station, marched 3 kilometres to their campsite at Zeitoun, and bivouacked without cover on the desert sand. Those who experienced that night remembered it as one of the coldest of their lives. The first day in camp, however, began as usual—reveille followed by breakfast, physical exercises, interior economy, everything all over again.

Including a company of the Ceylon Planters Rifles, Malone now had 1350 men under his command, and was told that they were likely to be in action against the Turks in less than a month. He wasted no time in reshaping the camp to his liking. Unhappy with the haphazard way in which the battalion's tents had been pitched, he had them all pulled down and realigned 'until every tent pole and peg stood in perfect symmetry'.

Rubbish disposal, water supply and sanitation were given the usual close attention and a 'wet canteen' set up where beer could be bought by the bucket and drunk in the tents. After a final showdown, Malone sacked his Quartermaster Sergeant Dallinger for insolence and put him under arrest.

Meanwhile, he observed the surrounding landscape with a soldier's eye—flat, covered with green crops, interlaced with Arab villages and date palm groves. There were small towns with good buildings, he noted, mud houses and shrines; irrigation channels and water wheels; natives riding camels, donkeys, cows or bullocks. Again he decried the squalor and dirt of the Egyptian and Arab populations, contrasting it with the European parts of the towns, which were 'decent and in many parts fine'. Cairo itself was utterly disapproved of—'a vicious place, a sink of iniquity'.

The country about the camp, however, had strong links with both Egyptian antiquity and Christian tradition. Beneath the 'fashionable' suburb of Heliopolis lay the remains of the great and ancient 'city of the sun', the principal place of worship for the Egyptian sun god Ra. Nearby were the holy shrines of Mataria—the Virgin's Spring and the Virgin's Tree—where the Holy Family was said to have rested during the flight into Egypt.

A heap of white rock near the camp, however, had no known historical links and appeared to have no owners. Malone had the stones broken up and used as tent boundaries and edging for all roads and paths within the camp. 'A few days later, a gentleman looking like the Sheik of Araby arrived at battalion headquarters on a donkey. He addressed himself in Arabic to Allah for advice but spoke excellent English. He said the heap of rock belonged to himself and produced documentary proof of ownership.'

Brigade headquarters ordered the stones returned to the owner and summoned Malone to account for 'the unauthorised destruction of certain private property'. The matter was eventually resolved by paying the 'Sheik' a considerable sum of money for the loss of his rock pile, upon which it finally became the property of the battalion.

Training now began in earnest—platoon, company and battalion drill, musketry, attack and defence exercises, trench digging, route marching up to 50 kilometres a day with full packs up and often in temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius. Each man carried an overcoat, blanket, waterproof sheet, water bottle and rations, plus rifle and bayonet and 150 rounds of ammunition—a total load of nearly 30 kilograms.

Infantry officer Spencer Westmacott was among the sufferers: 'Men marched in fierce heat, beaten by hot desert winds, covered in dust from the feet of horses, wheels of gun carriages and wagons, and the boots of the infantry. And always thirst, when water was strictly rationed on the march.' Not one to ask his men to do anything he himself would not do, Malone marched at the head of his column rather than riding his horse.

Malone also drove his junior officers hard, requiring them to parade each morning for an extra hour's physical drill, additional to everything else the battalion was doing. The subalterns eventually refused to turn out; Malone paraded them before him and told them that what they had done was effectively mutiny. They were warned that they risked being court-martialled and thrown out of the regiment.

Each in turn was asked why he had not obeyed orders. Some were evasive, but Lieutenant Turnbull—later to command a battalion—spoke out. The orders were unfair, he said, because the junior officers of the battalion had work to do at that hour that the other ranks did not. As the first to answer truthfully, Turnbull believed that he was from then on out of favour with Malone, whose manner towards him seemed brusque and cold.

Smallpox vaccinations were now administered to all ranks, which put most of the battalion temporarily out of action with painfully swollen arms and inflamed lymph nodes. Malone tended to downplay their distress until his own turn came. 'The doctor then saw that he received that application of vaccine to which his rank entitled him,' noted the battalion historian with some satisfaction. After visiting 49 of his sick men in hospital, Malone went on light duties and had no more to say on the matter.

Meanwhile, trains carried thousands of 'Bill Massey's tourists' into Cairo. Here the streets were thronged with people of all races, tribes and tongues. Places of amusement abounded, ranging in quality from the Shepheard's and Continental hotels to 'cheap and smelly cafes selling firewater guaranteed to send a man mad in as short a time as anything on earth'.

A first-class English meal could be bought at the YMCA in the Ezbekiya Gardens, and a band from a British regiment played there on Sunday afternoons. 'Astonished staff officers, with red tabs, gold braid, and eye-glasses found themselves rubbing shoulders with democratic but wealthy young colonials in resorts which had never been so desecrated before.'

For the culturally curious, there were visits to the pyramids of Giza and Sakhara and their underground tombs, to mosques and ancient Coptic churches, to the Egyptian museum and its collection of antiquities. For the more sensually inclined, the bars and brothels of Cairo provided ample if risky pleasures. As Spencer Westmacott put it, the twin gods of Bacchus and Venus received their quota of worshippers from all Anzac brigades.

Appropriately, Malone's tastes inclined to the cultural and spiritual. On 10 December, he attended Mass in an Italian church near the docks in Alexandria and then called on the priest to practise his French. On 13 December, Malone and 600 other Catholic soldiers marched to morning Mass at Heliopolis. 'Such strange looking people,' he wrote, 'all colours of brown, Egyptian, Maltese, Italians, French, Levantines and a general mixture—not a real white man or woman among them. They stared at us, some 600 stalwart men, and we at them . . .'

In the afternoon, Malone and Brigadier Earl Johnston (another Catholic) rode to Mataria to take part in the annual Egyptian pilgrimage to the shrine of the Holy Family.

Some 40,000 British, Indian and Anzac troops were now camped in Egypt and were expected to face 100,000 Turks within a month. What Malone had seen so far of British troops did not impress him. The men all seemed like boys—'so short, small and fair', and mostly very young. Alongside them his men seemed like giants. The British officers seemed 'slow, and not altogether soldier-like'. By contrast, the colonial officers were mostly practical men who, he felt, took more readily to the business of soldiering.

Meanwhile, the drill and deportment of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade was expected to match the British Army's best. 'The battalion was very smart in those days,' recalled infantryman O.E. Burton. 'Buttons, belts and boots were just as fine as fine could be. Pride was taken in smart drill, but above all in the mounting of the guard . . . the High Mass, the sung Eucharest [ _sic_ ] of the professional soldier.'

On 10 December, Malone wrote again to Ida: 'I am very well but feel the cold in the early morning. We turn out at 5.30am in the dark and only candle light. A cold bath in the open desert in the dark sounds romantic but it is not very interesting or luxurious. I have, however, bought a spirit lamp and some Bovril and have a good pannikin full after a bath and that is a luxury.'

On 18 December, Egypt was declared a British Protectorate and a regime favourable to British interests was set up under a new Sultan. Five days later, British and Anzac troops marched in force through Cairo to mark the event and demonstrate British power and authority to any nationalist elements in the Egyptian population that might be inclined to challenge it.

The route led through the native quarter of the city, past crowds of mostly silent Egyptians. 'The forest of flashing bayonets and the drivers of the transport riding high gave a sense of power that nothing could resist,' Westmacott wrote. On their flank, long lines of the Australian Light Horse sat immobile in their saddles, their rifles resting butt on thigh at the 'carry'. . . 'Horses and men, each superb as one. One felt proud to be of the brotherhood.'

Christmas dinner for the troops, their first since landing in Egypt, was an echo of a now distant homeland—roast turkey, bottled peas and plum pudding, all served in the searing heat of day. That day a contingent of New Zealanders recruited in England arrived. Malone called for three cheers for the men as they marched into camp then gave them a tongue lashing for wheeling over his new vegetable garden.

From now on a detachment of reinforcements would arrive every two months, each nearly 2000 strong. Among them was a 500-strong Maori contingent. Godley and Birdwood were impressed with their dress and bearing, Malone was not: 'Mostly big hulking gone-in-the-knees walking men. They look soft, and, I fancy were not killed with work on the transports.'

The Maori soldiers were keen to train and eventually fight with their brother New Zealanders, but were told that they would be sent to Malta as garrison troops. With them would go over 200 venereal disease (VD) cases who were being emptied out of hospitals in Egypt to make room for the wounded of the coming military operations.

By now Godley was worried about the rate of VD among the New Zealanders. He calculated that the NZEF could lose up to 10 per cent of its troops to the disease, let alone its losses to locally supplied booze. 'The filthy native liquor, diluted as it is with urine, makes anyone who drinks it quite mad,' he wrote to Defence Minister Sir James Allen. 'One can only be thankful that so few of our men do drink.'

Godley's solution to the VD problem, an enlightened one for the time, was to ensure that the medical officers of every battalion had a supply of ointment and syringes on hand to treat the troops returning from leave in Cairo. Malone, in private at least, violently disagreed.

To my horror, the GOC (ours) has approved certain measures for preventing certain frightful consequences of vice and so as to enable them to indulge in the vice with no fear of disease.

At present we appeal to the men's better nature and to his morality at the same time letting him know the awful punishment of certain vice in this country. To do what is proposed is to destroy all moral restraint and lead to worse things . . . right and not expediency is the only sound rule in life.

To manage the risks, Malone preferred to give only 25 per cent of the men leave daily and only to the 'good characters'.

The last day of 1914 was marked by an inspection of the New Zealand Division by Anzac commander General Birdwood followed by a general march-past. For Malone it was again a demonstration of the might and cohesion of the British Empire. A complete force of horse, artillery and infantry had been brought from the Antipodes and assembled in Egypt's desert, he noted, close to the place where Napoleon's army had defeated a greatly superior army of Turks . . . 'Our New Zealand flag floated out proudly, may the division always do it honour.'

On 2 January, the New Zealand High Commissioner, Thomas MacKenzie, told Malone and other senior officers that the New Zealand Division would go to France in February or March—provided that it was not fighting the Turks, who could arrive, 80,000 strong, by 10 January. Malone, however, hoped that the Turks would come and that the New Zealanders would have the benefit of fighting them. 'It would be the best training and do us a world of good.'

To Ida he confessed that he was finding his separation from her and the children hard to bear. He 'devoured' all her letters, he wrote, and reread them constantly. In a brown pot that had been a gift from her he had kept the lilac she had given him before his ship sailed from Wellington. It now held roses and mignonette. 'Most lovely and sweet. The bees keep visiting it.'

Malone and his brigade commander, Brigadier Earl Johnston, now clashed for the first time. Johnston wanted the Wellington Battalion to focus on tactical schemes and manoeuvres. Malone wanted to improve the basics—in this case, the battalion's shooting and fire control skills (musketry). 'The Brigadier is in a hurry to rush us along at schemes and the top of the work,' he told his diary. 'I am determined to begin at the bottom.'

Malone argued that he was responsible for the efficiency of his battalion and knew better than Johnston what the weak places in its training were. Tactical schemes and manoeuvres were all very well, he said, but if fire control was bad, let alone the actual shooting, 'it was no good'. Johnston insisted that Malone obey orders; Malone asked for permission to refer the matter to Godley. Johnston refused and rode away.

In the end, Johnston backed down, telling Malone that he had misunderstood the situation and that he could do what he wanted provided that some 'battalion work' was done. Malone felt that Johnston bore him no ill will over this episode as over the next two weeks he twice complimented him on the standard of his training. Even so, it was a foretaste of things to come.

The next day, the battalion was put through attack training according to a plan devised by Malone himself. Connected by telephone to a battery of field artillery for the first time, Malone was able to call down shrapnel fire on 'enemy' positions at will. 'Cooperation between artillery and infantry,' he concluded, 'is the thing in successful attack.' His studies of the military theorists and the South African and Russo-Japanese wars were beginning to pay off.

On 7 January, the Anzacs had their first experience of the khamsin, the hot dust-laden desert wind that blows across Egypt for three months of the year. Training was abandoned and the men spent the day nearly suffocating in their tents while sand driven by the wind penetrated every gap and pore.

'We breathe it in, drink it in our tea, eat it with our bread and butter,' wrote Hart. The cook houses were not geared for sandstorms and the troops were forced to live on dry rations and cold tea. After it was over, brass, boots and equipment had to be cleaned of yellow dust, as did ears, noses, hair and bedding.

Godley now confirmed that the New Zealand Division would go to the Western Front when fully trained and fit, but would first intercept a Turkish army believed to be on its way to invade Egypt near the Suez Canal. The division would attack Turkish positions in the desert and cut their communications so as to make any further invasion impossible. 'Our men are itching to get moving and fighting,' Malone wrote that night.

Their chance came two days later. The Wellington Battalion was ordered to move to the Suez Canal to meet a 25,000-strong Turkish force that was now advancing across the Sinai Desert towards the canal. The enemy was assumed to have had a dual objective—first to capture the canal and then to support an uprising by Egyptian nationalists against British rule. The most likely places for a crossing of the canal were thought to be at Ismailia and El Kubri.

The Wellington and Otago battalions would go to El Kubri under Malone's command to stiffen up Indian troops holding the canal at that point. The Auckland and Canterbury battalions would deploy to Ismailia. The force was to be under the overall command of Major-General Melliss VC, commander of the 3rd Indian Brigade.

The brigade cheered the news to a man, delighted at the prospect at last of a move and a fight. Wagons were loaded with food, ammunition, entrenching tools, water and medical supplies, and the troops entrained for El Kubri. At midnight on 2 February, the Wellingtons woke to the sound of heavy firing from the canal about two kilometres away from their camp. The Turks were attacking the El Kubri post in a show of force while the main assault was delivered at Toussum.

Here some 5000 Turkish troops attempted to cross the canal on aluminium rafts. Facing them were the Auckland and Canterbury battalions, supported by Indian troops and British and French warships firing from the canal. Only one raft reached the other side of the canal; the rest were destroyed by gunfire. Over 200 Turks were killed and another 700 captured, along with 90 camels carrying ammunition and supplies. Total British and dominion casualties were about 100.

In the following days, the Wellingtons came under occasional fire from snipers and during reconnaissances, but otherwise things were quiet. 'Our fellows were very anxious to get into the scrap but we were not needed,' Malone noted in his diary. He hoped, however, that the Turks would try again and that this time his men would be allowed to 'go out on the flank and try and scupper them with the bayonet'.

Meanwhile, armed patrol boats passed up and down the canal in daylight hours, and the warship HMS _Himalaya_ swept the desert with its searchlights at night. Passengers on ships passing through the canal cheered the troops and threw tins of cigarettes, tobacco and other goods into the canal for them to swim out and retrieve.

Waiting passively for the Turkish onslaught, however, was not to Malone's taste. He wanted General Melliss, as commander of the canal defences, to 'lash out a bit' and told him so. 'It is deadly to my mind to allow the Turks to concentrate day by day, and bit by bit, a big force,' he wrote. 'We ought to go and smash up the bits as they come along, debouching from the high country.'

The Wellingtons were not to get the chance. A week later, aerial reconnaissance confirmed that the main Turkish force was now 50 kilometres into the desert and in full retreat. On 7 February, Private William Ham died of his wounds, the only New Zealand casualty from the Suez Canal action. 'New Zealand's 1st on the Roll of Honour, in the Cause of the Age', was Malone's diary entry that night.

The defeat of the Turks at the canal took much of the excitement out of life for Malone's men, but there was to be no slackening of vigilance or effort. Troops stood to arms at dawn, guards paraded and patrols went out each day, and there was still plenty of digging to do. But with no leave to Suez or anywhere else, discipline problems began to surface. On 12 February, a drunken sentry was arrested for firing off live ammunition at random. On pay night, six men broke camp and went into a nearby town. A picket arrested them and they got ten days' detention at Abbasia military prison.

Entertainment for the troops helped somewhat to relieve the boredom. On 15 February, Malone put his Taranaki Company to work organising a concert for all units holding the line at El Kubri. Lit by a searchlight from the warship HMS _Ocean_ , a cast of Wellingtons, Lancashire territorials, Gurkhas and British seamen put on a show of songs and recitals, Maori haka, boxing and wrestling. The cheers of the 500-strong audience of soldiers and sailors made it a night to remember.

A successful action by a Gurkha regiment provided a brief distraction. The Gurkhas landed near Tor on the Red Sea, marched 16 kilometres by night, and in a dawn attack killed 60 of the enemy and captured another 100. 'The prisoners were of all ages,' wrote one of Malone's officers, 'from boys of 14 to old men of 60. Their weapons were equally as varied and ineffective as themselves, old swords and obsolete single loading rifles. Many had neither arms nor equipment.' Experiences like these and the easy repulse of the Turkish attack on the canal would give the Anzacs a dangerously false impression of the fighting qualities of their enemy.

At the end of February, the New Zealand Infantry Brigade returned to their camp at Zeitoun and to more hard desert training. On 3 March, 16,000 soldiers of the newly formed Australian and New Zealand Army Corps were sent on one of their toughest days in the field so far—a twelve-hour march across the desert for an all-arms attack training exercise. As the last battalion in the brigade, the Wellingtons marched under a continuous dust storm kicked up by the boots of the leading formations. Over a hundred men fell out of the ranks through exhaustion.

Another exercise involving Russell's mounted rifles brigade and the Australian Light Horse left Malone distinctly unimpressed. 'It was a poor show and neither of the Brigadiers in my opinion seem to have a sound knowledge of their work,' he wrote. 'I was not astonished because I have long since found that very few officers have a real knowledge of military principles.'

Malone may have spoken too soon. A night attack by the Wellingtons on two hills known as 'The Virgin's Breasts' was a shambles. Two of his men finally took the position alone and Malone himself was taken prisoner. If their commanding officer was not amused, his soldiers were delighted.

The tough desert training, however, was producing results. Godley—usually very sparing with praise—had already told his officers that the New Zealand Division was set to become the best in the British Army. Malone himself considered the New Zealand Infantry Brigade to be the best in the newly formed ANZAC Corps. More training, however, was needed if it was to be fully battle ready: 'The whole is a very fine body of men, but soldiers are not made under our circumstances in six months.'

Religion now came briefly into view in the form of a new Catholic chaplain, Father Richards, and disputes over what form battalion church services should take. Malone didn't like the cut of Father Richards: 'Looks more like a commercial traveller or actor than a priest and is a bit fat looking.' Decisions on religious services had been left to battalion commanders, and Malone had ordered separate services for each denomination. Every man, Catholic or Protestant, he argued, should have the right to attend the service of his choice.

The Wesleyan minister, Major Luxford, objected and claimed the right to hold combined services. According to Luxford, Malone complained bitterly about the historic persecution of Roman Catholics and refused to reconsider his decision. Whether the persecution issue played any part in Malone's decision is unknown, but he had little respect for Luxford's competence as an army chaplain. 'He is quite unsuited to his job,' Malone wrote. 'I am going to keep him up to his regimental work. He runs about too much to Cairo and everywhere, except our own lines.'

Much to his pleasure, Ida had now written to say that she would come to England to nurse any of her family wounded in the fighting in France, where the New Zealanders expected to be finally deployed. At this stage, she planned to bring only her youngest daughter Molly and stepdaughter Norah, leaving the two boys, Barney and Denis, behind at boarding school in Nelson.

Meanwhile, the immediate temptations of the flesh were ruthlessly ignored. After dinner at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, Malone was taken to the Palmariam dance hall—'a place where people sit and drink and smoke and get up as the spirit moves them to dance with ladies of doubtful character'. The dancing was chaste enough, he noted, but there was 'an undercurrent of impropriety about the whole thing'.

Dinner with Anzac commander General Birdwood was more to Malone's taste. He found Birdwood genial and affable with no hint of pretentiousness or conceit. Birdwood felt that the New Zealanders had improved enormously as a result of their training; Malone did not entirely agree, and on being asked his opinion gave it in full.

By now the New Zealand officers had been told that they were likely to embark for parts unnamed sometime between 15 and 22 March, and that they would be in line with British troops who had already seen action on the Western Front. 'Rumour has it that we all go to Cyprus,' Malone recorded that night, 'and then join other troops in readiness to land in Turkey or Greece, take Constantinople, settle the Turks, then go up to Austria through Servia [Serbia], Vienna and then on to Germany!'

On 6 March, Malone and his senior officers were invited to a ball at Cairo's Continental Hotel—'a gay scene in which officers of all arms and countries in scarlet, blue and gold danced with the elite of the city and its visitors'. As a student of the Duke of Wellington's campaigns against the French, Malone may have noted an interesting historical parallel—the glittering ball hosted by the Duchess of Richmond in Brussels on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo, exactly 100 years before.

The next day delivered a brief but poignant reminder of lost moments with his family. Malone was invited to afternoon tea with an expatriate French woman and her infant daughter. The little girl was about the same age as his own five-year-old Molly—'very fair, fluffy and shy. She speaks French so sweetly and is a very modest, sweet little soul . . . How I wished I had Mater and Molly especially here even for the couple of hours I had. Joy to come.'

March 10 was a day of brigade manoeuvres. The Wellington Battalion performed with distinction and was congratulated for its efforts by Brigadier Johnston. 'My men are splendid,' wrote Malone that night. 'Twenty miles tramping across the hot and dusty desert and attack. Yet they marched into camp as though they had done nothing. I am very proud of them. They are a long, long way ahead of the other battalions.'

The demeanour of his officers, however, was causing Malone some concern. After a particularly tough night exercise, he wrote: 'They are a bit too glum to my fancy and appeared as though they thought they were being a bit badly done by. Still they did their work and the spirit of the men in keeping on digging was splendid, evidence I am pleased to think of good discipline.'

Training on 11 March proved troublesome. Malone's horse Billy misbehaved to the point of being almost unmanageable—snorting, cavorting and eventually bolting with his rider along the road beside the former Khedive of Egypt's palace. The problem was camels—Billy hated them and they were constantly passing by as he and Malone rode along.

Meanwhile, General Melliss had written to Birdwood commending 'the conduct, discipline and excellent soldierly spirit' of the Wellington and Otago battalions during the defence of the Suez Canal. Malone, their commanding officer, was described by Melliss as 'an excellent soldier and disciplinarian' who would make a good brigadier.

According to his diary, Malone was told by Melliss that if the emergency had continued, he would have been given command of the five redoubts on the east bank of the canal, and in recognition of this extra responsibility promoted to the rank of brigadier. 'It would have been a grand change, though of course a greater responsibility. If the Turks do come on again, Genl Melliss will ask for us specially as reinforcements.'

Some days later, all units marched out into the desert for inspection by Sir Henry MacMahon, the British High Commissioner, and General Sir John Maxwell, commander of the British armed forces in Egypt. The troops had no sooner assembled than a swarm of locusts passed over, obscuring the sun. The men slashed at them with their rifles, killing thousands, but making no impression on the swarm. A strong wind then blew a cloud of dust over the infantry as each battalion marched past.

The troops considered that morning easily the worst they had experienced in Egypt so far, but on 22 March they paraded again before their generals. The dust was 'something awful—thicker than smoke in a bush fire near the saluting point'.

In spite of it all, Malone wanted to be nowhere else. On 24 March, he wrote to his cousin, the nun Sister Teresa Vasey, about his relief at being free of his law practice: 'I was very sick of churning away in it. If I get through the war all right, I doubt if I shall go back to my law profession. I am better suited where I now am.'

By now the New Zealanders were tired of the relentless training and were thirsting for action. 'Sight-seeing, even in the most wonderful land on earth, was not what they had come for. Pleasures commenced to pall, and training became tiresome. The glamour was wearing off from this land of sand and sin . . . Birdwood's 30,000 were spoiling for a fight. There was bravery in the air.'

Their day was not far off. In London, the War Council was making plans for a campaign that would break the military deadlock on the Western Front by opening a second front against Germany's ally Turkey in the east. Under this plan a combined British and French naval force would break through the Dardanelles Strait into the Sea of Marmara to threaten the Turkish capital Constantinople. Panicked by this show of force, the Turkish Government was expected to capitulate and withdraw from its alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Turkey's surrender would, it was reasoned, open a supply route through the Black Sea, allowing military supplies to reach the Russian armies fighting the Germans and Austrians in the east, and Russian wheat to be shipped to the west. Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania would be encouraged by Allied successes to join the Entente, and Russia, by a secret agreement with the British Government, would take control of Armenia and Constantinople.

Elements of the British Cabinet had even more ambitious plans. It was envisaged that once the British Navy was in control of the Sea of Marmara, it could link up with the Russian Navy in the Black Sea and make a combined assault up the Danube into the heart of Austria-Hungary. An alliance with Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania would allow the Allies to throw an army against the Austrian flank, relieving pressure on the Russians and giving them time to re-equip their forces.

The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill—'a romantic in strategy and enthusiast for military adventures'—originally wanted 50,000 Russian troops to be brought by sea to attack the Turks on the Gallipoli peninsula. 'The price to be paid in taking Gallipoli would no doubt be high,' he wrote to Britain's Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, but there would be no more war with Turkey. 'A good army of 50,000 men and sea power—that is the end of the Turkish menace.'

In January 1915, the Russians asked the British Government to send a force to the Dardanelles to take the pressure off their troops who were fighting the Turks in the Caucasus. It was agreed that once the Dardanelles had been forced and access gained to the Sea of Marmara, the Russians would, if possible, advance by land and sea against Constantinople.

The options finally settled on by the British and French high commands were either a combined attack by naval and ground forces—the latter landing first on the Gallipoli peninsula and destroying the Turkish forts—or a thrust through the Dardanelles by the fleet alone. The demand for troops on the Western Front ruled out the use of ground forces, and on 7 February a combined French and British fleet bombarded the outer forts protecting the Dardanelles.

On 18 March, the attack was renewed and this time with disastrous results. Turkish mines and shore gunfire put a third of the fleet out of action, sinking three old battleships, crippling three others, and drowning 700 British and French sailors. Acting alone, the British and French navies had failed; the soldiers would now have to finish the job.

The two naval attacks, however, had forewarned the Turks and they had rapidly built up their coastal defences. Trenches were dug and redoubts built, field guns and howitzers ranged on likely landing places, and barbed wire spread along vulnerable beaches. Any landing force could now expect stiff resistance.

On 28 March Malone took four days' leave, which he spent visiting the Egyptian temples at Luxor, accompanied by Major Temperley, brigade major of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade. 'Crossed the Nile, then by donkey to the temple of Queen Hetetu, a beautiful piece of work. Then to the tomb of Queen Nefertari, 2nd wife of Rameses II or III. Then to the temple of Medmet Habi.' The day's touring done, Malone wrote to Ida asking her to spend a second honeymoon with him after the war was over—floating down the Nile on a large riverboat.

On 29 March, 20,000 troops of the newly formed Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) paraded before its commander, General Sir Ian Hamilton, the last before leaving Egypt for the Dardanelles. Men and horses were in peak condition; equipment glittered and shone in the sun, while through the dust storm created by the mounted men marched the long-suffering infantry, their mouths, noses and ears clogged with dust.

The last hurrah was the so-called Battle of the Wazzir, which began when the Anzacs were granted final leave to Cairo. About 4 p.m. a riot broke out in the brothel quarter, most likely over VD-infected women and the price of 'filthy native liquors'. Grog shops were looted, furniture thrown out of the high windows and set on fire. When the fire engines arrived, the rioters tipped them over and cut the hoses. Egyptian police trying to disperse them were pelted with bottles, sticks and stones. Revolvers were fired into the crowd wounding five men.

A squadron of cavalry, aided by pickets from the Australian and New Zealand camps, finally restored order, but nearly a hundred men from the Wellington Battalion alone were now either under open arrest, in the guard tent, or still missing. Whatever Malone's thoughts about this major breach of battalion discipline, he kept them to himself. 'If they had burnt the quarter to the ground it would have been a good thing' was the only entry in his diary that night.

On 7 April—three days before leaving Egypt—Malone took his battalion on a final, 22-kilometre, march into the desert in full battle array. It was a feat of endurance for all hands, he conceded, but march discipline was excellent. 'I was very pleased and am so proud of the regiment.' The men in the front line had a much different view: 'All [the] men call Colonel Malone a rotter,' recalled Private William Hampton.

The MEF commanders now confirmed that the Allies would be landing on Turkish territory and that heavy fighting was expected. 'Deo Volente [God willing],' wrote Malone, 'we shall come out of it all right. Then for a big flank attack on the Austrians and Germans via Servia [Serbia]. Perhaps the Greeks, Italians, Bulgarians and Romanians will join in. If they [do] what a polyglot lot we shall be.'

On 8 April, the Maori contingent left for Malta and garrison duty. All leave was stopped and troops warned of a move in a few days. As a last act, Malone visited the graves of three of his men who had died of pneumonia or other causes during the battalion's training in Egypt. He took photographs and arranged to have them sent back to their relatives in New Zealand.

At dawn on Saturday, 10 April, Malone led the Taranaki and Ruahine companies of his battalion out of Zeitoun camp to entrain for Alexandria, where they would embark for the Allied base on the Mediterranean island of Lemnos. 'Silently they marched out of camp, no cheering, no bands playing . . . Sternly, as on a grim business, they pushed forward into the darkness of the night.'

The Force Gathers

'Here lay the Argonauts before they sailed away for the stormy Euxine and the dark wood of the war god, where hung the golden fleece. Here came Agamemnon and his Greeks before they fought the ten years' fight for Troy. These ancient Greeks live in immortal story, but they were not taller or stronger men, more beautiful in body, higher in heart, or of a more splendid daring than these young unblooded troops who had assembled from the ends of the earth.'

—A New Zealand soldier describes the arrival of the Anzacs at the Allied base on the Mediterranean island of Lemnos, April 1915

On the afternoon of 10 April, _Itonus_ and _Achaia_ , the two troopships carrying the Wellington Battalion, sailed from Alexandria for the Allied base at Mudros Harbour on the island of Lemnos. The _Itonus_ had been engaged in the Indian cattle trade before the war and, appropriately enough, was equipped with doors for embarking and disembarking animals.

Both ships were crewed by Lascars—Indian seamen serving on British ships—who in Malone's uncharitable opinion were 'miserable specimens of humanity'. No straw or mattresses had been provided and the troops slept anywhere they could—on the iron decks of the ships, on tables, and even in the lifeboats.

In a foretaste of the administrative shambles to come, the ships had not been properly provisioned for the voyage to Lemnos. The Australian troopships were supplied with fresh meat, tinned vegetables, flour, oatmeal, sugar and condensed milk; the New Zealanders had to live on their emergency rations—bully beef and biscuits—until landfall four days later.

More seriously, the ships sailed from Alexandria without a naval escort and without enough lifeboats and lifebelts for both soldiers and crew. The first officer of the _Itonus_ told Malone that if the ship was torpedoed or involved in a collision, the soldiers would get all the lifeboats and the Lascar crew would have to 'swim or drown'.

According to his diary, Malone insisted that the crew should have priority in any emergency. His men, he said, would take what was left of the boats, cling to any floating debris, and hope to be rescued by other vessels within a few hours. 'Still,' he mused, 'it is not pleasant to think that some of us may drown like rats.'

The ships were now on the alert for enemy submarines and torpedo boats, one of which had recently attacked a troop transport off the Turkish port city of Smyrna. Malone ordered his men to be ready to line the side of the ship and spatter any attacking vessel with rifle fire. 'Some of the officers laughed at the idea,' he wrote, 'but I thought it better to be prepared for anything and not get put out without a fight.'

In the event, a fierce northerly gale was the worst problem faced during the voyage to Lemnos. In heavy seas, a steam launch and two barges being towed by the _Itonus_ broke adrift and floated away. The ship's crew attempted to take the launch in tow, but the line snapped as it was almost alongside and it was smashed and sunk by the ship's propellers. Malone, who had put his men on standby to rescue the crew, admitted to being mightily relieved that they were not needed.

On 14 April, both ships arrived safely at Mudros Harbour. Inside the anti-submarine net stretching across the harbour entrance the forces of the Empire were gathering. At anchor lay an armada of over 200 ships—British and French battleships, cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and submarines, troop transports, trawlers and hospital ships. There were battalions of the British 29th Division, French and Indian troops, and soon Australians and New Zealanders.

Here lay the battleship _Agamemnon_ with a shell hole in her funnel and the top of her rear mast shot away—the result of action against Turkish shore batteries a month before. Close by was the _Queen Elizabeth_ , the largest and most powerful battleship in the British Navy. The _Queen_ had fired some 500 shells against the Turkish forts and had sustained some minor damage. She was soon to be in action again, her 15-inch guns covering the landing of the British 29th Division at Helles. 'A great sight,' Malone wrote in his diary. 'Britannia rules the waves right enough!'

After four months' training in Egypt, Malone admitted to being glad to see European faces again. The Greek women of the island, he noted, were good-looking but mostly old; the younger ones were kept well out of sight of the thousands of soldiers and seamen who now roamed the island. The children appeared healthy and good-looking, the men strong but not tall. His men purchased nuts and lemons from the villagers and bottles of rough black wine. Others bought whisky ('Lemnos Lightning') that had been distilled in a cellar below the village's Greek Orthodox church.

Malone and other senior officers were now briefed for the first time on Hamilton's plan to capture the Gallipoli peninsula. The main part of the landing would be carried out by the British 29th Division under General Hunter-Weston. It would land on four beaches at Cape Helles, on the southernmost tip of the peninsula, and advance north to what were thought to be the commanding heights of the Achi Baba ridge.

Meanwhile, the Royal Naval Division would mount a feint attack at Bulair in the far north of the peninsula to delay the movement of Turkish reinforcements to the south. French troops would land on the Asiatic shore of the Dardanelles to distract the Turks and prevent them from shelling British troops landing at Helles.

The Anzacs would be given the easiest part of the landing as they were not fully trained and were reputed to be undisciplined and hard to lead. They would land midway up the peninsula near a headland called Gaba Tepe, an area thought to be lightly defended. Once ashore, they would secure the heights of the Sari Bair range, then move south-east and occupy the Kilid Bahr range which dominated the Narrows. Surprise would be the key element as the Turks would not be expecting a landing in such difficult country.

A covering force consisting of the 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade would land before dawn and establish a beachhead. The 1st Australian Division would then land and widen the perimeter won by the covering force. Finally, a composite division of Australian and New Zealand troops (the NZ & A Division) would land and continue the advance across the peninsula towards Kilid Bahr and the Narrows.

Hamilton's staff estimated enemy strength on the peninsula at about 34,000 men in four divisions, but their intelligence indicated that the Turkish Army was poorly equipped, inefficient and demoralised by a succession of defeats. The final report circulated by General Headquarters on the eve of the landings predicted that the Turks would offer 'energetic resistance' to the Allied landing, but once the troops were firmly established on the peninsula they might then crumble away.

Getting safely ashore, however, would be the hard part. Birdwood warned his troops that they could expect a very rough time until the enemy had been pushed back from the first objectives of the landing. Supplying them ashore would also be difficult because of the rugged terrain on the peninsula. Every man must therefore carefully conserve his supplies of food, water and ammunition.

Birdwood was right to be concerned. The Turkish commander on the peninsula, General Von Sanders, had arranged his forces carefully to oppose the expected landing. His six divisions were divided into three groups—two to be deployed to Bulair in the far north; two to the south to guard against landings at Cape Helles or Gaba Tepe; another two to the Asian side of the Dardanelles to protect Besika Bay and Kum Kale. Defences would be light wherever the enemy was expected to land, but two divisions would be stationed nearby and ready to move.

Meanwhile, there were route marches ashore for the Anzacs and regular boat drill. The men climbed down rope ladders loaded with rifles and equipment, were rowed ashore and then back to the ships. Malone caught his first sight of French and English regular troops and was not impressed. 'Our NZ men stand out as something far superior,' he wrote. 'Grand stalwart soldiers.'

By now Ida and her family were on their way to England. Malone admitted to being relieved that she had changed her mind about leaving their two youngest sons, Denis and Barney, behind at boarding school in Nelson. The boys, he was sure, would be overjoyed to be with their mother again, and would enjoy their time aboard ship and in 'the old country'.

Ida had sent her husband some lavender, which he put in the locket he wore around his neck along with his identity disc. In return, he sent her some flowers that he had picked ashore on Lemnos Island. 'I picked them for you, thinking how lovely it would be if only you were with me. Some day we will pick flowers together again—please God . . . Pray for me always that I may do right.'

On 17 April, Malone and other senior officers were called to Godley's headquarters on the transport _Minnewaska_ to receive detailed instructions for the landing. They were told that the Anzacs could expect to land under fire and to have to fight for a foothold on the peninsula. Every officer and man was to carry enough bully beef and biscuits for three days, but no blankets or ground sheets. As water supplies ashore were likely to be scarce, drinking from water bottles would be restricted.

That evening, Malone went for a 5-kilometre walk ashore, returning by moonlight to his bunk on the _Itonus_. He left no record of the thoughts that passed through his mind that night, but ensuring that his men were properly briefed and equipped for the battle to come must surely have been uppermost.

The next day, Malone lunched with Brigadier John Monash, commander of the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade. Monash showed him a map of the Gallipoli peninsula with the latest aerial reconnaissance marked up. The Turks, it was clear, had covered key points on the peninsula with trenches, redoubts, gun emplacements and batteries. Malone, however, remained confident: 'Our artillery is going to give them a hot time, a hotter time than they will give us.'

Ashore on Mudros, he sighted a battalion of British regulars (Lancashire Fusiliers) and again was unimpressed. 'Their faces are not good, they look very young boys many of them. They are small men. Nothing smart about them. Good stuff no doubt, but if they are, as they have been called, the flower of the British Army, then I understand Genl Godley's statement that the NZ Divn should be the best in the army.' On the whole, the New Zealanders 'looked like gentlemen' and the Tommies did not. 'As for the French they look very slack and soft.'

Secret orders for the landing were now issued to senior officers of the landing force. 'It's going to be a great fight and we must succeed,' Malone wrote in his diary. 'The preparation seems very thorough. Our Genl Birdwood is one of K's [Kitchener's] men and K's motto is "Thorough". From what I have seen of Birdwood he takes after his chief.' In the matter of thoroughness at least Malone was to be quickly disillusioned.

The New Zealanders would go ashore well loaded: 200 rounds of ammunition, an oil sheet, extra food and iron rations, and some firewood—about 35 kilograms all up. Malone arranged for every platoon commander to be issued with a supply of morphia tablets to give wounded men quick relief from pain.

Every man in his battalion would also be given a pound of raisins to take ashore. With these, plus three days' rations, Malone was confident the men could last five days without further supplies. 'In 5 days surely we shall be masters of enough of the Peninsula to give us plenty of water and enable landing regularly of full supplies etc.'

On 24 April, Malone and other senior officers met with Godley to discuss final arrangements for the landing. Earlier he had been told that he would command the New Zealand Infantry Brigade as Brigadier Earl Johnston was sick with gastric influenza and still in Alexandria. Birdwood now decided that General Harold ('Hooky') Walker would take command of the brigade instead. It was an unsurprising decision—Walker was much senior to Malone, a British regular officer and therefore a known quantity; Malone was a territorial officer, a colonial and at this point in time untested in combat.

At 2 p.m. that day, the fleet that was to support the landing sailed from Mudros Harbour for the Dardanelles. The battleship _Queen Elizabeth_ led the way through the anti-submarine barrier at the entrance to the harbour, followed by a line of lesser battleships, cruisers, torpedo boats and destroyers. The troops on the transports cheered wildly as each ship passed, bands played their national anthems, and the Australians sang _Australia Will be There_. 'Now all men knew that the hour had come. Now they were on the threshold of great happenings. There was no more discontent.'

The day before, Hamilton had issued a final message to his troops:

Soldiers of France and of the King. Before us lies an adventure unprecedented in modern war. Together with our comrades of the fleet we are about to force a landing upon an open beach in face of positions which have been vaunted by our enemies as impregnable. The landing will be made good by the help of God and the Navy, the positions will be stormed, and the war brought one step nearer to a glorious close.

The Landing: 25 April

'All through the afternoon the Turks pressed on the thinning line, creeping up through the scrub, cutting off small parties, sniping, machine gunning, crawling out on the exposed flanks, enfilading the torn ranks, and all the time their terrible shrapnel pelted and tore. Smoke, dust, heat, the air whining, singing, trembling with the screeching shells and the flying fragments, rifle barrels red hot with constant firing, dead and dying all around—this was war.'

—Ormond Burton, who went ashore with the New Zealanders at Anzac Cove on 26 April 1915

At daybreak on 25 April, _Itonus_ and _Achaia_ weighed anchor and headed for the Gallipoli peninsula accompanied by some 200 warships, transports, trawlers and hospital ships. Passing Cape Helles, where the British 29th Division was landing, the troops had a grandstand view of the British warships bombarding Turkish positions, their shells bursting high on the ridges ashore.

Watching through binoculars, Malone could see transports steaming in close to shore and landing troops in boats and barges. Anticipating an easy landing for his own men that afternoon, he was in a confident mood, writing in his diary: 'The weather conditions seem perfect and I cannot but think that our enormous artillery power will blast most of the Turkish resistance off the face of the peninsula.'

Hamilton's plans for the landing were straightforward. His Anzacs would land and capture key points on the Sari Bair range, including Chunuk Bair and Koja Chemen Tepe (Hill 971). They would then advance across the Gallipoli peninsula to a point north of Maidos on the shores of the Dardanelles Strait, cutting off the Turkish Army in the south and preventing it from being reinforced from the north. The artillery would complete the job by cutting all communication by sea between the Turkish Army, Constantinople and points on the Asian coast.

Ashore, and unknown to the New Zealanders, the plan was beginning to unravel. The covering force—3000 men of the 1st Australian Division—was landed 2 kilometres too far to the north. Instead of low hills and a plain leading across the peninsula to the Dardanelles Straits, they were confronted with a narrow beach dominated by almost sheer scrub-covered cliffs and ravines.

Pushing rapidly inland the men had lost contact with their units in the rough and broken country. Small groups were now fighting off fierce Turkish counter-attacks while others, far inland, had been cut off and killed to a man. With no artillery protection and their officers wounded or dead, leaderless men took cover from heavy shrapnel fire in the gullies or straggled back to the beach.

Aboard _Itonus_ and _Achaia_ the excitement was growing as the hour of the landing drew near. The troops attended a church parade and then checked their weapons, clothing and rations for the last time. They had been told that the Australians would make the first landing and would be reinforced by the New Zealand Infantry Brigade during the day. Most of the men were desperate to get ashore and into action before it was all over.

At 1 p.m. the two transports dropped anchor 2 kilometres off Anzac Cove. Shells from a Turkish warship or the forts in the Dardanelles were throwing columns of water into the air nearby. Ashore, shells from the British warships were raising huge clouds of dust and men could be seen climbing the gullies and spurs and pushing forward over the ridges. The rattle of musketry from rifles and machine guns was incessant.

First off the _Itonus_ were Malone and his headquarters staff, along with the machine-gunners, signallers and stretcher-bearers. In the group were Malone's adjutant, Captain 'Hellfire Mac' McDonnell, and the 'incompetent' Sergeant Major Dallinger. McDonnell had by now come to heel, but Malone had sacked Dallinger from his previous position and had him court-martialled for insolence. A lasting peace, it seemed, had at last been secured.

The troops scrambled down rope ladders and onto the torpedo boat HMS _Bulldog_ , which headed for the beach. Two kilometres offshore they were transferred to small boats and rowed towards the shore. 'The Turks welcomed us with shrapnel and sprayed up the sea all about us, but very few of us got hit,' Malone recorded that night. He himself was one of them, sustaining a slight wound to the neck from shrapnel or a spent bullet.

What they saw on landing was a strip of sand 25 metres wide and just 400 metres long, crowded with men, mules and horses, stacked high with ammunition, stores, tanks of water, and wireless and dressing stations. Medical staff were attempting to treat hundreds of wounded men under continuous machine-gun and shrapnel fire. Steady streams of reinforcements were still arriving by boat and barge while others pushed off to the hospital ships and transports with their cargoes of wounded.

Under the headland of Ari Burnu two boats full of dead Australians had drifted onto the beach after being machine-gunned from Turkish positions on the headland. On the beach a pile of thirty or forty dead men lay waiting to be buried. Everywhere were shallow graves marked with crosses made from biscuit-tin boards.

Once ashore, Malone was ordered to send two platoons to support the 16th Australian Battalion, now fighting hard at the head of Monash Valley and near what was to become Courtney's Post. Under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire, they dug in with the Australians and held on, stopping the Turks at a point vital to the defence of the Anzac bridgehead.

Private Hayden went out under heavy fire to cover up boxes of ammunition, Lance-Corporal Loney to attend to a wounded man. Both were killed. Company Sergeant-Major Bonar steadied the men and saved a number of wounded by going out and bringing them back to cover. 'They [the Wellingtons],' wrote Malone, 'got messed up by the Australians and lost in a short time some 15 killed and 19 wounded.'

At first, the landing had gone well. By 6 a.m. the Australians were in control of the first and second inland ridges, and by 7 a.m. small parties had reached the third ridge. About 4000 Australians were now ashore and were opposed by probably no more than 700 Turks. By 10 a.m., however, the Turkish 19th Division under Mustapha Kemal had been thrown into the battle and the advance parties were overrun or pushed back.

Fierce counter-attacks forced the Australians off Baby 700, a key feature on the third inland ridge, and by 3 p.m. they were fighting desperately for the vital high ground above Monash Valley. By 5 p.m.—the time the Wellingtons landed—the remnants of seven battalions, Australian and New Zealand, were being driven back to the sea.

'The Turks came on again and again, with their patchwork uniforms, old-fashioned rifles, and screams of "Allah!" Cut down in swathes, the second and third waves would come on over the bodies of the dead and dying. Units were cut off and killed to a man.' No quarter was given or prisoners taken. Men fought it out hand to hand or died on their rifles.

Expecting another Turkish counter-attack at dawn, the British commanders ashore—Godley and Bridges—told Birdwood that the landing might have to be abandoned and the entire force evacuated. Birdwood advised Hamilton, who consulted his naval commanders, De Robeck, Thursby and Keys. Back came the reply—there would be no evacuation, the troops would have to dig in and stick it out. 'You have got through the difficult business,' wrote Hamilton, 'now you have only to dig, dig, dig until you are safe.'

Malone's reaction to the possibility of evacuation was brief: 'Personally, I could see nothing to require it.' A more pressing problem was the confusion and disorganisation ashore. 'On paper it was all right, but in practice no good. Still Britishers always muddle through somehow or other. The Heads like General Birdwood and Godley plan all right, but the executive officers in the main are no good. Have no idea of order, method etc.'

The muddle on the beach that morning was worse than Malone could have imagined—among other things, Hamilton's staff had failed to provide adequate facilities for the evacuation of the wounded. On board the one hospital ship were over 600 wounded men with just two doctors, no nurses or medical orderlies and no anaesthetics. The hospitals of Alexandria were four days away across the Mediterranean.

As for the landing that morning, Malone was critical, writing in his diary:

The Australians had carried the heights surrounding the bay, but instead of being content with that and then digging in hard and fast had scallywagged into the interior some 3 or 4 miles, got scattered and so became a prey to the Turks, who had been surprised in the 1st place and had (it is said) only some 500 defending troops at our landing place. Their troops . . . were brought against the scattered Australians and slaughtered them.

Striding along the beach in search of more tools for his men up on the ridge, Malone came across a group of sleepers. 'Quoth I to one group "who are you fellows?" Lo and behold, they were Generals Birdwood, Godley and Bridges and their staff, and, lo and behold, there were quite a number of picks and shovels in their quarters—the open beach. I soon got these tools and sent them up to my men.' The reaction of the Anzac top brass to his assault on their sleeping arrangements and the purloining of their tools is not recorded.

The generals had much to be sleepless about. The attack that morning had lost cohesion and direction in the rough country behind the landing beach, and had so far failed to reach any of its objectives. Failure to land the artillery had left their troops exposed to murderous shrapnel fire and large numbers of men were now sheltering in gullies or straggling back to the beach. The small Turkish force that had opposed the landing so tenaciously was being steadily reinforced and more troops were expected to arrive in the following days. Under a cold and persistent drizzle, the British commanders could only pray for an end to a disastrous day.

At five the following morning, the Wellington Battalion's West Coast and Hawke's Bay companies landed. They were met on the beach by Malone, 'cheery as ever' but still growling at the disorder he found everywhere. 'Probably nothing would have pleased him better than to have been detailed with his battalion to tidy up the beach,' wrote one of his senior officers.

The Wellingtons breakfasted on hard biscuits, jam and tea, and at 9.45 were ordered to move to the left flank where a strong Turkish counter-attack had developed against the line held by 1 Brigade of the Australian Division on Walker's Ridge. At the foot of the ridge they were met by General Walker and shouts for reinforcements from the hard-pressed men at the top. Here the ridge opened out onto a flat area about 160 metres above the beach, which was now under heavy Turkish machine-gun and rifle fire.

After a hard climb in single file to the top of the ridge, the Wellingtons dumped their packs and were hurried by sections into the firing line. Reinforced by Malone's men, the Australian commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Braund, led a bayonet charge against the Turks who were moving steadily down from Russell's Top. Pushing through the scrub against the fire of a hidden enemy, the two Wellington companies alone suffered over 40 per cent casualties.

After more shouts for reinforcements, Malone climbed the ridge to assess the situation for himself. He passed scores of unwounded Australians lying all along the track and finally reached Lieutenant-Colonel Braund. Malone demanded to know why Braund had left his own men down the ridge and was now calling for reinforcements from the New Zealanders.

'He didn't know and knew nothing. He had no defensive position, no plan, nothing but a murderous notion that the only thing to do was to plunge troops out of the nek of the ridge into the jungle beyond. The Turks were shooting down all the bits of track that led from the ridge outwards and dropping our men wholesale.'

Malone got Braund to push all his troops forward into the front line and shift his headquarters to be up with them. He then brought his remaining two companies halfway up the ridge and went forward again 'to get a grip of things'. He was met by a wave of Australians rushing down the track and yelling 'Fix bayonets, the Turks are coming!!' Malone returned quickly to his men, ordered two machine guns and a line of his best marksmen into position, and got ready to repel the attack. 'I really believed we were in for a solid thing and told the men we would have to stick it out at all costs.'

No Turks appeared and Malone went forward again to investigate. He found that his second-in-command, Major Hart, with the help of Captain Cox, had steadied the men at a critical moment and stopped what could have been a panic-stricken retreat. Malone sent his Ruahine Company forward 'to help stiffen things up' and established his headquarters near the top of the ridge, where his men spent the night digging in.

Braund now asked Malone to send him more reinforcements. Malone refused. In that case, said Braund, he would have to retire to his first position. Malone told him he should never have left it. Asked to explain why he persisted with his costly attacks on the Turkish line, Braund said he feared that if he did not push on, his men would run away. That, responded a furious Malone, was no reason to aimlessly sacrifice his men.

Meanwhile, the Anzacs hung on at the crest of the ridge, unable because of the thick scrub to see their enemies. Worse, they were now crowded into an area some 80 to 100 metres wide with little or no trench cover. Too densely packed, they were decimated by Turkish machine-gun and rifle fire.

About 3 p.m. the order was given to 'fix bayonets' and for the whole line to charge. The attack carried the line forward for some distance, but again casualties were heavy. Anzac commanders had yet to learn that bayonet charges against entrenched positions held by determined troops had no place on Gallipoli.

At 11 p.m. the Turks attacked all round the Anzac perimeter, blowing bugles and howling 'Allah! Alllah!' but were beaten back with heavy casualties. Braund, now commanding a mixed force of Australians and New Zealanders, sent back a cryptic message from Russell's Top: 'Will hold until otherwise ordered. No officers except self and one other. Want picks and shovels. Also water.'

On Walker's Ridge the wounded were brought back from the front line but left on the track as no stretchers were available. 'They were all very brave,' wrote Malone. 'No cries or even groans . . . Many greeted me cheerfully. "Well Colonel I've got it." Many smiled. My men are wonderful. The world never saw better men or braver, I am sure.'

Malone estimated his casualties from the first hour's action on Walker's Ridge at 45 killed and about 150 wounded. 'The companies were (1st) Wellington West Coast, (2nd) Hawke's Bay,' Malone wrote that night, 'some 450 of the best soldier men in the world: They were being sent to chaos and slaughter, nay murder.'

He was particularly incensed by the loss of Lieutenant Wilson and almost all of his machine-gun crew in the attack earlier that day. 'It was skirmishing with machine guns. Quite wrong. My officers knew better but Col B [Braund] took the attitude [that] I am your senior officer and I order you to do what I tell you. They did it, to our frightful cost . . . It made me angry to so have to lose my splendid men.'

At one the next morning, Braund came to Malone and asked for more ammunition. Again Malone refused, telling Braund that he was wasting enough of it already and only letting the Turks know that he was 'scared'. Braund insisted but Malone was adamant: if Braund wanted ammunition, he would have to get General Walker to authorise it. Without a direct order from Walker, the Australians would get nothing from him.

Malone now asked Walker to withdraw the whole Australian brigade and let the position be taken over by his Wellington Battalion. The Australians, he told Walker, were 'a source of weakness' and must go. Walker went back with Malone to the ridge to assess the situation for himself. 'We struck lots of Australians who hadn't moved,' wrote Malone. 'I ordered them up and drove them ahead, pelting the leading ones on the track where they stopped with stones and putting my toe into the rear ones.'

Five hours later, Walker withdrew 1 Australian Brigade, which had fought for three days and nights on Walker's Ridge and lost 450 officers and men. Malone admitted to being enormously relieved to see them go. 'I believe they [the Australians] are spasmodically brave and probably the best of them had been killed or wounded. They have been, I venture to think, badly handled and trained officers in most cases no good.'

Malone conceded that Braund was 'a brave chap' for holding on in the thick of the fighting, but wanted him court-martialled for incompetence. 'It makes me mad when I think of my grand men being sacrificed by his incapacity and folly . . . I would not have minded losing the men, if only in a fair go, but to have them thrown away is heartbreaking.'

Malone's anger was understandable. He had seen two companies of his battalion taken from his command and pushed under fire into the dense 'jungle' beyond without any apparent plan. But it was also unfair to Braund, whose tenacious defence of Walker's Ridge on the night of 25/26 April had ensured the survival of the Anzac line.

The attacks on the 27th, of which Malone was so critical, had extended that line across the head of Russell's Top and closed a dangerous gap through which Turkish snipers had infiltrated and were causing heavy casualties. As historian Robert Rhodes James put it, 'The whole Anzac position might have been lost but for the dour defence of the New Zealanders and Australians under Colonel Braund at the head of Russell's Top.'

Under Malone's direction, the Wellingtons now dug forward onto Russell's Top and across the plateau until they overlooked Monash Gully. By dawn the next day their machine guns were in position, all troops under cover and Walker's Ridge was secure. 'We go on digging and are shelled and rifle fired at night and day, but thanks to our excellent digging our casualties get less,' Malone wrote in his diary.

With his men dug in all around, Malone set himself up in a shelter of his own—'part dug-out, part sandbag, no roof '—perched on a ridge 130 metres above the sea. 'It is a delightful spot in very sharp contrast to the fighting going on,' he wrote.

Sleep would have been difficult: the Turks kept up an incessant tattoo of machine-gun and rifle fire all night; Turkish shells roared overhead from the Dardanelles and plunged into the sea near the ships below.

All along the line, Turkish machine-gunners sprayed the parapets, killing sentries peering unwarily into the tangled scrub. By day their snipers harassed the parties carrying food, water and ammunition up the steep track from the beach. Malone ordered his company commanders to send their best shots to his headquarters where they were organised into a specialist team to hunt down the snipers.

On 28 April, Braund, who was slightly deaf, failed to hear a sentry's challenge and was shot dead. Malone almost went the same way a few days later. 'Last night I had a close call,' he confided to his diary. 'I was reconnoitring with General Walker and the snipers were trying to get us. At last a bullet just cut my hair on the back of my neck, and goodness knows it is short enough. Still it wanted cutting!'

What pleased him, however, was his lack of fear under fire, something he did not expect. 'I was inclined to think that I was too high strung to stand the racket of a real hard war. It is not so. Dreadful things are all around, yet no dread,' he wrote on 29 April. 'It seems the same with all of us.' Somewhat insensitively, he refused Godley's offer of a regular issue of rum to steady the nerves of his men, who were now constantly under fire. 'I told him I should be sorry to think that my men wanted "Dutch courage".'

Earlier in the day of his 'close call', Malone had succeeded in setting up a phone connection, via brigade headquarters, with a howitzer battery and British warships down in the cove. He was now able to direct fire onto Turkish artillery positions and then onto their trenches. 'When they ran out our men got up and let them have it. We gave them fits and got some of our own back. Our men were delighted.'

Overall, however, the tactical situation at Anzac was grim. By nightfall on the first day, 26,000 of Hamilton's troops, including over 3000 New Zealanders, were ashore. By nightfall on the second day, they had been forced back to a line of outposts on the second ridge that would not move for the next three months—Russell's Top, Courtney's, Quinn's and Steele's posts. The plan for taking the Sari Bair heights followed by a rapid advance to Kilid Bahr and the Narrows was no more.

Birdwood's headquarters, however, assured the Anzacs that the Turkish forces had suffered very heavy losses. According to its intelligence bulletins, Constantinople was overflowing with wounded, all hospitals were full, and there was a severe shortage of medicine. Turkish troops were said to be exhausted and a good many of those facing the Anzacs now had no heart for the fight. In some cases, Turkish officers were having to drive their men into action with boot, sword and revolver.

The Allies, however, were hardly in better shape. After nearly a week of fighting, the British and dominion forces had lost nearly 400 officers and over 8500 men, 2650 of them killed. 'Confidently expecting a walkover, the Army was numbed by the reality.'

At dawn on 1 May, Mustapha Kemal made his final attempt to throw the Anzacs back into the sea. The Turks opened a heavy fire on the Wellington Battalion's position, which faded when Malone called in supporting fire from a battery of howitzers. One thousand Turks moving across the New Zealand positions towards the Australians were then 'slaughtered' by rifle and machine-gun fire. 'It was most stimulating, just what our men wanted.'

On the night of 2/3 May, Birdwood struck back with an 'ambitious and ill-conceived' attempt to capture the key point of Baby 700. Mishandled by Godley, Johnston, and Moore, the commanding officer of the Otago Battalion, the attack was bloodily repulsed. Malone thought the plan doomed from the start. 'They tried to go in where the Turks have been attacking for days,' he wrote in his diary. Corporal William Copeland, whom Malone had just recommended for promotion to officer rank, was killed that day within three metres of him. 'Poor lad, shot through the heart. Not a sound.'

By 4 May, both sides were exhausted. The Turks had lost an estimated 14,000 men, due mostly to Mustapha Kemal's 'bloody and unimaginative tactics'. The remnants of the two forces were now clinging to a front line at no point more than 1000 metres from the sea. The beach below it was under observation on both flanks and exposed to enemy shrapnel fire. At the posts lining the second ridge—Courtney's, Quinn's and Steele's—the Turkish and Australian trenches were in places barely five metres apart. Another massed attack by the brave and dogged Turkish infantry could well end in 'bloody annihilation on the beaches'.

Despite the conditions, Malone was pleased with the high morale of his men: 'Everyone jokes, smiles and laughs. Good men pass out and we don't wince. Our turn next perhaps but we are doing our job and it's all in a day's march.'

Malone's dugout, high on the ridge overlooking the beach and the sea, was equipped with two oil sheets to keep off the sun; a bunk made of sandbags; twigs and leaves for a mattress, and an old scrim sack for a blanket. He slept with his greatcoat on and another greatcoat from a dead Australian as a coverlet. He washed in a pint of water at night, saving the water for a sponge down the next morning and perhaps again the next day. What was left was often used to wash a pair of socks. Four bayonets stuck into the sandbag wall served as pegs to hang up equipment and other personal gear.

In spite of constant Turkish artillery, machine guns and rifle fire, Malone was pleased to report that very few of his men were now being killed or wounded—'thanks to their splendid discipline and good digging'. He calculated that his sniping team was now 'bagging' about fifty snipers a day, which meant that he could now send some men to the beach every day for a swim and a spell from the trenches.

The lack of munitions and basic equipment, however, was causing him immense frustration. He complained to his diary:

I am getting sick of it. The war is a 'joke war'. Ever since August last we have been getting 'notes' from the front, all emphasising that modern war is a question of 1) artillery, 2) digging, 3) telephones, 4) periscopes . . . but when we want artillery to help us, phones and periscopes to enable us to work quickly and safely, we get almost nil results.

Our howitzers are short of ammunition, our 18-pounders don't seem to be able to get into action, and the naval guns can't talk soldier gunnery . . . If it were not so serious—the penalty—one could roar with laughter at the preach and no practice . . . The Briton is a muddler all right. Still he gets there . . . If only some of the German thoroughness could be put into us. What a people we would make.

The day before, Malone had armed himself with a rifle and gone scouting alone into Turkish territory to see if the British warships could fire directly onto new enemy trenches without hitting his positions. Corporal Sievers went after him with a warning that he could be mistaken for a Turk and shot by his own snipers. Malone went back 'quick and lively', but not without securing a Turkish pack containing a greatcoat and blanket, which he planned to use as a cover for his table.

In the scrub he had found the bodies of several dead Turks. 'Poor devils, been there since 25 April . . . some women are wondering about them and will weep. I will try and get them buried tonight.' He regretted, however, not being able to bury his own men, as it was almost certain death to do so.

Offsetting his grief at the loss of good men was an intense pride in how his citizen-soldiers had fought since the landing: 'There are no troops like ours to look at, and for work. No regiment in the world could have done better. Into action on the 27th, 40% loss of troops engaged, fight and dig night and day for 8 days. No blankets. All food and water to be carried up here a long way. Living in trenches. Yet cheery and unshaken.'

Malone noted the 'innumerable acts of special bravery' performed by his men. In one of them, Private Sydney Roberts had carried three wounded men 'out of the inferno', had gone back for another and was killed himself.

For the New Zealand Infantry Brigade there was now to be a new deployment. With casualties by now at over 8500, Hamilton instructed Birdwood to make no further attempts to advance at Anzac but to send two of his strongest infantry brigades to Helles. Here they would support British and French forces in their so far unsuccessful attempts to advance up the peninsula to Kilid Bahr and the Narrows. 'We are sorry to go in spite of everything,' Malone wrote. 'I wanted to get at the Turks on our left and I think it could be done. Still we must do as we are ordered.'

Malone was to get his wish. On 5 May, he made use of a recently installed heliograph to signal Turkish positions to the battleship _Majestic_ , then standing off Anzac Cove. The _Majestic_ opened fire and hit the Turkish trenches with its first salvo. A howitzer battery then shelled the survivors who by then were 'running for their lives', and his men shot down many more. Another bombardment, followed by a determined advance by his battalion, he was sure, would have swept the Turks out of their front-line trenches.

Helles and Back

'They advanced over 1200 yards of open ground swept by shell, machine gun and rifle fire, crossing three lines of trenches filled with British regulars, but refusing to take shelter in them. As they went, shrapnel slashed them—then machine gun and rifle fire—men began to fall, but the rest bored steadily on and on. After passing 200–300 yards beyond the front line of British trenches, the Wellingtons were hit by enfilade fire from both flanks as well as shrapnel. Only then did they dig in and begin to fire, for it was impossible to go further . . . The British troops have christened my men the "White Gurkhas". We are very proud of the sobriquet and mean to live up to it.'

—Malone describes his battalion's advance at Helles on 8 May 1915

On 5 May, the Wellington Infantry Battalion turned Walker's Ridge over to the Nelson Battalion of the Royal Naval Division and prepared to embark for Cape Helles. Malone's men were struck by the youth and inexperience of the newcomers—'ignorant and bewildered, strangely immature compared with the hard-bitten cursing Australians . . . and in such wild surroundings quite out of their depth.'

The Wellingtons' transport south was the destroyer _Mosquito_ and the crew made them welcome with generous quantities of coffee and rum. Malone got a cup of cocoa, biscuits, two oranges and chocolate creams. 'Quite a feast.' On the beach where they landed lay tangled heaps of the barbed wire the British 29th Division had faced during its landing on 25 April. To their left lay the hulk of the steamship _River Clyde_ from which troops had been disgorged onto the beach only to be slaughtered by Turkish machine-gun fire. Above them was the shattered fort of Sedd-el-Bahr, its guns dismounted by the fire of the battleships.

The contrast between Helles and Anzac could not have been greater. In place of ravines and scrub-covered hills was open country with fruit trees, olive groves, crops, streams, fields of poppies and daisies, old towers, cottages and wells. French and African troops, Senegalese and colonial Zouaves in baggy trousers moved along roads alive with traffic.

The Wellingtons shouldered their weapons, ammunition and equipment and marched inland, bivouacking that night in green fields bounded by elm and walnut trees. Here they could rest briefly after ten days of fighting and digging at Anzac.

Helles, Malone noted, was ideal fighting country, open and undulating. He could see French and British troops advancing but no Turks, yet rifle fire went on all day and night. He was happy, however, to be clear of the Australians, and confident also that the battle at Helles was in capable hands, writing, 'It is a relief to get in where war is being waged scientifically.'

After heavy fighting, the Allies had established a line running across the peninsula about four kilometres from Cape Helles. The area was flat, open and cramped, and all of it could be swept by shellfire, including the landing beaches. The French held the right flank, the Royal Naval Division the centre, with the 29th Division and some Indian troops on the left. All Allied attacks in the first two days of the Battle of Krithia had been repelled by murderous machine-gun fire from a Turkish redoubt a kilometre in front of British lines and two strongpoints in the fir copses on either flank.

The Allied offensive was to be renewed on 8 May, the third day of the battle. The objective was again the village of Krithia and a hill called Achi Baba, which Hamilton and his staff believed was the vital high ground dominating the Narrows. Hamilton had favoured a night advance against the Turks followed by a dawn attack, but had allowed Hunter-Weston, his 29th Brigade commander, to persuade him that this was too difficult.

Too many of his officers and NCOs had been lost since the landing, Hunter-Weston argued, and a night attack risked confusion and loss of control. On each of the previous two days, however, his brigades had advanced in broad daylight and been thrown back with heavy losses. It was now to be more of the same.

After a preliminary bombardment, the French were to capture Kereves Dere, while the New Zealanders would pass over the trenches of the British 88th Brigade and take the village of Krithia. Wellington Battalion would advance on the left, Auckland in the centre, Canterbury on the right. Otago, badly cut up in the attack on Baby 700, would be in reserve.

In the words of the Australian military historian John Laffin:

If Hunter-Weston had actually wanted to be beaten he could hardly have improved on his plans. His attack was timed for 11 am, by which time the Turks would be breakfasted, rested and organised. He did not know the position of the Turkish trenches, the shell supply was seriously short, and he was attacking on a narrow front . . . without any feint, deception, oblique or flank attack to make things more difficult for the Turks.

On 7 May the Wellington Battalion was ordered to move up Gully Ravine and occupy a trench 500 metres in the rear of the 29th Division. By running his troops across open ground in small detachments, Malone avoided casualties from Turkish rifle and machine-gun fire. The battalion bivouacked that night in a deep gully running out to one of the beaches where British troops had landed on 25 April.

Just two hours before the attack was due to commence, New Zealand Infantry Brigade headquarters was informed that the advance would begin at 10.30 a.m., preceded by a 15-minute bombardment of the Turkish trenches. Johnston delayed passing the information on to his battalion commanders until after 10 a.m., giving them just twenty minutes to brief their company commanders. They in turn had a bare ten minutes to brief and deploy their platoons. Neither officers nor men had any clear idea what the objectives of the attack were or what support they could expect from the other troops.

Rushed and inadequate orders were not the brigade's only problems. The Wellington and Auckland battalions were still 500 metres behind the front-line trenches from which they were due to advance when the supporting barrage ceased. The ground between was in full view of the Turks and exposed to shrapnel and long-range rifle and machine-gun fire. They would now have to cross it wholly unsupported by the artillery.

At 10.15 the artillery and the British warships offshore pounded the ridge in front of the attacking troops, shrouding it with the smoke of their shells. At 10.30 the four New Zealand battalions climbed out from the reserve trenches and into a blast of shrapnel, rifle and machine-gun fire. The troops of the 88th Brigade cheered them on as they crossed the front line and pushed on against an invisible enemy. Some 300 metres on the Wellingtons were forced to ground by heavy enfilade fire from hidden Turkish machine guns. The battalion was now 300 metres in advance of the troops on either flank and could go no further.

The Auckland and Canterbury battalions had also been roughly handled and by 1.30 p.m. the whole brigade had been brought to a standstill. The men 'sprawled exhausted in their trench scrapes, listening to the crack of bullets overhead and the cries of the wounded lying helpless in the fields behind them under the hot midday sun'.

The attack was pre-ordained to fail. The New Zealand battalions had been sent into the attack in full daylight without proper preparation, reconnaissance, or any clear-cut objective. The advance from the reserve trenches, 500 metres behind the front line, had given the Turks clear warning of the impending attack. Against an almost invisible enemy, the artillery had provided the troops with no effective protection.

Hamilton decided to make one last effort to capture the village of Krithia. At 4.30 p.m. the New Zealand Brigade, this time supported by the Australian 2nd Brigade, was ordered to 'fix bayonets, slope arms and move on Krithia'. Malone protested to Johnston, pointing out that his battalion was already 300 metres further forward than any other unit and holding on to what it had gained. Any attempt to push forward when the troops on his right flank had no orders to move, he argued, had no chance. Johnston, according to Malone, refused to listen and insisted that the Wellingtons push on. 'I was sat on, and was practically told that I was more bother than I was worth!' Malone recorded in his diary.

The original order was now withdrawn and Hamilton ordered a general advance—'from the Aegean to the Dardanelles'—for 5.30 p.m. After a short but intense bombardment, two companies of the Wellington Battalion went forward, but were forced back to their trenches by enfilading fire from the Turkish positions and the shrapnel fire of their own guns. The other two companies found themselves unable to move. The Auckland and Otago battalions, charging across the 'Daisy Patch', were cut to pieces.

Joe Gasparich watched appalled as men in front of him were scythed down in groups by the Turkish machine guns. 'The grassy daisy-covered space soon became a pathetic field of dead . . .' Digging in under a shower of bullets, Gasparich and his mates could see 'Jacko' entrenched right along the ridge ahead. 'He was underground, timber and sandbags and sods overhead, and safe as houses . . . And we had to attack that!' 'It was just hell,' recalled Russell Weir. 'All those bodies lying across fields sprinkled with daisies and poppies—or perhaps the poppies were just patches of blood.'

Meanwhile, the Australians had been stopped on Krithia Spur after advancing for 500 metres and suffering over 1000 casualties. On Kereves Spur, the French were also badly mauled and beaten back to their original trenches. Malone's battalion alone had suffered 200 killed or wounded. Hunter-Weston's plan for the third day of the battle had failed and the Allied troops could now only dig in and hold on.

On the night of 8 May, Hamilton wrote to Kitchener: 'The result of the operation has been a failure as my objective remains unachieved. The fortifications and their machine guns were too scientific and too strongly held to be rushed, although I had every available man in today. Our troops have done all that flesh and blood can do against semi-permanent works and they are not able to carry them.'

The Turkish defences might have been 'too scientific', but for _Daily Telegraph_ correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett the tactics of Hunter-Weston and his staff had shown an unconscionable lack of science. They had persisted for days with murderous frontal attacks on an impregnable position, he wrote, and had given no thought to alternative strategies. Tens of thousands of the Allies' 'best and bravest men' had been lost without achieving any result or bringing them closer to victory.

That night the Wellington Battalion dug in to its new positions as flares and star shells from the Turkish lines lit the sky. The stretcher-bearers performed heroically, going out under fire day and night for the next four days to carry in the wounded. 'I hope I shall be able to tell the people of NZ what grand fellows their soldier men are,' wrote their commander. 'Nothing better in the world!'

Without fires, blankets, and in most cases without greatcoats, the Wellingtons held on. At night streams of bullets swept over their positions, cutting off shrubs and small trees close to the ground and levelling the crests of the trenches. 'We sat at the bottom of the trenches,' wrote Malone, 'and never fired a shot. We couldn't.'

Malone himself was so far unhurt, despite several narrow misses. A shrapnel shell had burst just in front of him and several bullets had rapped the timber close to his head. Another bullet just missed him while he stood talking with Colonel Moore, the British regular commanding the Otago Battalion. Malone concluded that he was 'somehow or other immune', but given the heavy loss of officers in his battalion so far, he resolved to be more careful.

Meanwhile, he waited in dread for the attack to be renewed. 'I expect every day to be told to, in our Brigadier's words, "fix bayonets and go right through—no shilly-shallying about, everybody going in." If I do, there is a 500-yard slope in front of me, over which my men must pass and it is absolutely commanded and enfiladed by a number of machine guns across a big gully.'

The Wellingtons, however, would remain in their trenches and Malone would record their achievements on 8 May. His battalion, he noted, had advanced 1200 metres under shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire, crossed several trenches held by the 29th Division without taking shelter, and had not fired a shot until they were within 200 to 400 metres of the Turkish trenches. The British Army regulars who had witnessed the attack were full of admiration for the Wellington advance. 'It opened their eyes, they say they never saw anything better or finer . . .'

The Wellingtons had advanced further than any other battalion that day and had hung on to the ground they had taken. Due to the battalion's better discipline, Malone wrote, it had also suffered fewer casualties. His men had been told long ago that the best disciplined formations lost the least and dug the best, and his men were great diggers . . . '"Eat to live" is old—"Dig to live" is the new tag.'

On 20 June, Malone wrote to Major Hart, still recovering from his wounds in England. Most of his battalion's 200 casualties on 8 May, he told Hart, could have been avoided by a night advance to the front line followed by a dawn assault the next day. 'Such is the sense of war as practised by people who are supposed to know better. _C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre_. That is my criticism of this war in these parts so far.' He was quite convinced that New Zealand officers had nothing to learn from the "imported" British Army regulars. 'Active service has taught the latter nothing.'

Johnston and Moore, both British Army regulars, were the most likely targets of this judgement, and his frustration with both was rapidly increasing. Johnston, he wrote in his diary, seemed to resent him asking for information and his unwillingness to allow his men to be 'plunged ahead' without reconnaissance.

'I ask also for barbed wire, engineer detachments, the moving up of so-called supporting troops . . . and generally everything that can enable me and my men to do our jobs thoroughly. He says I am more bother to him than the three other COs together. They say yes to everything and seem to blunder along, but I am not seeking popularity, only efficiency.'

For Moore's apparent attempt to blame his own Otago Battalion for its failure on 8 May, Malone had only contempt.

And now the CO of Otago, Lt Col Moore, jumped up from captain and adjutant to command the battalion because he was an Imperial officer and had seen active service, turns round on his own battalion, which thro' his own fault is not good, and says 'Colonials are no good.' It is a d—d shame, no better material in the world, but [in] this battalion it is the CO.

Now down to half strength, Malone's battalion was still the strongest of the four New Zealand formations in the line. It was holding about 750 metres of trench with about 500 men, and the Turkish trenches were still 200 metres away across a gully. He and other front-line commanders knew that a further advance was hopeless until the enemy machine guns had been destroyed by shellfire.

Allied shellfire, however, had so far been ineffective, and in some cases was dropping closer to the New Zealand trenches than those of the enemy. Malone discovered that the advance of his West Coast company had been stopped by British shrapnel shells bursting right in front of them instead of on the enemy trenches.

After one such episode, the commander of a British battery got the rough edge of his tongue. 'I went down and told them they were very rude, and that if they shot us up any more we should have to shoot back. We expect Turkish shells to annoy us but expect our own to go over and not into us.'

At the root of the problem was poor observation and lack of telephones to connect the artillery with the front line. The only solution, Malone decided, was to buy telephones himself out of regimental funds. 'It will save many a life. I lost 3 orderlies out of 8 the other day carrying messages to the firing line—all for want of a phone.'

Despite the sniper risk, Malone reconnoitred the ground to the right of his position in an attempt to pinpoint the hidden Turkish machine guns. He found some 100 dead Turks lying face down where they had fallen, along with a number of British or New Zealanders who had been shot by snipers. As many as possible of them would be buried, he decided, once darkness had fallen. Meanwhile, his men were put to work cleaning the battlefield of tins, food scraps and general filth, and recovering the rifles, ammunition and equipment left by the dead. 'A battlefield,' he wrote in disgust, 'is a much littered and untidy thing.'

On 11 May, Malone was ordered to relieve a British battalion which was some 1200 metres in his rear. He told Johnston that he could not do this without withdrawing men from the front trenches. He asked why the Otago Battalion, then in reserve, could not do the job. He was told that both the Auckland and Otago battalions had been shattered by the action on 8 May and were temporarily out of action. For the moment, his Wellington Battalion was the only fully functioning unit in the brigade.

In Malone's mind, the heavy casualties sustained by both battalions were due to slack peacetime training, lack of discipline and poor leadership. 'Poor devils,' he wrote, 'they are paying for their leaders' faults.' The lighter casualties of his battalion, he concluded, were the result of its better discipline. 'I always thought the Wellington Btn [battalion] was easily the best in the Bde [brigade]. I now know that it is.'

After four days in the line, the New Zealanders were relieved and sent into reserve. On 'a pig of a night' with the rain lashing down, their positions were taken over by the Manchesters, a British Territorial battalion. 'They were just boys, most of them . . . and physically unimpressive compared to the Australians and New Zealanders on the peninsula. Relieved as we were to be getting out of that position, we couldn't help feeling sorry for them.'

The Wellingtons marched back to the coast in the rain and lay down in a grove of olive trees. Malone and a party of his men took shelter on the beach amongst the stacks of boxes and food containers. He found a small shelter with an unidentified man already in it, crawled in and snuggled up against him for warmth. The latter responded by putting a blanket over his guest and they both fell asleep.

In the morning Malone turned to thank his host only to find that he was 'a black man with gold earrings'. 'Fancy my surprise! Didn't I laugh,' he wrote to his son Denis. 'He was nice and clean tho' and very tidy. His name was Naran Sammey, a Madrassee Hindu, of the Indian Army.' Malone later returned to the beach, had his photo taken with Naran, and gave him a small sum of money in thanks for his hospitality.

The following night, for the first time since the landing eighteen days earlier, Malone took his clothes off and slept in a shirt and cardigan jacket picked up off the battlefield. For the moment at least he and his men could forget tension and the squalor of war. The next day, he borrowed a horse and rode through Sedd-el-Bahr village and up to its ruined fort. The village itself was full of French troops, horses and mules, and had been hammered into ruins by the guns of the Allied warships.

By now Malone was convinced of the superiority of his troops to all others on the peninsula. 'The Australian is a dashing chap, but he is not steadfast, and he will not or would not dig. He came here to kill Turks, not to dig, and consequently we have suffered. There are lots of good men and good officers among them, but they are not disciplined like our men . . . The NZers are out on their own as the best troops here.'

As for the British Territorials he had encountered at Helles—the Royal Naval Division, Lancasters and Manchesters—they were 'not a quarter as good as the New Zealanders'. The British regulars of the 29th Division were 'good stuff ', although again not as good as his men. The New Zealand officers, he wrote, were 'superior to the Imperial men'.

Meanwhile, the British and French commanders were taking stock of what had been achieved at Helles. After three days of fighting, they were still a kilometre short of the original objective—the village of Krithia and the high ground of Achi Baba. The issue now was no longer the capture of these two objectives but whether the Allies could maintain their precarious foothold on the peninsula.

Malone was by now critical of the strategy that opened the Gallipoli campaign:

The naval opening, the shelling of the forts, was a huge mistake, it gave notice of Britain's intentions and the Turks had 6 weeks under thoro' German officers to cover the peninsula and to fix artillery and machine gun positions with exact range to every approach. Had the operation begun by the landing of the army, then probably the rushing tactics now used would have succeeded; by now it is going to be sap, sap, dig, dig. The war of Flanders again.

Malone had devised a strategy of his own to break the stalemate at Gallipoli. The first step would be to establish an impregnable line at Helles and garrison it with the weakest Allied troops. Three strong divisions—45,000 men in total—would then be moved north to Anzac Cove by night. Supported by a naval bombardment, the force would attack Hill 971, the highest point in the Sari Bair range, at dawn.

Once Hill 971 had been secured, the force would move on towards Mal Tepe and Kilia Tepe on the Dardanelles coast, cutting the Turkish lines of communication from north and south. If something similar was not already in the pipeline, Malone hoped to get Birdwood's headquarters to consider it.

On 16 May, Malone wrote to his wife to say that he was 'fitter than ever' and coping well with the stress of battle. 'My nerves are like cast iron. I find I can stand any shock no matter how violent or startling.' His difficult relationship with Brigadier Johnston, however, was an ongoing problem. 'I bother him he says because I will not fight blindly. I want to know things—and what precautions have been taken and sometimes they haven't been.' Malone sent Ida two photos of his tent and the makeshift box-bookshelf on top of which he had placed her photograph.

He wrote also to old Major Sandford, a colleague from his Volunteer Force days in Taranaki. Much of the letter was a tribute to his soldiers:

Splendid and brave as they make 'em, patient, enduring, clever, cheerful, nothing upsets them. Heroes all. I am so proud of them. Sandford I love them. Strings of wounded men go by me . . . always with a smile, often with a little laugh or an attempt at one. No cries or groans, not a whimper or complaint . . . New Zealand can be justly proud of her sons. They are gallant gentlemen.

One day, he told Sandford, he hoped to meet the Taranaki families who had lost their sons on Gallipoli and tell them how great had been his respect and affection for them. As for the soldiers themselves, they had met a glorious death. ' _Dulce est pro patria mori_ —a sweet thing it is to die for the fatherland.'

Two days later, the New Zealanders re-embarked for Anzac Cove on the supply ship _Eddystone_. At 11 p.m. Malone went aboard to check on the accommodation for his men. There appeared to be none. The first troops aboard had taken all the 'handy' deck space and the officers had all turned in for the night. The only space left was in the ship's lower holds, which meant that his men would have to climb across hundreds of sleeping bodies in the dark and down a steep iron ladder, each loaded with over 30 kilograms of weapons and gear.

Malone was furious and demanded to know who was handling the embarkation. Temperley, the brigade major, until then comfortably asleep on a couch, said it was the Naval Transport Officer (NTO). The NTO said he could not help because he had no staff. Malone roused six sleeping officers and ordered them to get out and help. After several hours' work, all his men had finally been stowed away in the ship's holds. Malone found himself 'a roost' for the night in a lifeboat and was able to snatch a couple of hours' sleep.

The commander who lay down that night had much to be concerned about. He had seen his men rushed into action at Helles without proper reconnaissance, effective artillery cover or any attempt at surprise. He had watched the British high command squander men by the thousand in futile daylight attacks against heavily defended Turkish positions. His earlier belief that the war was at last being conducted scientifically had reckoned without Hunter-Weston.

The Second Battle of Krithia had cost the Allies over 6000 casualties, or nearly 30 per cent of the troops involved. The New Zealand Brigade alone had lost over 850 officers and men killed, wounded or missing. 'We and the other troops,' wrote Malone, 'have suffered tremendous losses because our directors failed to quickly appreciate that this is the day of digging and machine guns, and that prepared positions cannot be rushed.'

The New Zealand Brigade was destroyed as a fighting machine at Helles, and the reputation of the regular British officer for professionalism took a blow from which, in the eyes of the Anzacs, it would not recover. They would never forget Krithia Spur and the Daisy Patch nor the men who had sent them there.

Holding on

'The official guide book says bears, hyenas and other wild animals inhabit this place. We have seen no bears or hyenas and are trying to push the other wild animals back to Constantinople. The trouble is we have bitten off more than we can chew and we know it. I blame Winston Churchill for the loss of our boys. The job is too big for anything under 100,000 men and we are about 40,000 effective.'

—Lieutenant-Colonel P.C. Fenwick, NZ Medical Corps, 11 May 1915

Once ashore at Anzac Cove Malone recovered his mail and sat reading a letter from Ida in the shelter of a bank while bullets whined overhead and splashed into the sea. Another delivery, some days later, contained three photos of herself: 'She looks lovely and younger than ever,' Malone mused. 'I have a great longing to see her in person, but must be content.'

Johnston now summoned Malone to complain about lack of obedience to his orders, most likely as a result of the latter's 'intransigence' at Helles. 'Went and had it out with him,' Malone recorded in his diary.

He withdrew his complaint and apologized. Had a good talk with him. His heart is all right but [brigade major] Temperley, I feel sure, is a 'poisonous' sneak. I asked Col Johnston to carpet me every time he got any complaint and so hear the other side. He said he would. He admitted that I and my Btn had worked hard and turned out to be the most solid Btn in his Bde. The air is cleared.

While the brigade was still at Helles, a Turkish attack on the whole Anzac line had been bloodily repulsed with 3000 of the enemy killed and another 7000 wounded. The men of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade felt aggrieved that the newly arrived New Zealand Mounted Brigade should have been given such an opportunity while they had suffered huge losses at Helles for so little result.

Malone was shocked to learn that Godley had planned to retaliate the next day with an unsupported attack by 100 mounted riflemen against Turkish trenches at the Nek, a narrow, flat-topped ridge connecting Russell's Top with enemy positions on Baby 700. The attack was to take place in broad daylight, against heavily defended positions, and over ground where the Turks had been slaughtered the night before.

'A mad fatal thing,' Malone wrote in disbelief. 'It meant destruction to the 100 men. Meldrum [Commanding Officer, Wellington Mounted Rifles] saw the folly of it and got it countermanded.' One of the 100 selected for the attack was Malone's son Terry.

On 21 May, Malone was reunited with his personal kit, and for the first time slept in pyjamas on a camp stretcher with plenty of blankets. A visit to the Australian positions next day with a group of other commanding officers left him distinctly unimpressed. The Australians, he observed, did not seem anywhere as 'keen' as the New Zealanders. 'Only an odd one observing the Turks and no sort of plan to deal with them; every man on his own.'

Malone returned to his bivouac convinced that further progress from the Anzacs' present position could only be 'snail-like', and that his plan for a breakout to the north was the right one. Terry was waiting for him there after a spell out sniping. He had had a good 'killing', he told his father, and asked him to look after two Turkish rifles he had recovered from the battlefield.

That evening, Birdwood congratulated Malone on the performance of his battalion which, he had been told, had done 'splendidly' at Helles. A special divisional order followed, commending Malone and his second-in-command, Major Hart, for 'exceptional gallantry and good service' during the landing at Gallipoli and in the following weeks. Malone learned that he had also been recommended for the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his performance at Helles. His comment on the award was brief: 'There must be lots of others who did more. I only did my job.'

The Wellingtons were now in reserve and settling in to a new warren of dugouts and shelters in the gullies behind Anzac Cove. Malone's 'bivvy', which he built himself, looked out to the sea and to the island of Imbros in the distance. An oil sheet was stretched over the top to make a roof and a New Zealand flag covered the front to keep out the sun. Biscuit boxes were turned into an armchair, cupboards to store his personal gear, and a small table on which to keep his books and papers. A vase made from the casing of a shrapnel shell was filled with wild flowers.

Anzac at the end of May was a slice of steep, rough country the size of a small New Zealand farm and ringed by Turkish positions. Its hillsides were lined with dugouts and bivvies where thousands of men ate, washed and slept. Water was rationed to 2.27 litres a day for everything, including drinking, washing and shaving. Meals consisted of hard biscuits, bully beef, bacon, cheese, jam, dried potatoes, tea and sugar.

No-man's-land was littered with jam and meat tins, broken rifles and discarded equipment. Every few yards lay a dead body with clouds of buzzing flies. 'Chloride of lime was scattered thickly on all decaying matter, and the scent of Anzac drifted ten miles out to sea.'

In the unrelenting heat, the New Zealanders 'fought a losing battle with the flies and the lice, played cards, yarned about things back in New Zealand, dreamed of decent meals and clean girls in summer dresses, and were thoroughly bored with things as they were'.

Malone himself admitted to no discomfort. The evenings and nights at Anzac were 'delightful', he told Ida, except for the everlasting rattle and crash of rifle, machine gun, bombs and artillery. After two months of such noises by night and day, he and his men hardly noticed them.

With so many men crowded into a small space, however, sanitation was an ongoing problem. 'The lack of sanitation thro'out this Divn is dreadful,' he wrote. 'I can stand a month of dead and unburied corpses, but I cannot stand the filthy ways of living beings.' Malone feared a serious epidemic if proper facilities were not provided. He asked for timber to build proper latrines for his men but was told that there was none available.

News of his brother Austin's death in an accident south of Auckland now arrived. Austin had apparently fallen on hard times, and Malone regretted that he had not done more to help him when he was alive. 'I am afraid I have been far too selfishly engaged in myself and my own affairs. I must try to do better in the future,' he wrote to his sister Louie. He planned, however, to give what help he could to his brother's two sons after the war. In the meantime, he would offer Austin's widow, Jessie, a small weekly allowance to help her raise her three children. 'It's not much, but it should help, and I think I can easily manage it.'

On 24 May, a nine-hour armistice was declared to allow the Turks and the Anzacs to bury their dead. Malone's battalion provided men for the burial parties and began the gruesome task of burying thousands of men killed since the landing on 25 April, most of them on the night of 19 May. In front of the position that his Wellingtons and Braund's Australians had fought to hold on 27 April, Malone found the bodies of over a hundred Turks.

'We got in and buried all we could at the time. Poor shattered humanity—exposed for 27 days, as dreadful a sight I suppose as could be seen.' It was a desecration of the human body, he wrote, to leave it unburied for so long. As he had hoped, the bodies of two of his men, Lieutenant Wilson and Bugler Bissett, were recovered and buried.

The atmosphere in no-man's-land was tense for the nine hours of the truce, but the behaviour of both sides was for the most part irreproachable. Each took the opportunity to survey the other's positions, and the Anzacs were able to bury the dead in trenches and craters previously used as cover by Turkish snipers and bombers.

The Turkish officers supervising the digging were reported to be mostly charming, the Germans rude and dictatorial. One of the latter, in particular, caused Malone grave offence. 'This pig accused us of digging a sap. A rotten job to bury their men and then to be accused of sapping made me wild. I told some of the chaps (that) if he said anything more to squash a dead Turk on to him. He snarled, but got more civil.'

That night, Malone wrote a long letter to his wife, no doubt to distract himself from the horrors of the day. He told her briefly of the 10,000 Turks killed and wounded just days before, many of whom still lay in front of the Wellington Battalion's trenches. He wrote of the beautiful flowers lining the gully up to his shelter above Anzac Cove, but could say nothing of the slaughter of the New Zealand Brigade at Helles on 8 May. The plight of the wounded, he confessed, brought tears to his eyes. For the most part, however, he shed no tears: 'I am really very callous and hard.'

A day later, Malone and his men watched in disbelief as the battleship _Triumph_ was torpedoed off Anzac Cove in full view of both armies. The Turks cheered down the gullies and ravines; the Anzacs yelled and cursed. Two days later, the German submarine repeated the feat, sinking the old battleship _Majestic_ off Helles. Admiral De Robeck swiftly withdrew all his larger warships to Imbros, leaving the sea off Anzac Cove almost completely bare of shipping.

The sinkings were a heavy blow to the morale of the Anzac troops, perhaps the worst of the campaign. 'We sorely missed the friendly presence of the Navy,' wrote Cecil Malthus of the Canterbury Battalion, 'and the moral support its mighty guns had given.' Malone appeared more worried about the loss of naval protection for the army's food, water, munitions and other essential supplies, which all came by sea. 'It hardly seems just,' he wrote in his diary, 'but somehow or another we have got a notion that the navy messes things up and are getting messed up.'

Meanwhile, at Hunter-Weston's request, a new offensive had been mounted at Helles. On 4 June, the troops went into battle for the first time knowing what their objectives were and how they were to achieve them. The attack came much closer to success, but the territory won was soon lost again in Turkish counter-attacks. 'The forces at Helles were now exhausted. Hamilton had no choice but to delay any further operations until late July.'

Malone was now told that his son Terry had been badly wounded by shrapnel—a bullet through the right forearm and three through the right leg. Anxiously, he asked Johnston for time off to visit him aboard the hospital ship _Gascon_. Johnston readily agreed and informed General Godley, who arranged for a boat to take him out to the ship.

'Terry seemed quite cheerful,' Malone noted, 'tho' there was, I was pleased to see, a tear in his eye. Terry feels more than he shows I am sure.' Malone was grateful to both Godley and Johnston for their quick and compassionate response to his need. 'They couldn't have done more if it had been a case of their own sons.'

By now, Wellington Battalion wounded were arriving by ship in England. Malone asked Ida to visit the men in hospital and reassure them that their 'services and sufferings' had not been in vain. She should tell them that their battalion had now survived two fierce actions on the peninsula with its morale and reputation intact, and still fit for anything. They should be told that it was the only battalion on 8 May to gain and hold new ground and that it always held what it took. They should know how proud he was of them all. 'This not by way of a boast, but I think it will help our wounded chaps along the road to recovery . . .'

Meanwhile, she was not to worry about his hardships on Gallipoli. 'I endure nothing, it is one great pleasure of the best sort. The pleasure—or perhaps "la joie" of living, of doing a new job, of feeling physically and mentally absolutely fit to do it, of doing something for one's country when it needs the service of its men.' The only hardship he admitted to was having to put up with incompetence or ignorance.

With the Gallipoli campaign now stalemated on both fronts, Hamilton was experiencing little of the joy of living. He was short of reinforcements and munitions, he had seen the navy's battleships run for shelter at Imbros, and the support expected from other allies, including the Greeks and Russians, had not been forthcoming.

From his headquarters on the island he wrote:

What a change since the War Office sent us packing with a bagful of hallucinations. Naval guns sweeping the Turks off the Peninsula; the Ottoman Army legging it from a British submarine waving the Union Jack; Russian help in hand . . . Now it is our Fleet which has to leg from the German submarines; there is no ammunition for the guns; no drafts to keep my Divisions up to strength; my Russians have gone to Galicia and the Greeks are lying lower than ever.

'A dilapidated, demoralised and filthy Hell'

'Quinn's was a place of endless digging, exploding mines and bombs, lack of sleep, a monotonous diet of bully beef and hard biscuits, lack of water for cooking, washing and drinking, and the pervasive stink of unburied bodies. In the stalemate of Quinn's we knew that there was no way forward, that we had to break out of the trap in another direction, through fresh country.'

—Machine-gunner Dan Curham recalls his two months in the front line at Quinn's Post

On 1 June, the New Zealand Infantry Brigade took over Courtney's and Quinn's posts from Monash's 4th Australian Brigade. Malone was unimpressed with his first sight of Courtney's. 'A very higgledypiggledy show,' he observed. 'I put Major Cunningham in charge of my battalion and began to take hold as O/C [post commander]. Built a new HQ bivouac and propose to terrace the ground and so make room for the men . . . The Australians didn't like having to shift but I insisted . . . There is a lot of work to do remodelling, but we will get it done soon.'

Malone put his men to work building terraces with overhead cover and more comfortable living quarters for troops not in the line. Latrines were sited in deep saps attracting fewer flies and rubbish pits dug. Periscopic rifles, flares, bombs, tools and extra supplies were brought in and a party of the battalion's best shots set up to deal with the Turkish snipers.

Equipped with special rifles and telescopic sights, they silenced the enemy snipers in two days, and within a week Monash Gully had become a safer route to the posts on the ridge. 'The Turks in trenches in front of us here are learning that there is a change,' Malone wrote. 'We got several of them, including an officer.'

On 5 June, the garrison at Courtney's gave covering fire to an Anzac attack on Turkish trenches from Quinn's Post and Pope's Hill. 'At 11 pm, the ball commenced. All hands and guns opened fire, a really terrific business. Pitch dark, flashes and reports of rifles and machine guns on all sides. Shells, red hot, coming from our own guns, just over our heads, and from cross emplacements . . . a veritable inferno.' The Turks replied with heavy rifle fire and shelled Courtney's Post with shrapnel. Thanks to the protection given by Malone's covered-over terraces there were no casualties.

In Malone's mind, the attack was poorly planned and not worth the casualties. 'I suppose I shall be poked up and ordered to continue the game, but I shall take some forcing until I am satisfied of chances of success or necessity of operation. Isolated local attacks at the most salient point of our position are not in my opinion sound.' In short, he would resist pressure to join any attack on the Turkish lines in which the cost in lives was likely to outweigh the gains.

Meanwhile, Malone worried about the condition of battalion officers wounded in the fighting of the previous six weeks. Hart had still not recovered, nor had McLernon, and Furby had been sent to England for a special operation. There was no news of the other wounded officers. Lieutenant James Cargo, recently promoted to officer rank, had been killed by a sniper two nights before. 'A splendid young fellow—soldier-officer,' wrote Malone. 'Very sad really. Still no better death.'

On 9 June, the Wellington Battalion took over Quinn's Post (Bomba Sirt or 'Bomb Ridge' to the Turks), the most dangerous and insecure post on the Anzac line and the most critical to its defence. At the time of the takeover, Quinn's was a warren of trenches and tunnels clinging to the edge of a cliff on the Second Ridge. The Australians had held it from the landing to the end of May; the New Zealanders would hold it for two months in June and July.

Because its siting was so vital to both sides, the post had been repeatedly attacked up to the end of May and a succession of unsuccessful Anzac assaults were mounted from it in May and June. Turkish bombers had forced the Australians to evacuate parts of the front line, and two sections of the post had been almost blown to pieces by a Turkish mine. The post was overlooked from both north and south by Turkish trenches—the Chessboard on Baby 700 to the north, and the German Officer's Trench and Johnston's Jolly to the south.

At Quinn's Post, men 'stood to' all day, bayonets fixed, bombs ready, watching through periscopes for the slightest movement. 'After dark the sentries, rifles ready, peered out into the night. At any moment might come a shower of bombs or a rush of men, a mine sprung and the whole post blown to pieces. Dawn comes at last—another anxious time—then "stand down", the rum issue, and breakfast.'

Malone sent his second-in-command, Major Cunningham, to inspect the post before the Wellingtons took it over. Cunningham found it dirty, disorganised and foul with the stench of corpses that had been lying in front of the trenches since the landing of 25 April. The Auckland and Canterbury battalions the Wellingtons relieved, Malone observed, were 'much cowed' and went off as if they were leaving a death trap.

Malone was quick to blame the Australians who had held the post for most of the previous six weeks. Instead of sapping out and making forward trenches when they first occupied the position, they had 'sat tight' on the edge of the cliff and allowed the Turks to come so close that in one place there was only about five metres between the two sides.

'The Australians seemingly just sat down and waited and did nothing. That seems to be their character, dash forward like mad things and then instead of working and making good, sit down and loaf, and then get "scary". That is not only my opinion but of Australians themselves.'

Fifty metres of the front fire trench had been abandoned, Malone complained, and the Turks had achieved such superiority in fire and bombing that it was impossible to put up even a periscope without getting it shot away on sight. 'The Turks are sapping and no doubt intend to blow the post up and into the gully. Nice place to have to take over.'

The post was now to be occupied by two battalions at a time—usually Auckland and Canterbury, Wellington and Otago. Each company would do eight to ten days alternately in the line and in support, and a similar period in reserve. Because of the severe strain of a night on duty in Quinn's the garrison was to be relieved every morning.

As at Courtney's, Malone tackled the job with his usual focus and energy. Again, the ground behind the post was terraced and covered over to make it shrapnel and bomb-proof. Machine guns were mounted to cover the Turkish trenches, and loopholes that had been closed by Turkish fire reopened. Parapets were repaired and the trench deepened, the bodies of the dead sprayed with petrol and burned. Wire-netting screens were erected to catch and throw back Turkish bombs, and the abandoned portion of the front line was gradually recovered.

Malone encouraged the men of the garrison to clean their boots and shave daily, to wash even in a pint of water, to keep calm despite the noise of battle going on around them, and to keep everything as near normal as possible—'no pigging it, no letting things slide, no "near enough" because it is war we are at (the fond excuse of incompetent people)'.

He insisted that every officer and man at Quinn's be mentally prepared for all possible contingencies—to constantly ask themselves 'If such and such a thing happens, what will I do?' Every rifle shot and bomb from the Turkish positions was to be returned at least twofold. 'We can and will beat them at their own game.'

If headquarters would not supply him with the hardware he needed, Malone simply took it. Refused wire netting and timber for his bomb protection screens, he conspired with the naval landing officer to have the items stacked apart from the main dump. A 40-strong working party was then dispatched to the beach to take it all away. A week later he did the same again, purloining forty or fifty sheets of galvanised iron from which to build his bomb-proof shelters. At Quinn's, the garrison always had an excellent supply of materials which no other unit could get.

After eight days of intensive labour, Malone was confident that Quinn's was now the safest post in the Anzac line. His men had established complete fire superiority, outshooting and outbombing the Turks and regaining the 50 metres of abandoned trench. A Turk deserter was said to have told Anzac headquarters that the mining and fighting opposite Quinn's Post was now so hazardous that they had been forced to call for volunteers to man their positions and to promote every such volunteer to corporal.

'It was a dilapidated, demoralised and filthy Hell,' Malone wrote to his former brother-in-law Harry Penn.

But all it wanted was cleaning, reorganising, re-arming, repairing and the 'cultivation of the domestic virtues.' Within a week of our taking over, my men got all over the Turks, shot and bombed them. We scraped and cleaned and reorganised, repaired, put in machine guns . . . We recovered the whole of the abandoned trench. The 'terror' had passed to the Turks. They practically abandoned their front trench and gave us best. It is now absolutely the safest post in the whole defences, and the most comfortable.

Casualties so far had been 'ridiculously small', and of this Malone was prouder than anything else. But there was pride also in the performance of his battalion. 'To come out of Courtney's after 8 days' strenuous trench fighting and go into Quinn's and within 8 days to settle the Turks is an achievement as great as any battalion that has ever fought.'

Malone's own headquarters at Quinn's was a dugout cut into the hillside with two ground sheets stretched over it for a roof. The walls were lined with photographs of Ida, and he talked of planting roses on the terraces below. In front of the dugout were 2 square metres of flat ground on which he held his various conferences, and from which he reprimanded any man he thought deserved it.

According to the _Hawera & Normanby Star_, Malone should no longer have been in command at Quinn's. On 21 June it reported that some Taranaki soldiers had written home to say that he had been shot dead during recent fighting on Gallipoli.

While Quinn's Post was being reshaped, a company of Australian and New Zealand miners was tunnelling vigorously under the Turkish line in an attempt to stop Quinn's from being blown off the map. Working around the clock, the Anzacs would tunnel towards the Turkish trenches and the Turks would tunnel back towards theirs. In both cases charges would be laid.

It was a nerve-wracking experience for all, and made more so by the stifling heat and the sounds of the opposing tunnellers tapping away above, beside or below them. At least twice the Anzacs broke through into the enemy galleries where there were fights with rifle, revolver and bomb. The balance of terror, however, lay with the New Zealanders—in two months at Quinn's Post they fired 28 mines, the Turks just four.

Malone was a strict and demanding boss, and at first his miners were not amused. 'For the first day or two we reckoned he was a damned nuisance,' recalled Hedley Howe, then an Australian lance corporal. 'He used to come round when we knocked off to see that our picks and shovels were laid in our dugouts in the prescribed place and in the prescribed manner and everything else in similar order.'

After a hard shift underground, the miners would come to the battalion adjutant, Lieutenant Harston, for a reviving tot of rum. When one of them woke Harston one night for his ration, Malone appeared 'like a hurricane' and asked him how the devil Harston was expected to do his work if he was never allowed to get any sleep

Behind the tough facade, however, the miners sensed the essential humanity of the man. As Howe wrote later:

I think he liked to picture himself as a regular martinet, but he failed dismally in conveying this impression to his troops because he was the unfortunate possessor of a very keen sense of humour which he could not control.

In his most impassioned tirades, he would invariably come out with some Irishism which sent his hearers into fits of laughter and utterly destroyed any disciplinary effect his lectures might otherwise have had. Before long it was the constant endeavour of the troops to excite the 'old man' into telling them off. He was absolutely delightful when really annoyed.

Malone the peacetime soldier abhorred bad language, but on Gallipoli things were apparently different. 'His language was profane and emphatic—if possible more so than that of the troops,' recalled Howe. 'It ordinarily embellished the opinions he expressed whether in relation to the rank and file or to seniors—his opinion of whom I suspect was no higher than ours.'

Malone was protective of his miners. Howe recalled an incident involving an engineering major from the divisional staff who complained regularly at the slow pace of the mining work at Quinn's. During one of his visits, the major—'whose ignorance of mining operations was abysmal and complete'—told the men that if they dug the tunnels just three feet high instead of six feet they would save themselves a lot of unnecessary work and get the job done faster.

When he had finished talking, one of the miners handed the major his pick, saying, 'Show us how to use a bloody pick in a tunnel three feet high or shut up!' The major was very annoyed and ordered the man arrested for insubordination. Malone, however, had heard the discussion and said to the major, 'Get the bloody hell out of this and leave my miners alone!'

At dinner time that evening, Malone was elected an honorary member of the mining squad and presented with a badge cut from a shell casing and embossed with a crossed pick and shovel. Fifty years on, Howe would tell Malone's son Denis that he and his fellow miners considered his father one of the most outstanding personalities they had met in the army, 'and they were men who were not easily impressed'.

Despite the strain of command at Quinn's, Malone remained in good health. Terry wrote home to say that his father was 'in his element—a picture of health and looking 10 years younger'. The health of Malone's men, however, was being steadily undermined by hot weather, a poor diet, lack of sleep, and the heavy workloads imposed on them while they were supposed to be resting—ration parties, water-carrying, trench-digging and road-making. Sick parades increased day by day and men were sent in dozens to the hospital ships. During its tour of duty at Courtney's and Quinn's posts the battalion suffered 482 casualties, 364 of which were due to sickness.

Under these conditions, infantryman James Meek found it easy to reassure his family that he and his mates were not, as they feared, 'surrendering to temptation and sin':

No danger, dear ones. Here on Quinn's and Courtney's there is no wine, no song, no singer, and no end to rifle fire, bomb bursts, and fatigues. No pin-up girls' pictures, and seldom a word spoken about women; for we are in a strange new womenless world in which we have little time to think or talk about the old world many of us may never see again. Hope and plans for the future? What future?

By now Ida and her children had arrived safely in England. Her letters revealed the worries she had had about the threat of German submarines, particularly as she and the children were at sea when the American passenger liner _Lusitania_ was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with heavy loss of life. Although not convinced that the threat to his family's safety had been serious, Malone was clearly angered by the incident: 'The "Huns" are too barbarous for words. They are "swine" as we class human swine.'

Meanwhile, he was revelling in the work of reshaping Quinn's Post, and as Brigadier Johnston was sick he expected to get temporary command of the brigade. 'It will comfort you I think to know that the higher the command I get the further I get away, for most of the time, from the front line, and from the "fire".'

Malone's command of the brigade was brief. Just two days after he took over from Johnston he was replaced by a British General Staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel William (Bill) Braithwaite. The decision, he complained in a letter to Hart, confirmed that New Zealand officers were not considered suitable for higher command in their own army no matter how hard they worked. Generals Birdwood and Godley had told him how pleased they were that he was commanding Quinn's Post, but they were obviously not prepared to give him even temporary command of the brigade.

On 3 July, Malone wrote again to Ida. He had recovered from a brief bout of dysentery and was 'all steel now, bones, flesh, muscle and nerves. I can climb and spring like a goat, and a young one at that . . . I feel young, thank God. The dry climate suits me, and I think I was never better in my life.'

His relationship with Brigadier Johnston and Brigade Major Temperley, however, was steadily getting worse.

They think I am a nuisance, because I have an opinion of my own and do not slavishly toady to them. All the worse for me. If I want telephones, machine guns, work done, water, things for my men, I will not take no for an answer and keep on until I get what I want. But that is not the way of what we call the 'Imperial Army'. There apparently, the junior officer always takes no for an answer.

The most recent standoff had arisen over the composition of a working party. Malone had asked that it be made up of reserve troops rather than his own front-line men. When Johnston refused, Malone insisted on having the matter referred to General Godley. Johnston told him that he was being 'extremely insubordinate'. Malone complained to Godley that Johnston did not treat him fairly and seemed to be trying to thwart him whenever he could. He had reached the point, he told Godley, of asking to be relieved of his command of the Wellington Battalion and given another job.

'The General was very nice, as he can be. Since then the Brigadier has become a different being altogether. Temperley is no good. But I do my job without fear and don't look for favours. The Brigadier, I believe at least, is not a bad sort, but as I told the General, in his presence, his mind is poisoned against me.'

Johnston had been consistently unwell since the landing, and if he was too sick to carry on, Malone was next in line to command the brigade. However, he expected his prospects of promotion to be frustrated by Temperley who was an Imperial officer and therefore likely to be preferred over him. 'Rightly or wrongly, we NZ Army officers feel that the Imperial Army has had and still gets all the pull. Their so-called "experience" has been and is not as of much value as our "experience". They are not practical men.'

Meanwhile, the big casualty lists at Gallipoli had finally awoken New Zealand to the meaning of the war, he told Ida. The New Zealand Infantry Brigade had already suffered 2300 casualties out of an original strength of 4000—'an almost incredible number!' His battalion alone had lost over 200 on Walker's Ridge and another 200 at Helles.

She was not to worry about him, however. 'I have a charmed life, or rather God, with so many prayers offered up for me, cares for me and keeps me safe.' Missing from Malone's letters were any mention of the narrow escapes he had had since returning from Helles. A shrapnel bullet had passed through his shelter narrowly missing him, and shortly before he went on leave the casing of a Turkish bullet had grazed his cheek after striking an iron loophole. His face and hands had also been spattered with metal chips after a bomb or bullet struck some wire entanglements he was straightening up.

A month later, Malone again came close to death or serious injury. Somewhat foolishly, he allowed the visiting captain of the destroyer _Chelmer_ to throw a bomb at the Turkish trenches. The bomb hit the netting in front of the trench, rolled back and exploded on the parapet. Malone pulled his guest under cover just in time and both escaped unscathed. 'He was very apologetic,' Malone recorded. 'It was a rotten shot.'

At the end of June, Malone had taken another naval officer on a tour of the post, this time Captain Roger Keyes (later Admiral of the Fleet). 'He [Malone] is a fine fellow and simply loves it,' Keyes reported to a prominent British newspaper. 'He took me into the [bomb] crater now occupied by the Wellington Btn—pitch dark except for slits—it is held by four rifles. They said they could hear the Turks working, and had just sent for the miners to come and listen and counter-mine.' Keyes was told that the Wellingtons had blown sixteen mines under the Turks' trenches for only three mines blown in return.

In early July, after six weeks in the line, Johnston ordered Malone to take a week's leave. He spent it walking the island of Imbros with his staff officer Captain Short. They dined with a poor peasant family and a Greek priest, ate simple meals swamped in olive oil, and met General Godley who insisted that Malone take an extra three days' leave. He was also introduced to Admiral De Robeck, commander of the British fleet, who, according to Malone's diary, said: 'I've heard of you, you are the man who turned the Turks down at Quinn's Post—you deserve a good rest.'

Soon after his return, Edmond, who had rejoined the mounted brigade after being left behind in Cairo with a damaged knee, called on his father at Quinn's—'dressed or undressed like an Indian, absolutely nothing on but a pair of slacks like bathing pants, boots and socks, a hat, his identity disc, and his water bottle'. Many of the men went about like that, Malone told his wife—'a majority naked above the waist. They are sun burnt brown, as brown as Maoris'.

A few days later, Edmond was wounded on Walker's Ridge by an exploding bomb. Both of Malone's sons had now been wounded in the Gallipoli fighting, and Terry had been sent to England for further treatment. He reassured Ida: 'Don't worry about me—two Malones out of 3 must fill the average bill of chances.'

On 30 June, the Turks made another determined attack on the line with the aim again of driving the Anzacs into the sea. Two battalions charged across the Nek and attacked new trenches at Russell's Top, but were repulsed with heavy losses. Fifty Turks overran the Australian trenches but were hunted down within the Anzac lines. The rest were destroyed almost to a man.

By mid-July there were reports that the Turks could be about to try again. The Turkish Council of War was understood to be sending another 100,000 troops south to the Gallipoli peninsula. Allied commanders were advised that another massed attack at Helles or Anzac could be mounted on Turkish Constitution Day, 23 July.

On 17 July, a Special Force Order advised the Allied troops that although the Turk was 'a natural fighter' and his bravery proverbial, he laboured under two disadvantages. The first was being subordinated to German 'taskmasters'; the second was that his heart was not in the present struggle, except where the safety of Constantinople was concerned.

An intelligence bulletin issued some days later claimed that Turkish troops were being driven by their officers to attack Quinn's Post and then abandoned. Many of the troops facing the Anzacs appeared to be no more than raw recruits, it said; many others were waiting for an Anzac attack so that they could surrender. The Gallipoli peninsula, according to some prisoners, was now known amongst the Turkish soldiers as the 'slaughter house'.

Malone and his subordinate commanders prepared their men to meet the attack, but apart from a few extra outbursts of fire and the explosion of a mine, nothing eventuated. He and his men, he wrote in his diary, had prayed that the Turks would attack en masse and be slaughtered as they had been on 19 May. 'We do so wish they would come on . . . It has been slow waiting and waiting, shooting and bombing at small things.'

Again he was critical of the decision to open the Allied attack on the peninsula with a naval bombardment independent of army support. 'We are paying for it,' he wrote to Harry Penn. 'Still we will get thro' all right, but warfare is now siege warfare. The power of the pick and shovel is mighty. No huge walls and forts—trenches and trenches and trenches—machine guns and bombs.'

At 4 a.m. on 30 July the Turks fired a huge mine about ten metres in front of Quinn's Post, killing three of Malone's men and wounding eight. The men stood to arms expecting an attack but none came. Unhurt but furious, Malone blamed divisional headquarters. If he had been supplied with the timber, iron and nails he had been begging for, more overhead cover could have been built and the men would not have died. 'It is almost criminal. Three fine young men killed and 8 wounded while sleeping . . . I almost cried, not at their loss—we are used to that—but at the waste.'

Malone put the blame squarely on Brigadier Johnston and the other battalion commanders who were not prepared to tackle their respective headquarters and demand that their basic needs be met. 'It is not popular and the best way of getting on to suggest, let alone emphatically point out what HQ should do!'

He himself had urged Johnston to get divisional HQ to supply his men with proper bomb-carrying equipment. Johnston had refused, effectively saying that whatever headquarters decided was the last word on the matter. 'Such is the way of the Imperial army I suppose,' Malone observed sourly. 'What a poverty of organisation and supply!'

On 1 August, Malone complained again—this time that his men were being fed inferior quality bully beef in the hottest weather when rice, dates and other such cheap fruit would improve their diet: 'More muddle, and more severe questioning by the Junior Officer of his superior.' A whole army of senior officers (heads), he told Ida, should be sacked for incompetence.

A few days earlier, Malone had met Johnston and Temperley, his brigade major, for a discussion that would have far-reaching consequences. It was to discuss an instruction from the War Office based on the British Army's experience in France. Defensive positions, said the War Office, should now be established on the reverse slope of a hill as a protection from enemy artillery, rather than the forward slope where there would be a clearer field of fire. According to Temperley, Malone told him that this had always been his opinion, and that he would never entrench anywhere except on the reverse slope.

Temperley disagreed. Hasty lessons from another theatre of war, he argued, should not be applied to Gallipoli where the battles were being fought largely with rifle and bayonet, and where the Turks were inferior to the Allies in artillery. Upcoming battles would be fought above all to secure commanding ground, and it would be 'madness' to dig in below the crest and allow the Turks to mass for the counter-attack and push the Allies off the high ground. According to Temperley, Malone appeared to accept the logic of this and there the exchange ended.

By now the Wellingtons' tour of duty at Quinn's Post was nearly at an end. Johnston's brigade had been selected to play a key role in a plan devised by Birdwood's headquarters to break out of the Anzac perimeter and onto the heights of the Sari Bair range. If successful, the siege of Gallipoli would be lifted and the strategic objectives of the April landing, including control of the Narrows, would finally be achieved.

For his part, Malone had much to be satisfied with. When his battalion took over Quinn's Post in early June, it was one of the most vulnerable positions in the Anzac line. In three weeks, his men had rebuilt its defences, overcome the Turkish superiority of fire, and turned it into one of the safest.

The defence of Quinn's Post by the New Zealanders, and the Australians before them, wrote historian Robert Rhodes James, would stand as one of the most remarkable examples of courage and ingenuity in modern warfare.

The Guns of August

'I have a rendezvous with death On some scarred slope of battered hill, God knows 'twere better to be deep-pillowed in silk and scented down, Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . But I've a rendezvous with death I shall not fail that rendezvous.'

—World War I poet Alan Seeger, killed in the Battle of the Somme, September 1916

By the end of June it was clear to the Allied commanders that they were now as deadlocked on Gallipoli as the British and French armies were on the Western Front. Birdwood now revived earlier plans for a 'breakout' attack that would capture the heights of the Sari Bair range, cut Turkish communications from both north and south, and allow Allied troops to sweep across the peninsula to the Narrows on the opposite coast. With the Dardanelles Straits secured, the British and French fleets could steam through the Sea of Marmara to threaten Constantinople, as had been the intention four months earlier.

Russell's mounted brigade had already explored the hills and steep gullies to the north of Anzac and discovered what appeared to be lightly defended routes up to the dominating heights of Sari Bair. A party of New Zealanders had also landed at Nibrunesi Point and crossed the Suvla Plain without meeting any Turks or seeing any sign of emplacements.

The plan as devised by Birdwood and his staff was for the New Zealand & Australian Division, supported by a British New Army division, to break out of the north flank of the Anzac position on the night of 6/7 August. It would capture the high points of the Sari Bair range—Chunuk Bair, Hill Q and Koja Chemen Tepe (Hill 971)—and then attack down the range to capture Battleship Hill and Baby 700.

The Australian Light Horse would simultaneously attack Turkish positions on Baby 700 and at the Chessboard. They would then advance to meet Godley's force coming down the ridge from Chunuk Bair. Supporting attacks would be made at Helles in the south and at Lone Pine and Quinn's Post in the north to draw enemy forces away from the main assault. Two divisions of British troops under Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stopford would land at Suvla Bay to secure it as a base and then push inland to capture Turkish positions on the Chocolate and W hills.

Overall, the Allies were expected to face a Turkish force of about 100,000 men, including 27,000 at Anzac and another 37,000 in reserve. All reports tended to show that although the enemy was expected to fight well in the trenches, his morale had suffered considerably because of recent heavy casualties and his stock of ammunition was low.

The Turks were fully aware of the impending operation, but not exactly where it would occur. Mustapha Kemal, however, was convinced that the British would advance up the almost undefended Sazli Dere and the valleys to the north of it to attack the summit of Sari Bair. His corps commander, Esad Pasha, was sceptical, but it was Kemal who was to be proved right.

For the attack on Sari Bair, two covering forces consisting of Russell's mounted brigade, the Maori contingent, and two battalions of British infantry under Brigadier-General Travers would capture the Turkish positions in the foothills of the range. This would allow two assaulting columns of infantry to advance up four deres (valleys) to the main ridge.

The right assaulting column, consisting of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade under Johnston, would attack the ridge of Chunuk Bair from two different directions—Canterbury Battalion through Sazli Dere and the Wellington and Otago battalions through Chailak Dere. The left assaulting column, consisting of Cox's 29th Indian Brigade and Monash's 4th Australian Brigade, would attack Hill 971 and Hill Q through the Aghyl Dere.

Malone felt his battalion was quite unfit for such a demanding task. 'Three months fighting and work, big new strain, heavy casualties, not much rest, bring the best of men to a point dangerously near that of breaking,' he wrote in his diary. It would also involve a night operation in very rough country, for which none of the New Zealand troops had been trained. 'We shall possibly mistake the Maoris for Turks and the confusion in the dark will be terrible.'

Unlike the Canterbury and Otago battalions, which had been briefly rested on Lemnos, his men would go straight out of the trenches of Quinn's Post and into the line again. They and the entire New Zealand Infantry Brigade, he wrote, should have had a long period of rest such as the British 29th Division had recently been given.

Malone was right to be concerned. With a theoretical strength of 4000, the New Zealand Infantry Brigade was now down to 2800. The troops had fought in the landing and in the grim battes at Helles, and had garrisoned Courtney's and Quinn's posts at the head of Monash Gully for two months. They were worn out, and a good 70 per cent of them were suffering from diarrhoea or dysentery. Malone's battalion was in a particularly bad state, weakened by a heavy workload, bad food, lack of water, and endless fighting. It would be committed to the last British offensive on the Gallipoli peninsula without any opportunity for a rest.

Birdwood, Malone had been told, had wanted to rest the entire New Zealand Brigade because it had been very hard worked and was 'much knocked about'. Johnston, he also heard, had insisted that the brigade be used for what would be one of the toughest parts of the job. 'He is too airy for me and does not know the weakness of his brigade,' Malone confided to his diary.

In his opinion, Johnston's preparations for the attack were also not thorough enough.

The Brigadier will not get down to bed rock. He seems to think that a night attack and the taking of entrenched positions without artillery preparation is like 'kissing one's hand.' Yesterday he burst forth 'If there's any hitch I shall go right up and take the place myself.' . . . He says there is to be no delay. He is an extraordinary man. If it were not so serious it would be laughable. So far as I am concerned the men, my brave gallant men, shall have the best fighting chance I can give them or that can be got. No airy plunging and disregard of the rules and chances.

Meanwhile, the build-up for the August offensive had begun. Over three days, 30,000 New Army troops were brought ashore at night and hidden away in ravines or patches of dead ground. Immense dumps of food, ammunition and other supplies were established.

On 3 August, Birdwood and Godley issued their instructions for the attack on the Sari Bair ridge.All ranks were to be identified by white armlets and white patches worn on the back. Each man was to carry semaphore flags to show the position of their units to the warships, artillery and supporting troops. Bayonets were to be fixed but rifles not loaded. Wounded were not to be evacuated during darkness until the attacking columns had passed. All movement was to be as silent as possible.

If the troops came under fire while approaching their objective, they were to move on, leaving enemy pickets or snipers to be dealt with by advanced parties or special groups set up for the purpose. Punctuality and accurate timing were vital as the various attacks were timed to provide mutual support and protection.

The troops were warned to be sparing in their use of ammunition, food and water. In some cases, no water could be supplied for at least eighteen hours and no food for 48 hours. The first night of the operations would be sleepless and probably the next night also. Flares were to be lit at dawn on 7 August to mark the position of the troops to the warships and the artillery. Heavy enemy fire was to be expected once it became light, but the guns of the warships and the artillery batteries at Anzac would provide 'powerful assistance'.

Battalion commanders were told that they must push on to their objective whatever the progress of the other columns in the attack. The ground taken was to be consolidated without delay and made impregnable against counter-attack. They were then to push on down the spurs to the east of Battleship Hill and converge with the Australian Light Horsemen who would be attacking up the range from Baby 700. If its strength permitted, the whole force was then to press on further down the range as far as Quinn's Post.

In short, Godley's force was to be the left wing of an Anzac pincer movement designed to clear the Turks off the heights facing the Anzac perimeter and pave the way for an Allied thrust across the peninsula to the Narrows on the opposite coast. The plan was innovative but it would require good coordination, navigation and timing, and all by men weakened by months of combat and sickness.

Hamilton at least was realistic about what lay ahead. The New Zealand and Australian divisions, he wrote, had been called up to carry out one of the most difficult military operations that had ever been attempted—'a night march and assault by several columns in intricate mountainous country, strongly entrenched, and held by a numerous and determined enemy'.

Malone now wrote a last letter to Ida.

We are in for a big move and everything promises well. The attack starts tomorrow night. You will have heard all about it, long before you get this . . . I do know all your feelings and I reciprocate them, but do not be sad. All will be well and our future life together will be all the sweeter and better for this separation . . . My candle is all but burnt out and we shall soon be moving. So good night dearest one. Your lover and husband.

On the night of 5 August, the Wellington Battalion was relieved at Quinn's Post by troops of the 2nd Australian Light Horse Brigade and moved under cover of darkness to Happy Valley on the northern side of Walker's Ridge. The battalion remained hidden in the scrub for all the following day. They were ordered not to look up as their faces would show if a Turkish scouting plane flew over.

That night, Johnston issued his orders for the assault on Chunuk Bair. The Otago, Wellington and Auckland battalions would move along the Chailak Dere and up onto Rhododendron Ridge in that order, followed by a field company of engineers and the 26th Indian Mountain Battery. The Otago Battalion would secure Rhododendron Ridge facing Chunuk Bair; the Wellingtons following up would secure and picket Cheshire Ridge overlooking Aghyl Dere. The Canterburys would move up Sazli Dere and secure the southern edge of Rhododendron Ridge facing Battleship Hill. The Wellington and Otago battalions would then push on and seize Chunuk Bair.

The attack on the night of 6/7 August did not begin well. Russell's mounted brigade and the Maori were delayed from the start by a strongly defended barricade at the mouth of the Chailak Dere, which was only cleared after fierce hand-to-hand fighting. Small parties of Turks then opened fire on the advancing Otago infantry, delaying the leading troops and throwing them into confusion.

The Wellingtons' advance up the Chailak Dere should have begun at 11 p.m., but it was past midnight when they finally moved into the valley with Malone at their head. Progress became slower as the country got steeper and more difficult to negotiate in the dark. Malone began to chafe at the delay, realising that once daylight arrived all hope of surprising the Turks on Chunuk Bair would be gone.

Johnston now ordered Malone's battalion to advance through the scattered Otagos and on to Rhododendron Ridge. It was just breaking day when he and his Taranaki and Ruahine companies reached the top of the spur and halted at the Apex, a shallow basin about 300 metres below the crest. The Wellingtons should have been within assaulting distance of Chunuk Bair two hours earlier.

Malone sent a message to Johnston's headquarters, which was following his battalion up the dere: 'I am occupying a position nearly at the head of gully. As it is day and I am not sure of my position I am lining the crest of surrounding ridges so as to ensure reasonable safety. I am reconnoitring further and will act on further knowledge and report.'

With the arrival of daylight, all hope of a surprise attack had gone. The Otago Battalion with which Malone was to mount a two-battalion assault on Chunuk Bair was scattered amongst the ridges surrounding Chailak Dere. The summit of Chunuk Bair was also clearly occupied as Turkish observers could be seen silhouetted against the light of dawn. As ordered, Malone had secured a position below Chunuk Bair and thrown out pickets to cover the advance of the following battalions to the head of Chailak Dere.

The Auckland Battalion now arrived, followed soon after by a party of Gurkhas who had lost direction during the advance. As the Wellingtons were digging in, Temperley arrived and urged Malone to push on. Malone argued that good gains had already been made, but now that daylight had arrived and all surprise had been lost it was better to dig in and secure those gains.

Elsewhere, the attack had not gone well. Major Allanson and his Gurkhas of the 29th Brigade were dug in below the crest of Hill 971. The Australian attack on Hill Q had failed completely, as had the diversionary attacks on Baby 700, and at Quinn's and Pope's. At Lone Pine, the Australians of Walker's brigade were locked in desperate fighting. Down in Suvla Bay, Stopford had got 20,000 men safely ashore but had not advanced far beyond the beaches.

At the Nek, over 370 officers and men of the Australian Light Horse had been killed or wounded in four futile charges against the Turkish line—over half those committed to the attack. Tragically, their sacrifice had been pointless, for the New Zealanders their attack was meant to support were halted and waiting below Chunuk Bair.

About 8 a.m., Johnston arrived and conferred with Temperley and the two battalion commanders, Malone and Young, while the exhausted infantry settled down in the scrub for a breakfast of bully beef and water. All appear to have agreed that an attack on Chunuk Bair at that hour had no chance of success.

By now Chunuk Bair was occupied in some force, and sniper and machine-gun fire were already causing casualties amongst the troops on the hillside. The Canterbury Battalion was still struggling up Sazli Dere after losing its way in the dark and marching back to Anzac. The supporting forces, the 29th Indian and 4th Australian brigades, were still nowhere to be seen.

Temperley's memoirs record that he advised Johnston to delay the attack on the grounds that the brigade was alone and unsupported on the right or left, and that any movement from the Apex drew 'a storm of rifle and machine gun fire' from the crest. Because there was no sign of other troop movement, he wrote, the brigade commanders therefore felt it prudent to await a further advance by the Indian brigade.

Temperley drafted a message to this effect and sent it down to divisional headquarters. Godley's response was blunt: 'Attack at once!' According to his account of the battle, Temperley then 'begged' Johnston to disobey the order on the grounds that he, Johnston, was the only real judge of the situation. If General Godley had been on the spot, Temperley insisted, he would have come to precisely the same conclusion. Johnston refused: 'All his traditions and training and innate loyalty were against it. Besides it was a heavy responsibility to take.'

While the commanders waited below Chunuk Bair, Turkish reserves were moving up the slopes on the far side of the hill. Two companies from Mustapha Kemal's division had arrived at 7 a.m., followed by two regiments under Colonel Kannengiesser at about 9 a.m. The fire from Turkish positions on Chunuk Bair and Battleship Hill was becoming heavier.

A new message now arrived from Godley's headquarters. The Auckland Battalion and the Gurkhas were to attack at 10.30 a.m., but with support from naval guns and field artillery. Young and his scouts went forward to inspect the ground over which his battalion would have to advance. What he saw was a frontage so narrow that his men would be forced to attack platoon by platoon and under heavy fire from Chunuk Bair and Battleship Hill.

To give his men a better chance, Young recommended that the attack be delayed until nightfall. Johnston insisted that it be launched on time. The brigade's machine-gun officer, Captain Jesse Wallingford, urged Johnston to delay the attack for at least 30 minutes so that he could position his guns to give the Aucklanders good covering fire. Johnston again refused—there would be no delay.

With at least two Turkish battalions now defending the ridge, the result was a massacre. In less than ten minutes, over 300 men were killed or wounded for the gain of just 100 metres of ground—a repeat of the slaughter of the Australian Light Horse at the Nek five hours earlier. Johnston—possibly drunk—stood on the crest of the ridge cheering his men on until dragged into cover by his staff. The officer sent up to take his place was shot dead.

'The result was as I had foreseen,' Temperley wrote. 'An isolated attack in broad daylight with distant and unobserved artillery fire was hopeless. Thus early in the struggle one battalion had been expended. We were shortly to lose another.'

By now the Otago and Canterbury battalions had arrived on Rhododendron Ridge and were ordered to move up to the Apex. Instead of trickling his men up under cover, the Canterbury commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes, formed his whole force up on the exposed end of the spur in full view of Chunuk Bair. A hurricane of fire from every available Turkish gun swept over the battalion and within a few minutes it had effectively ceased to exist.

It was now clear that no further progress could be made in daylight, but Johnston was determined that Godley's original orders would be carried out. Malone's Wellingtons and the remnants of the Canterbury Battalion were ordered to renew the assault. Malone refused. To attack in broad daylight against strong Turkish defences was suicide, he told Johnston. His men would wait and attack that night.

Infantryman Charlie Clark was standing near Malone when Johnston gave the order.

'Stop where you are!' Colonel Malone told us. He was very stern and strong faced. Malone told the British commanders, 'No. We are not taking orders from you people. Wellington is not going up there. My men are not going to commit suicide. I will take all risk and any punishment. We will take Chunuk Bar tonight, in the dark, not in daylight.'

These two Englishmen threatened to arrest Malone for insubordination. I reckon if they tried arresting him we would have shot them. Malone just ordered, 'Wellington Battalion, come back from that ridge.' So we did . . . We were all grateful and we thanked him.

Short of arresting Malone, Johnston now had no choice but to report to Godley that the attack on Chunuk Bair had failed, and to recommend that any further attempt be delayed until nightfall. Godley agreed to this while making some changes to the original plan. The 4th Australian Brigade would make another attempt to seize Hill 971; Cox's 29th Indian Brigade, reinforced by the British 39th New Army Brigade, would take Hill Q. Johnston's New Zealand Infantry Brigade would be reinforced by two inexperienced New Army battalions, the 7th Gloucesters and the 8th Welsh Pioneers. The state of the three other battalions of Johnston's brigade meant that Malone's battalion would have to lead the attack.

The New Zealanders buried their dead that night while the stretcher-bearers toiled up and down the spur with their heavy loads and Turkish machine-gun fire crackled overhead. At 1 a.m., Johnston issued his orders for the attack on Chunuk Bair. It would begin at 4.15 a.m. and be preceded by a 45-minute bombardment of the enemy positions on the crest. The leading companies would leave the Apex at 4 a.m., giving them fifteen minutes to cover the ground to the summit.

Foreseeing heavy fighting that day, and with water bottles empty and ammunition short, Malone asked brigade headquarters to arrange an extra supply of water and ammunition before his battalion moved out. A party was sent to the beach to see what could be done.

At 3.30 a.m. Malone and Cunningham, his second-in-command, roused their sleeping men and formed them up in the moonlight. Malone gave his batman, Ben Smart, Ida's address to write to in case he was killed, shook hands, and said goodbye. Passing along the trench, he stopped beside Lieutenant Turnbull, the subaltern who had stood up to him during battalion training in Egypt.

'Before we go forward,' he said to Turnbull, 'I want you to know that I hold nothing against you over what happened in Egypt. I like a man that tells me the truth.' Malone felt that he was going to his death, for he said, 'I do not think that I shall survive the day, but I feel my work is done for I command the best battalion that has left New Zealand.'

For 45 minutes, the shells of the warships and Anzac artillery turned the summit of Chunuk Bair into a sheet of flame. Steadied by Malone's calm presence, his gaunt and exhausted men waited in the moonlight for the barrage to lift. At 4 a.m. the leading companies fixed bayonets and moved through the forward positions occupied by the shattered Auckland Battalion and out along the narrow, steep-sided saddle connecting the Apex to the slopes of Chunuk Bair. Following some distance behind were two companies of the Gloucesters.

The issue of whether his trenches should be sited on the forward or the rear slopes of a captured position was still worrying Malone, and he admitted as much to his adjutant, Captain Harston, as they moved silently towards their objective. The best solution, Harston suggested, was to do both—put half the battalion on the forward slope and keep the other half on the reverse slope with a sap linking the two.

At the top of the rise, the Wellingtons expected to meet the same blast of rifle and machine-gun fire that had slaughtered the Aucklanders the day before. It never came—the leading lines overran a small Turkish trench, then moved over the top of Chunuk Bair and down its eastern side. The Turkish position was virtually deserted and not a shot had been fired. Either the garrison had fled in panic as a result of the preliminary bombardment, had been withdrawn by mistake or this was a trap. In the distance, the Narrows glinted dully in the dawn light.

From his headquarters at sea off Anzac Cove, Hamilton watched the attack unfold: 'At first faint glimmer of dawn observers saw figures moving against the skyline of Chunuk Bair. Were they our own men or were they Turks? Telescopes were anxiously adjusted; the light grew stronger; men were seen climbing up from our side of the ridge; they were our own fellows—the topmost summit was ours!'

Malone now had to make a choice: to follow the clear orders he had been given to take and hold the crest of Chunuk Bair and then push on into the enemy's rear or to get his troops underground. The Turks, he knew, were in strength elsewhere on the ridge and there were no troops immediately available to secure his position and widen the gap he had created in the Turkish lines. The Auckland and Canterbury battalions had been shattered, the Otago battalion was being reorganised, and the 29th Indian and 4th Australian brigades were still missing. Unsurprisingly, Malone opted to dig in on Chunuk Bair.

It would be a hard position to defend. The ground was rocky and hard, which made it difficult to dig trenches to any depth, and it was open to Turkish fire from both flanks. Malone deployed two of his companies in the main Turkish trench on the crestline and ordered the second two to dig a supporting trench on the seaward slope some 20 to 30 metres behind the crest with a sap linking the two.

The first companies of Gloucesters and Welsh Pioneers to arrive on the crest were deployed to the right and left of the Wellington line, and covering parties sent forward to give early warning of a Turkish attack. 'Col. Malone told everyone to dig and kept on at them, telling them that before nightfall they would want it, and he proved to be very correct . . . Even the officers dug with our small entrenching tools.'

On Chunuk Bair one of the most savage infantry battles of the war was about to begin. The haze that had masked the capture of Chunuk Bair from the Turks lifted and Malone's men on the crest and the British troops still crossing the saddle from the Apex came under devastating rifle and machine-gun fire. The Welsh Pioneers alone lost most of their officers and men before reaching the crest.

'It was the fire from Hill Q that did the damage,' Harston recalled. 'It enfiladed the whole position. The Turks had a clear field of fire not only along the crest but also along the forward slope and over a considerable part of the reverse slope. In a very short time, probably about 8am, we had been pretty well wiped out.'

Dense masses of Turks howling 'Allah! Allah' now attacked the survivors of the forward trench. The Gloucesters broke and fell back behind the Wellington line, causing a near-panic amongst Malone's men and forcing them to bend back in an attempt to cover their now exposed right flank. With their trench choked with dead and wounded, the Wellingtons fought tenaciously on until overrun and driven back to the supporting line on the seaward slope. The first Turks into the trench bayoneted the wounded or beat them to death with rifle butts; fourteen others were taken prisoner.

The Auckland mounteds and the Maori contingent were now sent forward to reinforce the beleaguered men on the ridge. The Maori were driven by Turkish fire down into the Aghyl Dere and remained there for the rest of the battle. The Aucklanders took most of the day to reach the summit, running ten men at a time across the bullet-swept ridge and up onto Chunuk Bair.

By now the defenders had more than Turks to contend with. 'Soon after they [the reinforcements] arrived,' recalled Lieutenant Charles Lepper, 'our artillery opened out and they did more damage to us in half an hour than the Turks did all day. They killed out two trenches of our chaps, one on either side of the one I was in, and slapped up ever so many mounteds . . .'

At 3 p.m., Malone sent Harston back to brigade headquarters on the Apex with an urgent request for more reinforcements and for a stop to the shelling that was killing his men on the crest. Harston found Johnston and Temperley reluctant to accept that three battalions had almost been wiped out on Chunuk Bair and that the position was critical. In the end they agreed to send reinforcements up to the crest at dusk and to have the shellfire diverted further inland.

Godley now revised his plan for the capture of the Sari Bair ridge. The attempt on Hill 971 was to be abandoned; Cox was to renew his attack on Hill Q; Brigadier-General Baldwin's 38th Brigade was to occupy the northern crest of Chunuk Bair between it and Hill Q. The Wellingtons and the Auckland Mounted Rifles on the crest would be reinforced by the Otago Battalion and the Wellington Mounted Rifles. A divisional conference was to be held at brigade headquarters that afternoon to discuss the details, but neither Godley nor a staff officer turned up. The key decisions on what should happen were now to be left in Johnston's unsteady hands.

Meanwhile, the New Zealanders fought on in the blazing heat of August, their faces blackened by dust and sweat, their tongues parched for lack of water. The few flags placed along the crest to signal their position to the warships and the artillery were shot away. Two machine guns, their crews all dead, swung uselessly above the forward trench.

With the Wellingtons now back on the rear slope the Turks could creep up to within 20 metres of the line, fire at almost point-blank range and heave their bombs into the trench. Wounded men no longer able to hold a rifle loaded for those who could. Others crawled around filling their hats with cartridges from the pouches of the dead and wounded and taking water from their water bottles.

Five times the Turks charged the line with bayonet and bomb; each time the Wellingtons threw them back while the ravine behind them filled with wounded and dying men: 'Two hundred of us, maybe more. It was terrible, terrible. No water and no attention and nobody could do anything. We were being shelled too as we lay there. Men were all smashed up, and getting smashed up even more. They knew they were dying.'

In the late afternoon the Turks shelled the position for over two hours, but by now a telephone link had been set up and Malone could talk directly to brigade headquarters at the Apex. His men, he told the brigade major, were very hard pressed and were in desperate need of more ammunition, bombs, tools and water.

All through that day Malone fought with his men. Armed with an entrenching tool, he rushed again and again into the firing line when the Turks threatened to break through. Each time the Turks charged, Malone was up, rifle and bayonet in hand, to lead the counter-charge. 'He kept boosting our morale, and he always had a kind word, an encouraging word,' recalled Vic Nicholson. '"It'll ease off shortly," he promised, "They'll get tired of this."'

Harston tried repeatedly to make Malone take more care and let his officers and men do the work, but he refused. His rifle was shot out of his hands, shrapnel bullets landed everywhere about him and still he was not hit.

By 5 p.m., the shelling seemed to have ceased and Malone and Major Schofield of the Auckland mounteds got ready to settle their troops into the best defensive positions for the night. Just as they stood up a shrapnel shell, either from a British warship or a New Zealand artillery battery, burst over the headquarters trench. Colonel Jordan of the Gloucesters got a bullet through the mouth; Major Schofield a fatal one through the lung. Malone, hit twice in the head, collapsed into Harston's arms and never spoke again.

'Of all the misfortunes of the day,' wrote Gallipoli historian Robert Rhodes James, 'this was the hardest one to bear. The official histories make no mention of it.'

Once on Chunuk Bair

'In the breaking light they swarmed over the skyline in a massed bayonet attack. The 1000 British of the garrison at Chunuk Bair and the nearby Pinnacle disappeared from view and from life . . . Ten NZ machine gun crews in flanking positions cut down hundreds of Turks, and gun crews on the warships threw salvo after salvo of shrapnel into the mass. But it was as irresistible as lava. Down the seaward slope it went, rolling onto the small plateau at the farm and leaving 1000 men dead or dying after savage fighting. Dead Turks lay everywhere—perhaps 5000 of them—but Kemal had done what he intended—removed the cancer from Gallipoli's throat.'

—John Laffin, _Damn the Dardanelles!_

With the taking of Chunuk Bair on the morning of 8 August, the Allied offensive at Gallipoli reached its climax. At 5 p.m. that day, the hour Malone was killed, it was held by fewer than a hundred Wellingtons, two contingents of Russell's mounteds, and a scattering of Gloucesters and Welsh Pioneers. They were hungry, thirsty and half-dead with fatigue after ten hours of heavy fighting. The Gloucesters alone had lost all of their officers and over 350 of their men.

That night, the Otago Battalion and two squadrons of the Wellington Mounted Rifles relieved the defenders of Chunuk Bair. Malone's oldest son Edmond—a Wellington mounted rifleman—may well have been among the reinforcements. Whether he found his father's body lying amongst the dead and wounded is not recorded.

Of the 760 Wellingtons who had advanced at first light that day, only 70 unwounded men walked off Chunuk Bair. Their uniforms were torn, drenched in sweat and blood, and caked in dust; most of them had had no sleep for 48 hours, none had had any water since dawn. The remnants of the two New Army battalions were in no better shape.

Throughout the next day, the Otago infantry and Wellington mounteds hung on to the crest. 'These suffered throughout the day an ordeal even more intense and dreadful than Malone's men had endured. Bombed, shelled, sniped, raked with machine gun fire, suffering extremely from thirst, they utterly refused to be dislodged . . . And all day the sun blazed down on their agony.'

The end came that night when all New Zealand troops were withdrawn from Chunuk Bair and its defence handed over to two New Army regiments—the 6th Royal North Lancashires and the 5th Wiltshires. Some 1500 British troops now held the crest, about 2500 were occupying a plateau below it known as The Farm, and the same number were dug in on the slope below Hill Q.

That night, Mustapha Kemal's battalions massed behind Sari Bair and attacked at dawn, bayoneting the defenders on the crest to a man and flooding down over the Wiltshire Battalion resting at The Farm. Baldwin, almost all of his officers and a thousand of his men were killed.

In twenty lines, 300 men in a line, the Turks swept down the slopes of Chunuk Bair towards the Apex. British, Indian and New Zealand troops fell back in a panic, and between 300 and 400 New Army men ran towards the Turks with their hands up. Threatened with the collapse of the whole line, Temperley ordered the New Zealand machine-gunners to fire into their backs, and those who could ran back to their lines.

The artillery batteries and the warships off Anzac Cove picked up the range and together with Wallingford's ten machine guns at the Apex they turned the attack into a massacre. 'Thousands came down, hundreds went back,' Wallingford recalled after the war. Days later, a New Zealand patrol found a small group of Wiltshires in a cleft in no-man's-land. They alone had survived the holocaust.

With the debacle at Suvla and the loss of Chunuk Bair, Hamilton's great August offensive was over and with it any hope of victory in the Gallipoli campaign. Some 25,000 men had been thrown into the attack, but by 10 August, after suffering some 12,000 casualties, most of them were back at the point from which they had advanced three days earlier. The Turks remained firmly in possession of the high ground dominating the Allied positions. Only on Chunuk Bair had New Zealand troops reached, and held, their objective.

'The Turks are well commanded: that I admit,' Hamilton wrote after it was all over. 'Their generals knew they were done unless they could quickly knock us off Chunuk Bair. So they have done it. Never mind: never say die.'

Back on Rhododendron Ridge, British troops held the line with Wallingford's machine-gunners in position behind them. Behind them again were the remnants of Malone's Wellingtons and the three other New Zealand battalions. On the morning of 12 August, Hamilton sent Johnston's brigade back to the Apex with orders to entrench and 'hold on forever'.

In the days following Malone's death, commanders and subordinates alike paid their tributes. Hamilton extolled Malone's 'brilliant leadership—a hero killed while leading his men with absolute contempt for danger'. Godley and Birdwood praised his loyalty and leadership skills. None at the time made any mention of the loss of Chunuk Bair, for which he was subsequently, and unfairly, blamed.

In spite of bearing the brunt of the fighting on Chunuk Bair, the New Zealanders received little official recognition. Cyril Basset, the signaller, was awarded a Victoria Cross (VC) for his heroism under fire below Chunuk Bair; Captain Wallingford and Lieutenant Turnbull received the Military Cross (MC). Malone's inspiring leadership during the offensive was recognised by a second mention in despatches, but there was no talk of a Victoria Cross, the only honour he was entitled to receive posthumously.

By contrast, General Walker ensured that his Australians received no fewer than seven VCs for their bravery at Lone Pine, one of them for Captain Alfred Shout, a New Zealander serving with Australian forces. The Gloucesters, who broke on Chunuk Bair, also did well. Their colonel got a CMG (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George) and his officers several DSOs and MCs. In later years Godley would acknowledge Malone's 'magnificent leadership' on Chunuk Bair, but in the aftermath he had nothing to offer. In the general's eyes, Malone had done no more than his job.

Godley's report to Birdwood on the Sari Bair operation was sparse, leaving out any potentially controversial material or a detailed description of his role in it. The report acknowledged the 'valuable' service rendered by brigade commanders Monash and Johnston, and battalion commander Hughes—all of whom could be said to have mishandled their commands during the operation. Malone, who was responsible for the capture of Chunuk Bair and its tenacious defence, was not mentioned.

There was more to come. Initiated by a signaller in Birdwood's headquarters, a story began to circulate amongst the troops that the New Zealanders had been thrown off Chunuk Bair because they had failed to dig in on the forward slope of the hill. From the same source came a story that the Australian 4th Brigade attack had failed because it had not been pushed with sufficient vigour (the brigade had suffered 50 per cent casualties). The men down on the beach, and particularly the survivors, were furious and blamed Birdwood, Godley and their staff for spreading false information.

On 21 August, Malone was remembered in a memorial service attended by the few surviving members of his battalion. In mid-September, his Wellingtons were withdrawn to the Allied base on Lemnos Island to rest and reorganise. In spite of having absorbed three contingents of reinforcements, the 1000-strong Anzac battalions of the landing on 25 April were now pathetically weak, with the strongest down to no more than 300 men. 'Five months of monotonous food and thirst, of constant hammering at the Turk, of constant danger and fatigue, had left its mark on the hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed men of Anzac.'

By mid-October all thoughts of further Allied offensives at Gallipoli had ceased and Hamilton had been replaced as commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force by General Sir Charles Monro. Bulgaria had allied itself with the Central Powers, allowing Germany to supply Turkey with artillery and ammunition directly by rail to Constantinople. The Allies would soon face the prospect of being blasted off Gallipoli by fresh Turkish batteries of heavy guns.

British leaders, both political and military, were by now convinced that the war would be decided on the Western Front and that it made little sense to divert forces elsewhere. Pressure was mounting for the abandonment of the Gallipoli campaign before the approaching winter made the supply and reinforcement of the besieged force impossible. As Chris Pugsley put it: 'Gallipoli was now an embarrassing backwater, expensive in men, material and effort and difficult to shrug off.'

After consulting his senior commanders, Monro recommended that all Allied forces on the peninsula be withdrawn forthwith. Hamilton, however, had opposed any such move, telling his superiors in London that it would result in the loss of up to 45 per cent of his force and most of his artillery and stores. To no avail. After a surprise visit to Gallipoli in early November, Kitchener, now Secretary of State for War, made the final call and planning began for the only successful British military operation on the peninsula—its evacuation.

All non-essential men and supplies were sent away in early December, followed a week later by the evacuation of one regiment or battalion in each brigade to Lemnos. Heavy guns were taken off the beach by night; surplus supplies, arms and ammunition dumped at sea, burnt in piles onshore or buried, and fires kept burning in deserted bivouacs. Self-firing rifles and booby traps were fixed in position and mines laid under the Turkish trenches at the Nek. If the Turks attacked during the critical stages of the evacuation, the rearguard would be sealed off behind large barbed-wire barriers and expected to fight, and if necessary die, where they stood.

The evacuation was more successful than anyone in the British military or political establishment could have foreseen. The entire Anzac/Suvla force of 134,000 men, nearly 400 guns and 14,000 animals was embarked for Lemnos almost without loss. Appropriately, the Wellington Battalion that had fought so magnificently on Chunuk Bair was the last to leave Anzac. Given his pride in his men and his fierce sense of duty, Malone would have wanted no less.

In the following years, soldiers and historians would blame Johnston for halting his brigade on Rhododendron Ridge instead of pushing on to capture Chunuk Bair as ordered by Birdwood. Malone would be blamed for subsequently siting his trenches 'wrongly' on the crest of Chunuk Bair, surrendering the heights to the Turks and with them the promise of final victory in the Gallipoli campaign. 'The cost in blood was not light,' wrote Temperley in his report of the action. 'The ultimate cost to the Empire and the cause for which the allies fought no one can measure.'

Establishing just what took place at the Apex and later on Chunuk Bair, and why the New Zealand commanders made certain decisions, however, will always be difficult. The descriptions of what happened and at what time differ considerably and there are gaps in the information so far available.

What is known is that Johnston halted his column on Rhododendron Ridge just 500 metres from the summit of Chunuk Bair to await the arrival of the Canterbury Battalion and the 29th Indian Brigade. This was contrary to Birdwood's strict instructions that all units were to push on towards their objectives regardless of the progress of other formations.

It is clear, however, that Johnston consulted Temperley and at least two of his battalion commanders before making his decision. All, including Malone, appear to have agreed that a frontal assault up a steep slope in broad daylight had no hope of success and that the brigade should wait for the missing battalions to arrive.

In hindsight, their decision was the wrong one. Johnston should have pushed Malone's battalion or the Aucklanders on to Chunuk Bair as soon as he arrived at the Apex. The crest could then have been in the New Zealanders' hands before the Turks began to arrive in force about 9 a.m. and the brigade came under increasingly heavy fire.

New Zealand's best-known historian of the Gallipoli campaign, Dr Chris Pugsley, has no doubt that Johnston committed a serious tactical blunder that day.

Malone had done what he had been ordered to do—establish a firm base on Rhododendron Spur for the next stage of the operation, the capture of the crest of Chunuk Bair.

Johnston, possibly because he was drunk, and Temperley, took counsel of their fears and halted their brigade for some hours, which gave the Turks time to consolidate on the crest. By waiting at the Apex instead of attacking at once, Johnston doomed the Aucklanders who finally made the assault on Chunuk Bair later that morning.

Johnston and his commanders, however, had to deal with an overambitious plan that had gone badly wrong. It was daylight when they finally arrived on Rhododendron Spur, and all possibility of surprise was gone. A force of Turks of unknown strength was in occupation of the crest, and only two of the four battalions that were supposed to make the attack had arrived on the spur. Cox's Indian Brigade and Monash's 4th Australian Brigade were meant by now to be attacking Hill Q and Hill 971, but were nowhere to be seen.

For the New Zealanders to attack now would be to do so under fire from the crest of Chunuk Bair and with both flanks in the air—a hazardous operation as Helles had already shown. Acting on what they knew, Johnston and his commanders decided to wait and so the opportunity passed.

In 1919, Major H.V. Howe, formerly of Quinn's Post and now a member of the Australian Historical Mission to Gallipoli, went over the battleground with Zeki Bey, a Turkish staff officer who had commanded the Turkish defence against the Australians at Lone Pine. Howe's conclusion was that Johnston and his battalion commanders would not have departed from their orders without very good reason.

Howe offered two possible explanations. The first was that leading elements of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade—three companies of Otagos under Major Statham—reached the crest of Chunuk Bair at 4 or 4.30 a.m. on 7 August but were repulsed by Turkish troops stationed in force just below the summit. Johnston and his battalion commanders then decided that any daylight attack on Chunuk Bair would be suicidal and that they should wait for dark and the arrival of the missing battalions.

This version of events was supported by Zeki Bey, who told Howe that some New Zealanders had indeed reached the summit of Chunuk Bair at dawn on 7 August, but were stopped by a Turkish counter-attack and then wiped out by artillery and machine-gun fire. The proof of this theory, Howe wrote, lay in the fact that when the Otago Battalion was sent to relieve the Wellingtons on Chunuk Bair two days later its strength was down to two companies.

Alternatively, Howe suggested that the Otagos had reached the Apex about dawn on 7 August. Statham then sent scouts forward to reconnoitre the ground over which the planned attack on Chunuk Bair was to take place. What they saw, less that 100 metres below them, was a battalion and a half of Turkish infantry ready for action and able to completely command the narrow nek from the Apex to the slopes of Chunuk Bair. They would also have seen two Turkish divisions marching along the valley towards Hill 971 and possibly activity around the Turkish artillery battery on Hill Q.

Acting on the information supplied by the scouts, the commanders of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade decided that a daylight attack was impossible and that they should wait. When the Auckland Battalion assaulted the position on Godley's orders at 10.30 a.m., however, it was too late—the Turks were in force on the crest and the attack was repulsed with heavy casualties.

The subsequent claim that Malone lost the heights of Chunuk Bair by wrongly siting his trenches was first made in a report by Johnston's brigade major, Major Arthur Temperley. Temperley's report was accepted by Godley, Birdwood and Hamilton, and subsequently by the official historians, Brigadier-General Cecil Aspinall-Oglander and the Australian Dr Charles Bean. Temperley was in a perfect position to damage the reputation of a man he disliked, and his unfair and inaccurate description of Malone's actions on Chunuk Bair became the accepted version of what happened on 8 August 1915.

In 1927, Harston, who was Malone's adjutant and had seen the action at first hand, sent a detailed account of it to Aspinall-Oglander who promised to incorporate it in the official history to be published in 1931. He did not do so, and historian John North, who had also relied on Temperley's report for his account of the battle, refused to publish a correction.

Harston recalled the discussion between Malone, Johnston and Temperley over a War Office pamphlet outlining the latest tactics being adopted on the Western Front. A key recommendation was that troops should occupy the reverse slope of a hill rather than the forward one so as to protect themselves from artillery fire. Malone felt that this also applied to Gallipoli, but Johnston disagreed. Artillery fire on the peninsula, he argued, was not as heavy as on the Western Front and so the troops should be positioned on the forward slope to give them a good field of fire.

According to his version of events, Temperley was worried that Malone would entrench his troops on the reverse rather than the forward slope of Chunuk Bair. He and Johnston agreed that, if possible, Malone should not be given the chance to do so: in other words, that another commander would be given charge of the assault on the crest. In the event, the destruction of both the Auckland and Canterbury regiments forced their hands and Malone was 'entrusted' with the critical attack on Chunuk Bair.

That night, Temperley said he again impressed upon Malone the importance of gaining 'command, observation, and a good field of fire, and of denying all of these to the enemy'. Malone assured him that this would be done. Having had first-hand experience of Malone's 'obstinacy', Temperley felt sure that he would do exactly the opposite—dig in on the reverse slope of the hill and surrender all initiative to the Turks.

'The convictions formed in Malone's stubborn, rather narrow mind overrode and obliterated the memory of all orders, discussion, argument or reasoning. He withdrew his line to the reverse slope: we could plainly see the troops digging in a pitifully impossible position on the lower position of the ridge, which became abruptly precipitous, without command, observation, field of fire, depth, or room for any supporting trenches.'

In Temperley's mind, the bad siting of the trenches was a main cause of the loss of the crest of Chunuk Bair and the destruction of the two New Army battalions that held it after the New Zealanders had been withdrawn. Once more, Malone was to blame: 'The weight of the counter-attack was immense, the surprise complete. Here once more we had to pay dearly for the way the trenches were sited.'

Temperley now acted to correct Malone's 'error'. He explained to the colonel of the North Lancashires, who were about to relieve the New Zealanders on Chunuk Bair, that the trenches had been wrongly sited. The colonel assured him that saps would be pushed out from the existing trenches and a new forward trench line gradually constructed. He was not to get the chance. The North Lancashire battalion was destroyed to a man in the massive Turkish counterattack launched at dawn the next morning.

Temperley had no basis for his conclusions. He did not take part in the final battle for Chunuk Bair, and there is no evidence that he was on the crest at any time during its defence. For this reason, and because of his obvious antipathy towards Malone, historian Robert Rhodes James refused to use his version of events as a source for the reinterpretation of the Gallipoli campaign that was published in 1965.

Unlike Temperley, Harston knew exactly what had happened on Chunuk Bair as it was he who transmitted Malone's orders for its defence to his troops. These were that two companies were to dig in on the forward slope and two companies on the reverse slope with a communication sap driven between the two. Temperley's statements about the siting of the trenches on the crest, Harston told Denis Malone, had therefore no possible justification.

Having gone carefully over the ground and spoken to men who had fought in the battle, Howe was convinced that Malone occupied the only position on which he and his men could have survived for even half an hour. The story that Malone wrongly sited his trenches began, he was convinced, with Johnston who wanted to cover up his own shortcomings. It was then 'assiduously' promoted by Godley and Birdwood as a convenient method of excusing themselves for the failure of the August offensive.

The myth, however, persisted for fifty years and to Malone's great cost. A British Army training pamphlet published in 1941 advised that in mountainous country where the enemy's artillery fire was likely to be of less importance than a good field of fire, trenches should be sited on the forward slope. It cited a commander of a 'British' battalion on Gallipoli who ignored this precept and established his trenches on the reverse slope of the hill. Lack of a good field of fire then allowed the Turks to mass in dead ground for an overwhelming attack. 'Unhappily this commanding officer's military qualities of tenacity were matched only by the tenacity of his ideas. Rigidity of mind made him a slave of a text book.'

Why then did the assault on Chunuk Bair fail? A number of factors contributed, among them an over-ambitious plan that took no account of the difficulties of a long night advance in very rugged terrain and the poor physical condition of the men making the assault. The decision to give key tasks to inexperienced British battalions was a critical factor, as was the leadership of a number of key commanders.

As Pugsley put it, the men who fought for the heights of Chunuk Bair were betrayed by the poor judgement and tactical incompetence of their commanders, particularly Godley and Johnston. Instead of going forward and taking control of the battle, Godley isolated himself at his headquarters at Old No 3 Post close to the beach. By contrast, the Turkish commander, Mustapha Kemal, moved quickly to the sound of the guns, counter-attacking at Suvla and after consolidating the position there moving to Chunuk Bair.

It was Godley who ordered Johnston's brigade into a disastrous daylight attack on Chunuk Bair on the morning of 7 August without going forward and assessing the situation for himself. He remained at his headquarters when important decisions had to be made on 8 August about the best route for Baldwin's 38th Brigade to take to attack Hill Q.

In Godley's absence, Johnston became de facto divisional commander and insisted that Baldwin and his troops follow a route through steep and unreconnoitred country below Sari Bair instead of an easier route across the high ground of the Chunuk Bair ridge. The result was that Baldwin's two battalions were unable to assault Hill Q before daylight on 9 August.

As for Johnston, it is hard not to agree with Howe's judgement that he was not fit for command at Gallipoli and that Birdwood should have replaced him with Malone once his alcoholism was known. 'The plain fact is that Johnston was drunk—dead drunk,' Howe wrote to Denis Malone. 'In the words of a sergeant on his brigade headquarters, "The old bastard was drunk as he always is when there's anything on."'

It was one of Birdwood's many failings, Howe claimed, that he would not sack or discipline senior officers, no matter how unfit they were. 'Johnston was well known to be an alcoholic and was so drunk just before the landing that he was not allowed to land. Allegedly he had the measles, and Walker took over his brigade until he was sober enough to land.'

Bean was no less critical: 'Johnston was completely unfitted by habit and physique for withstanding prolonged strain . . . By the afternoon of August 8th he was both mentally and physically incapable of affording that clear judgement and lucid exposition which were vitally required.'

Temperley was well aware of Johnston's condition, but rejected the idea that he should have reported his superior's state to Godley as divisional commander: 'It would have seemed to me, a regular officer, such a terribly disloyal thing to do that I am certain I could not have done it.'

According to Gallipoli campaign historians, Johnston failed on two counts. The first was that by not taking Chunuk Bair he ruined the plan by which his troops attacking down the ridge would combine with forces on the lower slopes of Sari Bair who were to attack up the ridge. The failure of the New Zealand Brigade to arrive meant that the Australians attacking at the Nek went in unsupported and were slaughtered.

In the view of Australian historian Robin Prior, however, this charge has no substance. Birdwood's staff were aware that none of the attacking columns would meet the dawn deadline and had been told that they were meeting stiff opposition. Birdwood ordered the attack at the Nek to proceed to draw off opposition to the New Zealanders' advance, not as part of a failed pincer movement.

The second charge against Johnston is that Chunuk Bair could have been taken had he acted earlier. As Pugsley and others have pointed out, this criticism has much more substance. At 4.30 a.m. on 7 August the crest was occupied by just twenty Turkish infantrymen guarding an artillery battery. The crest could have been taken and consolidated before the Turks began arriving in force from about 8 a.m.

Once captured, could the heights of Sari Bair have been held and the broader objectives of the offensive been achieved? Again the verdict is mixed. In hindsight, Godley himself thought the ridge could have been captured and held without difficulty had Russell's New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and the Australian Light Horse jointly spearheaded the attack. The New Zealand, 4th Australian, and Indian brigades could then have relieved Russell and established themselves on Chunuk Bair and Hill Q.

Cunningham thought so too, but only if, as planned, the Wellington Battalion had reached the heights of Chunuk Bair 24 hours earlier with the Auckland, Otago and Canterbury battalions close behind. The New Zealand Infantry Brigade could then have opened the way to the capture of Hill 971 and assisted the advance of the Indian Brigade on its immediate left. Between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. on 7 August a gap in the Turkish line lay open for the commanders on the spot to exploit, but 'the precious hours passed and the gap was finally and effectively closed'.

Malthus, who was with the Canterbury Battalion that morning, would not have agreed. Chunuk Bair, he wrote, was untenable with the limited forces available and therefore had no future. What was needed was a force strong enough to sweep along the heights in both directions, taking and holding Hill 971 on the left and then driving down Battleship Hill on the right and linking up with Russell's Top. This would have required days or weeks of battle by a whole army, and an army with its huge supplies of food, water and ammunition could not have been got up onto the heights of Sari Bair.

Pugsley, however, believes that Chunuk Bair could have been held if the right troops had been used. Birdwood, he argues, should have deployed two veteran Anzac brigades for the assault—the New Zealand brigade and another Australian brigade—and left the raw British battalions behind as garrison troops.

The British battalions selected for a key role in the offensive had no experience of fighting on the peninsula and, as subsequent events were to prove, were simply 'not up to the job'. Nor was Godley, who ideally should have been replaced for this offensive by the best of the senior generals, General 'Hooky' Walker. Had this happened, argues Pugsley, the assault on Chunuk Bair could have resulted in one of the greatest victories of the war.

Forty-five years on, Prior doubts whether 1500 sick and exhausted men could have held the crest of Chunuk Bair against enfilading fire and frontal attacks by a full division of Turkish troops. Like the New Army divisions on 10 August, they would almost surely have been forced off Chunuk Bair.

After walking the ground with Turkish staff officer Zeki Bey, Howe concluded that the attack on Chunuk Bair was the worst mistake of the Gallipoli campaign. 'Only a lunatic,' the Turk told him, would have expected to capture such a crest in a single engagement. It could not have been taken in months of heavy fighting—not even behind creeping barrages such as British armies used in France. 'Your commanders,' he said, 'must have been mad.'

Zeki Bey laughed when told that the attackers expected the height to be undefended or only very lightly held. A full battalion, he told Howe, was bivouacked behind Su Yatagha, just 200 metres from the crest and well sheltered from Australian artillery fire. Two other battalions were deployed between there and Hill 971. The crest was covered by machine guns sited on the western edge of the Chunuk Bair ridge, two batteries of field guns on Hill 971, and two mountain batteries around Hill Q. These guns had been in position for months and deliberately sited there to defeat any attempt to take the heights.

The only practicable approach to Chunuk Bair, wrote Howe, was the one taken by the New Zealanders across the narrow, steep-sided nek at the Apex, which was overlooked by the Turks on the crest. The gully up which the Gurkhas of the 29th Indian Brigade climbed was overlooked also from the top of the slope and from both flanks. The Abdul Rahman Bair spur by which the Australian 4th Brigade approached the heights was quite impractical for infantry.

'The troops did their job,' Howe concluded, 'but at no time did they have any chance to survive the storm of fire directed upon them.'

Mission Impossible?

'It is a tragedy . . . that if only the brigade had been handed over to your father at the end of July, not only might he have been spared to you today, but the whole history of the war—and of the world—might have been different. Chunuk Bair would have been captured at daylight on the 7th and it would have been held! This would have meant that the August plan would have succeeded. We should have reached the Narrows—Constantinople would have fallen—Turkey would have signed a separate peace, Bulgaria would have come in on our side—Serbia would have been saved—and the war would have ended in 1916 before the collapse of Russia.'

—Official British war historian Brigadier-General Cecil Aspinall-Oglander after reading Malone's diaries and letters

Had he lived, how would Malone have reacted to the claim that he could have played such a critical role in the winning of a world war? The judgement—delivered after Aspinall-Oglander had read Malone's diaries and letters for the first time in the mid-1930s—is a tribute to an outstanding New Zealand soldier, but quite unrealistic.

Given the strength of the Turkish forces below Chunuk Bair on 8 August and the debilitated condition of his men, it is unlikely that Malone could have held the crest for more than two days. Arguably, the position would have been of limited value even if he had. Hamilton could not have commanded Turkish sea and land communications from the heights of Sari Bair because his artillery did not have the range to reach the Narrows—presuming, of course, that he could have hauled them up to the ridge in the first place.

If Hamilton had hoped to sweep down from the heights to Kilid Bahr on the shores of the Dardanelles, his troops would have had to cross 10 kilometres of some of the most well-defended country on the Gallipoli peninsula. Nor did he have the troops to achieve it. All his reserves were committed to establishing and holding the Allied base at Suvla Bay.

That apart, any attempt to advance up the peninsula towards Constantinople, 240 kilometres to the north, would have been fiercely resisted. As historian Robin Prior has argued, there is no evidence that the Turkish Government would have sued for peace had the city been taken, or that Bulgaria would have made any useful contribution to the campaign had it decided to join the Allies.

H.V. Howe, who had studied the August campaign from the ground up, dismissed the claims of Aspinall-Oglander and Bean that the British forces missed holding the crest of Chunuk Bair by sheer bad luck, and that if they had held it they would have won the Gallipoli peninsula.

We never had the slightest chance of holding the crest—and if we had held it we would have been no nearer to winning the peninsula than we had been before the attack. North from Hill 971 to Bulair there stretched a tangle of hills and gullies even more impossible than those at Anzac. Our historians seem conveniently to forget that it took a million men and two years more fighting to defeat the Turkish Army—and they ask us to believe it could have been done in a few days.

How Malone would have handled the attack on Chunuk Bair had he replaced Johnston in July can only be surmised. Would he have pushed his battalion on to Chunuk Bair at dawn on 7 August as Aspinall-Oglander suggested, or would he have done what Johnston did—halt the New Zealand Infantry Brigade below the crest, wait for the missing battalions, and hope to assault the crest after nightfall?

Would he have resisted Godley's order to attack in full daylight that day and so spared the Auckland Battalion the massacre that followed? Given Malone's vigorous opposition to decisions that might unreasonably risk the lives of his men, it is tempting to think that he might have done so.

Ironically, Malone was never a serious candidate for Johnston's job. On 4 August, Godley's headquarters advised that should Johnston be killed or badly wounded in the coming offensive, Lieutenant-Colonel Braithwaite of the General Staff would again take command of the brigade.

Why then did the Gallipoli campaign fail? The main problem with the campaign, the Dardanelles Commission concluded in 1917, was that surprise had been lost. The Turks had been warned by the bombardment of the forts and the build-up of troops at Mudros that an attack on their territory was imminent and had prepared themselves for it. Trenches and wire entanglements protected by artillery and machine guns were put in place, and ground forces increased.

There were other major problems also. The Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) that assembled under Hamilton in April was a rushed affair and poorly prepared for an invasion of the Turkish mainland. Under the Field Service Regulations, Hamilton was entitled to detailed information on Turkish forces in the Gallipoli area, including the siting of roads and shore defences, the location of water supplies, good maps of the peninsula, and a carefully worked out plan of attack. Instead he was dispatched to Gallipoli with little more than a 1905 handbook on Turkey, an old map, and some briefing notes from the Foreign Office.

As historian John Laffin put it, 'No first-class power except Great Britain would have rushed bald-headed at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli without months of reflection and silent preparation by a highly trained general staff, composed of the best brains in the army.'

Once in the field, there were problems with leadership and organisation. Control of the MEF was divided between an army commander, General Hamilton, and a naval commander, Admiral De Robeck, each with his separate staff. Hamilton thought his army's operations would be carried out in tandem with another naval assault. De Robeck had apparently decided not to attack the Turkish forts until the army had occupied the peninsula.

Hamilton had left most of his administrative staff behind in Egypt, which meant relying on his General Staff alone. Staff officers preoccupied with the details of assembling and equipping the troops gave minimal attention to issues vital to the success of any amphibious operation—supplies of water, food and ammunition, facilities for handling the wounded, sea-to-shore communication. As a result, arrangements for the evacuation of casualties were hopelessly inadequate, as were arrangements for the supply of reinforcements.

Critically, the force engaged in the largest amphibious landing in history arrived on the peninsula without sufficient troops for the task, artillery, ammunition or hospital ships for the wounded. There were no prefabricated piers and jetties for use following the landings, no corrugated iron for overhead shelters, and scanty supplies of barbed wire, sandbags and timber for trench-building. The four British divisions deployed for the invasion should have had just over 300 heavy guns but could muster only 118. Their 18-pounder guns were equipped with shrapnel shells only and the navy was already short of high-explosive ammunition.

Inadequate leadership at the top levels of command was a major cause of failure at Gallipoli. Sir Ian Hamilton lacked the forceful personality and iron will required to take effective control of the campaign. Stopford, too old at 61 for battlefield command, allowed most of his troops to camp on the beach at Suvla Bay instead of pushing them inland to capture key Turkish positions.

At Helles, Hunter-Weston, one of the most brutal and incompetent of all the World War I generals, squandered three divisions of Allied troops in frontal daylight attacks on strongly defended Turkish positions. 'To the last,' wrote historian John North, 'Helles was to conform to a singularly brainless and suicidal type of warfare.'

At Anzac, Godley failed to take control of the critical August offensive and never left his headquarters except to observe the battle from a destroyer off Anzac Cove. Johnston, an alcoholic or simply in poor health, was in no condition to lead the New Zealand attack on the heights of Chunuk Bair. Malone, who at first described Johnston as 'a fine fellow', had grown progressively disillusioned with him.

Tactics were another critical factor at Gallipoli, as they were on the Western Front. In the early 1900s graduates of British military establishments were taught that the killing power of modern weaponry could be overcome by morale and fighting spirit—the doctrine of the offensive. Hamilton, Birdwood, Godley and Hunter-Weston were to learn, however, that the defensive combination of Turkish artillery, machine guns, rifles and trench systems was strong enough to defeat almost all Allied offensives.

Perhaps the most significant cause of the British defeat at Gallipoli was the strength of the Turkish resistance. For the duration of the campaign, Hamilton's mixed force of regulars and citizen-soldiers faced a professional Turkish army, many of whom were veterans of the recent Balkan Wars. The Turks were tough and courageous fighters, especially on the defensive, and had better leaders at the senior levels of command. In contrast to the Allies, they were in control of the high ground, well-supplied by road with reserves, munitions, food and fresh water, and determined to defeat the invaders who now threatened their capital.

New Zealand's Defence Minister, Sir James Allen, described the Gallipoli campaign as one of the biggest blunders of the war. It should, he wrote to Godley, have involved a large army supported by a powerful fleet, the two working in close cooperation and with all the advantages of surprise. Not one of those elements was present in the Gallipoli campaign.

In a hard-hitting report to the Dardanelles Commission, the New Zealand High Commissioner in London, Sir Thomas Mackenzie, described the preliminary bombardment of the outer forts in November 1914—ordered by the Admiralty without consultation with the War Office—as 'an almost irreparable mistake'. It had awakened the Turks to the possibility of an attack in force on the peninsula and given them time to improve their defences against the landing on 25 April.

The War Office and the Imperial General Staff had then allowed Sir Ian Hamilton to leave for the Mediterranean without a worked-out plan of attack, complete maps of the peninsula and other essential information. The result of its poor planning was 'the expenditure of lives instead of shells', and the incompetent administration of the wounded.

Whether Hamilton was the right man to command the expedition, wrote Sir Thomas, could never be answered because he was 'hurriedly dispatched, imperfectly instructed, and inadequately provided with men, artillery and munitions'. In spite of Kitchener's statement that Gallipoli was 'a young man's war', several of his key commanders were too old and simply not up to the task.

Sir Thomas was well supported in his criticisms. British journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett summed up the Gallipoli campaign as 'a story of muddle, mismanagement, and useless sacrifice'. The military historian B.H. Liddell Hart described it as 'a sound and farsighted conception, marred by a chain of errors in execution almost unrivalled even in British history'.

In 1965, Robert Rhodes James wrote that no single military campaign of modern times had been the subject of such intense and prolonged attention and controversy as the Gallipoli campaign of 1915.

Historians of the campaign before and since have tended to fall into two opposing camps—those who saw the campaign as the masterstroke that could have ended the war and those who did or do not.

Aspinall-Oglander and Liddell Hart, for example, agreed that the campaign was one of the great strategical conceptions of the war and would have broken the trench-warfare deadlock on the Western Front. The defeat of Turkey, they argued, could have drawn the neutral Balkan states into the war on the Allied side and assisted an Allied advance on Austria-Hungary from the east.

An Allied victory would then have opened a warm-water sea route to Russia, allowing Britain to supply its Entente partner with munitions and to transport Russian grain back to Britain. This might have averted the collapse of the Russian armies in 1917 and even forestalled the Bolshevik Revolution.

Historians writing since Robert Rhodes James have generally disagreed with this view. The Gallipoli campaign, they conclude, was no short cut to victory or any substitute for the stalemate on the Western Front. Robin Prior, for example, argues that Turkey was unlikely to have surrendered in the face of a naval attack on Constantinople, and an attack on Austria-Hungary from the south had little chance of success even if the Balkan states had supported it. Britain was unable to supply enough munitions for its own armies in 1915, let alone producing a surplus for the Russians.

Even if the campaign had succeeded and Turkey had been knocked out of the war, the Allies would still have had to face a German army intact on both the Western and Eastern fronts. As for the claim by Churchill and others that the campaign could have succeeded had it been mounted in July instead of August, a July offensive would have been just as obvious to the Turks and they would have brought up additional forces to oppose it.

In explaining the causes of the defeat at Gallipoli, some historians prefer to focus less on the faults of individual commanders and the performance of their troops than on broader 'systemic' problems. Among these were the British Army's inveterate respect for seniority when what was needed at Gallipoli was younger and more vigorous generals. There was too much concern, they say, with military etiquette and doing 'the right thing' rather than winning the battle. Hamilton, for example, refused to interfere with the decisions of Hunter-Weston and Stopford once an operation or battle had begun.

Tim Travers and other historians point to the inexperience of the Allies in the technology, tactics, and administrative requirements of modern war, and the ongoing failure of the British Government to supply the campaign with the resources it needed for victory. Divisions in the British Cabinet over the conduct of the war ensured that the forces on Gallipoli never had enough troops, guns, ammunition and high explosives to defeat the Turks.

The failure of the August offensive itself is widely seen as the turning point of the whole campaign. Liddell Hart argued that Hamilton achieved a real tactical surprise only to see it frittered away by the bungling of his subordinates, including Stopford at Suvla Bay and Johnston on Sari Bair.

John North blamed the loss of 'one of the momentous battles in the world's history' in large part on the failure of the New Zealanders to properly consolidate their positions on Chunuk Bair. In essence, North asserted, this was the result of Johnston's decision to halt below Chunuk Bair on the morning of 7 August, and Malone's siting of his trenches on the crest the following day.

Robert Rhodes James, Chris Pugsley, John Crawford and others have since restored some balance to the debate by confirming that Malone established a position on the forward slope of Chunuk Bair but was forced by fierce frontal attacks and enfilade fire to pull back to the rear slope behind the ridge. The argument, however, is probably irrelevant as any position occupied on Chunuk Bair would almost certainly have been overwhelmed by a mass Turkish counter-attack within 48 hours.

Ultimately, the August 'breakout' plan was defeated not by Malone's actions on Chunuk Bair but by a plan that was much too ambitious given the difficult terrain and the debilitated state of the attacking troops, the poor quality of key Anzac commanders, and because the Turks were on the heights in force and in the end too strong for their enemies.

As Pugsley put it: 'For the British, 7 August 1915 was a day of promise crippled by difficult country, an overly complex plan, and commanders whose fitness and mental toughness did not match the spirit of the men they commanded.'

'No finer soldier . . .'

'Tidy and methodical, strong willed, determined, intolerant of complacency, slackness and inefficiency, patriotic, brave and devoted to his men—long a soldier by choice and self-imposed training.'

—Denis Malone describes his father, 50 years after his death

The news of Malone's death on Chunuk Bair was received with shock, both on Gallipoli and at home in Taranaki. Officers of all ranks spoke of his inspirational battlefield leadership, his organisational skills, his physical fitness and endurance, his care for the safety and well-being of his men, and something more.

'We loved him, every officer and man, for himself, for his generous heart and his never failing fairness,' wrote battalion chaplain Father John McMenamin. 'The news of his death was listened to by his few remaining men with eyes brimming over with tears. Even now the men cannot speak of him without emotion . . .'

Birdwood, who had been in almost daily contact with Malone at Quinn's Post, wrote to Ida: 'I always had complete confidence in him, and knew that while he was there all was going right in his regiment, for there was no detail [that] escaped his attention . . . He was the life and soul of his regiment, being idolised by both officers and men.'

Godley, who had ignored Malone's death in his report of the action on Chunuk Bair, wrote effusively to his widow Ida: 'He was the most valiant soul I think I have ever known . . . I would sooner have lost a battalion than him . . . His loyalty and support to me both in New Zealand and here [Gallipoli] has been unfailing. I have lost one of my best friends . . .'

New Zealand's High Commissioner to London, Sir Thomas Mackenzie, probably spoke for them all: 'A man of great character, an example of what a commanding officer should be, and a true leader of men . . . No finer soldier,' he wrote, 'ever fought for New Zealand.'

Military historians generally agree that outstanding military commanders share a number of essential qualities, among them physical and moral courage, creative intelligence, fighting spirit, good health, and the ability to command the affection and loyalty of their men.

Physical courage, or simple lack of fear, Malone had in abundance. A fellow constable in the Armed Constabulary during the early 1880s remembered him as 'a daring soldier who was always ready to engage in any enterprise demanding prompt and bold action'. A fellow volunteer officer recalled a man who 'never knew what fear was, whether as a boatman at Opunake, as a settler in the backblocks of Taranaki, or as a soldier. He was as courageous as he was forthright.'

As the troops of the expeditionary force boarded ship in Wellington, Brigadier Andrew Russell had told another officer that if he ever got into 'a tight corner' in action, he hoped Malone would be near him to help pull things through. 'He is grit to the backbone and can be relied upon at all times to play the game.'

Despite a 'highly strung' personality, Malone himself claimed to have felt no fear under fire at Gallipoli. 'Dreadful things are all around, yet no dread,' he wrote in his diary on 29 April. This was not an indifference to danger, but 'an absolute acceptance of fact. War is war. Nothing more is to be said or thought.'

Whether due to natural fearlessness or iron self-control, Malone's performance on Walker's Ridge, at Helles, Quinn's Post, and most conspicuously on Chunuk Bair, demonstrated physical courage and leadership of the highest order. All day on Chunuk Bair, Malone ranged the forward and rear trenches under heavy Turkish fire, encouraging and inspiring his men to hold on. At least twice he led bayonet charges to throw back the Turkish attacks.

'There I saw the bravest man I ever saw, Colonel Malone who was doing the jobs from Lance Corporal to Brigadier-General,' recalled survivor and mounted rifleman Ken Stevens. Malone and at least two other New Zealand officers—Chambers and Elmslie—should have won the Victoria Cross for their outstanding leadership that day.

Malone's moral courage was most conspicuous in his refusal to commit his men to a fatal daylight attack on Chunuk Bair on 7 August. Officers of the British Army who knew that an attack would inevitably fail and refused to follow orders risked a humiliating court-martial and being sent home in disgrace. There was no reason to think that the penalties would have been any different in the New Zealand Army. In short, Malone knew what the consequences of his defiance of orders were likely to be.

Malone would have found a fellow spirit in Major-General 'Hooky' Walker, commanding officer of the 1st Australian Division and commander of the New Zealanders on the first day of the landing. Both men were willing to challenge tactical decisions that they considered would unnecessarily cost the lives of their men. Walker vigorously opposed the proposed feint at Lone Pine, and only agreed to it after several changes were made to the plan to give his men a better chance of survival.

What of 'creative intelligence' which, according to the great Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, is the second most important attribute of any successful commander? Intelligence in the military sense is the ability to plan and organise effectively, and think tactically, even in the extreme conditions of battle. It is the ability to recognise that soldiers who are well-trained, disciplined and properly cared for fight better and for longer than those who are not. It is manifested in the flexibility of mind needed to adapt to new ideas, technologies and battlefield conditions.

Malone's planning and organisational skills were most in evidence at Quinn's Post. 'His reorganisation of Quinn's was the work of a genius,' wrote H.V. Howe. 'When he went into it it was unquestionably the worst and most dangerous post ever occupied by Australian and New Zealand troops . . . When he handed over the command it was as safe as any post on the Peninsula.'

Temperley, Johnston's brigade major, praised Malone's organisational skills but considered him a poor tactician and, until the final battle on Chunuk Bair, not a good leader. 'He was not a man of many ideas, but the few he had he retained with inflexible resolution,' he wrote.'His heart was in order, method, good organisation, sanitation . . . He was no tactician; he was not even greatly interested in tactics.'

Malone's leadership skills were never in doubt, and his tactical abilities were by 1915 well rehearsed. He was familiar with the campaigns of Napoleon, Wellington, and the generals of the American Civil War. He had studied the Franco-Prussian War and the more recent Russo-Japanese War. From these sources came not only tactical knowledge but the quality in which all good commanders excelled—'a power of reasoning, a capacity for hard thinking and careful calculation'.

Malone had been thinking tactically for at least a decade before arriving on Gallipoli. There was the plan he devised during field manoeuvres in 1908 to outflank the 'defenders' of Wellington by attacking at night through its rugged northern hills. A tactical mind was at work in February 1915 when he urged his sector commander, General Melliss, to cross the Suez Canal and attack the Turks from the flank to prevent them building up and consolidating their forces. His tactical abilities were in evidence on 27 April when the Anzac defences on Walker's Ridge and Russell's Top threatened to collapse.

At Helles, Malone grasped quickly why Hunter-Weston's attacks against strongly defended Turkish positions could never have succeeded. The military theorists he had studied had stressed the value of surprise, and warned of the dangers of rushing into action without proper reconnaissance and a clear explanation of the plan of battle. None of this, he saw, was in evidence in the planning of Hunter-Weston and his staff.

Malone's ability to think tactically was best seen in the plan he devised in May for a breakout from Anzac across the heights of the Sari Bair range. Twenty years later, the campaign's official historian, Brigadier-General Aspinall-Oglander, wrote: 'It was an extraordinarily astute appreciation to have made so early in the campaign—and was dead right.' In its essentials, the plan mirrored the one adopted by the British high command for the August offensive three months later.

As for training and discipline, the rigorous regimes Malone imposed were designed to equip his men mentally and physically for war. Aboard ship, there were lectures and tactical exercises for the officers, physical exercises, squad drill and rifle-firing for the men. In spite of the heat of the tropics, Malone required his officers to wear full uniform, and in the hottest part of the Red Sea he paraded his battalion for an hour in full marching order.

In Egypt, a young infantry officer recalled 'seemingly endless marches over the burning sands of the desert; attacks, advanced and flank guards over the monotonous ridges of sand, eternal carrying of heavy packs and ammunition with heavy punishment for the man who soothed his parched throat from his water-bottle.' In training, Malone drove his battalion harder than any other in the brigade and the rank and file at least hated him for it.

Tough training regimes went hand in hand with an almost obsessive belief in order and cleanliness. His men, he reasoned, would fight better in clean and orderly surroundings than in dirt and disorder. His first desire on landing at Anzac Cove was to tidy up the beach. When reinforcements arrived at Helles, he set them to work to tidy up the battlefield.

'His battalion was splendidly drilled and disciplined,' wrote Temperley, who had no cause to love him. 'It was Malone's battalion and every man in it breathed the spirit of Malone.' 'Malone's name was never the subject of mess-room small talk,' wrote another senior officer. 'It would crop up, however, when the talk was of hard fighting and hard work, of intellectual exercise and efficiency.'

By hard work and the pursuit of efficiency, Malone made good fighting soldiers of his men, instilling in them a belief that they were the best battalion in the New Zealand Infantry Brigade. To his mind, there were no finer troops on the Gallipoli peninsula—better disciplined and more steadfast than the Australians; physically much superior to the British troops, their officers superior to the Imperial men in practical skills and common sense.

Ironically, the regular British officer had for long been held up to the Australians and New Zealanders as the epitome of professional soldiering. At Anzac, they experienced heroic levels of inefficiency and incompetence; at Helles, poor planning and tactics that would cost thousands of Allied lives. 'After the terrible casualties incurred at Helles,' recalled infantryman Charlie Clark, 'the New Zealanders lost faith in the way the British did things, as did Colonel Malone.'

As for fighting spirit, Malone had it in large measure. It was in evidence during the Wellingtons' defence of Walker's Ridge on 26 April, and in the tenacious defence of Quinn's Post throughout June and July. It underlay Malone's heroic leadership on Chunuk Bair where on 8 August he and nearly 400 of his men were to die.

Natural aggression, however, was tempered by concern for his men's lives, particularly where he felt they would be uselessly squandered, and most conspicuously on Chunuk Bair. 'Malone, he looked after us, the Wellingtons, and we admired him for it,' recalled Charlie Clark. 'He wouldn't allow us to be pushed against Turk positions in daylight, the way the British troops were.'

In the mid-1980s, infantryman Russell Weir recalled reports circulating at Quinn's Post that Malone had resisted Godley's orders to make 'useless, suicidal attacks' against the Turkish line, and had been threatened with court-martial if he did not obey them. Although unconfirmed, the reports were consistent with Malone's often-stated concern for the lives of his soldiers: 'So far as I am concerned the men, my brave gallant men, shall have the best fighting chance I can give them or that can be got. No airy plunging and disregard of the rules and chances.'

Gaining the love and affection of his troops was more difficult. Malone was a hard taskmaster who pushed his men to the limits of their endurance, whether in training in Egypt or on Gallipoli. He succeeded in the end because of his ongoing concern for their safety and well-being, and their growing respect and trust in him as a commander.

On Gallipoli, wrote adjutant Harston, Malone's leadership and care for his men was unequalled. 'I say this because it is true, and any other officer will tell you the same. His regiment, rank and file, loved and trusted him implicitly with their lives. If the "Old Man" ordered it, it was right, for we knew that he had first considered everything and that there was no better way of doing it.'

For the welfare of his troops, Malone pushed ceaselessly for better food; building materials to protect them from Turkish bombs, shrapnel and rifle fire; telescopes and periscopes to allow them to fight more efficiently. When he needed iron roofing, wire netting and timber to build these shelters, he ignored the usual channels and went directly to the beach staff. The men whose comfort and safety was his priority were grateful; Birdwood, who had a high opinion of Malone's work at Quinn's Post, ignored any complaints.

'Forthright, outspoken, self-willed and insubordinate he may have been,' wrote H.V. Howe, 'but to a man of his calibre with his clear view of battle problems, direct action was the only way of achieving results in face of the inertia and lethargy of headquarters.'

As the respect of the men for their commander grew so did his pride in them. 'New Zealand can be very proud of her soldier sons,' he wrote from Helles in May. 'None better in the world. Brave as they make 'em, cool, determined, enduring, clever, patient, kindly and cheerful . . . Stoics and heroes all.'

Malone was prepared to be ruthless where he saw the need, however. It was one of the Wellingtons, Private Dunn, who was sentenced to death for sleeping at his post—the only New Zealander so punished on Gallipoli. Fortunately for Dunn, Hamilton waived the sentence on medical grounds.

As for good health, Malone appeared to have inherited an iron constitution, supported by much pre-war preparation. In these years, he had worked to keep himself in good physical condition, rationed his food intake and did not smoke or drink. He was hard on himself because, as he sometimes said, 'You must treat your body as if it were a piece of wood.'

Apart from a brief attack of dysentery, Malone remained healthy throughout the Gallipoli campaign despite poor food, insanitary conditions and the ongoing stresses of combat. 'I find I am one of the strongest men here and can stand anything,' he assured an anxious Ida. 'Always cool, calm and steady.' 'My nerves are like cast iron. I find I can stand any shock no matter how violent or startling,' he wrote from Helles. As one of his officers put it, 'He was never away from duty from the day he arrived at Awapuni until his death on Chunuk Bair. He thrived on conditions that others could not endure.'

As a fighting soldier, Malone can best be compared with two other Anzac commanders who served on the peninsula—the New Zealander Brigadier Andrew Russell, and the Australian Brigadier John Monash. Russell was one of the few commanders to emerge with credit from Gallipoli, and in 1916 he was appointed to command the New Zealand Division on the Western Front. After an unimpressive performance on Gallipoli, Monash went on to command the five divisions of the Australian Army Corps and become one of the outstanding Allied generals of World War I.

All three commanders were citizen-soldiers with practical and professional experience in common—Monash as a lawyer and civil engineer who held several company directorships; Russell as a prominent Hawke's Bay farmer and company director; Malone as a Taranaki farmer, lawyer and local body administrator. All were well-educated men with previous command experience in Territorial Force units. All—except, for a brief period, Russell—had avoided the 'mind-blunting, routinised career of a large military organisation', which in Victorian times typified the British regular army.

The results of that system were clearly evident on Gallipoli—British regular officers who were too often impractical, inefficient or tactically incompetent. By contrast, Monash, Russell and Malone shared a well-developed knowledge of their profession and a flexibility of mind that came from broader intellectual and practical experience.

Like Monash, Malone was a product of no military academy or staff college but his own intensive reading, thinking, and willingness to go on learning his trade. The military theorists had taught him that war was no longer a matter of brute force, courage and common sense but a science which needed to be carefully studied if commanders were to win victory in the field.

'He [Malone] was one of the very few commanding officers who really thought about war,' wrote Howe, who was later to become Military Secretary to the Australian Minister for the Army. 'His ideas were original and practical—all directed to either increasing the comfort and well-being of the men or to improving their fighting capacity and security . . . Had he lived, he would probably have become one of the most prominent of all Dominion commanders.'

Whether Malone would have realised this prediction will never be known. At 56, he was already old for senior command and had offended Johnston and other senior officers with his challenges to their authority and his often abrasive and demanding ways. Physically and mentally, however, he was still in good condition, and at Quinn's Post he had impressed Birdwood and Godley with his mastery of trench warfare. If not sent home to train reinforcements, he might well have gone with the New Zealand Division to France as one of Russell's four brigade commanders.

'A strong man, a true gentleman . . .'

'In many ways he was a man of his times; the typical Victorian—reserved, earnest; life was a serious business. He was driven by a constant need for self-improvement, hard work and self-discipline. One must do one's best at all times. There must be no slacking. Malone couldn't stand muddle and inefficiency, things being done in a slapdash fashion. One must be thorough; one must get down to bedrock; all of this combined with a taxing code of personal conduct.'

—Family historian Dr Judy Malone

On the news of Malone's death the tributes flowed in—from former Volunteer Force officers, lawyers he had worked with or opposed in court, high-ranking local body officials and newspaper editors. They praised his accomplishments as a soldier, businessman, lawyer and administrator, his humanity and high principles, the energy and drive that had equipped him to play a leading part for over thirty years in the settlement of Taranaki.

A fellow officer recalled Malone's 'great talent, dynamic energy and high courage'. 'His powerful physique and resolute countenance made him a man to be reckoned with in whatever society he found himself in.'

George Marchant, a former chairman of the Stratford County Council and a close neighbour, recalled his 'great industry, kindly disposition, marked ability, high principles, and views of the broadest humanity'. If the younger generation of New Zealanders needed a role model, Marchant wrote, 'they would surely find it in the life and death of Lt Colonel Malone'.

A Stratford solicitor well known to Malone recalled an idealist who set himself rigorous standards of business and personal behaviour. 'Malone abhorred everything mean and petty, and was always himself an example of straight dealing. In building up an extensive legal practice, he always upheld and maintained the best traditions of the profession. He was a strong man, a true gentleman, a loyal friend, a generous and honourable foe.'

Malone was also very much a man of his time—for the most part the three decades before World War I. It was a time when most colonists considered themselves British, and support for Britain and its Empire was uncritical and strong. It was a time of social and moral conservatism, a time when women were almost invisible in national or local affairs. Life, at least in principle, was guided by values unfamiliar to modern times—honour, duty, self-discipline and self-sacrifice.

In Taranaki the majority of settlers were Protestant, and anti-Catholic prejudice was still strong enough to undermine Malone's bid for political office in 1907 and 1908. Class differences also persisted, at least in the early years. The Malones came from the well-educated Irish/English middle class, but most Taranaki settlers at the time were farm labourers and their families originated from Devon, Cornwall, Kent and Lincolnshire.

The Malone family, however, appeared to have mixed easily with their new neighbours, Catholic or Protestant, working or middle class. In the early years at least, they would have had to depend on their skills in forest-clearing, house-building and small farming. Shared needs and hardships were the frontier's great levellers.

The social gatherings of small-town Taranaki may have been a different matter. Typically they were 'inward-looking affairs, dominated by talk of bushfelling, grass, beef and fungus, butter, cheese and children'. For those with other interests, however, there were home-grown cultural activities to enjoy—concerts, musical evenings, poetry readings and drama productions, and in these the Malones regularly took part.

For them and most Taranaki settlers, the compensations of their new lives outweighed the hardships. They had recreated the village culture of the old country, and freed themselves from poverty, servitude and most of its class distinctions. The province's pioneer farmers were independent, self-respecting, and beholden to no one but the government that had leased them their land or lent them the money to buy it.

A good number, including the Malones, had become wealthy. By 1914, the year he left for war, the family's land and business assets were worth more than $5 million in today's currency. They included nearly 700 hectares of farmland at Stratford and Puniwhakau, 20 hectares of suburban land, a large home and a thriving legal practice in Stratford. The pioneering farmer with the smell of wet bush, raw milk and forest burn-offs still in his nostrils was by 1914 one of Taranaki's most prominent and successful citizens.

Although only a boy when his father left for war, Denis Malone remembered him as 'a big, strong man in every way, with a strong sense of justice and the fitness of things. He was practical, very methodical, and demanded cleanliness, good order and discipline, but not beyond the reasonable bounds he set himself. A much repeated maxim was "right before expediency".'

Offsetting these somewhat stern virtues, wrote the younger Malone, were a readiness to help those less fortunate than himself, and a nice, perhaps Irish, sense of humour. 'He was generous to his family and greatly loved and respected by them, and I think, by almost all who knew him.'

Kathleen Laverty, who worked at Malone's law firm after the war, recalled William and Ida as 'fine-looking people' who would walk into Stratford with their younger family on a Sunday morning—the former in 'a very upright military fashion, a real soldier'. In unsoldierly fashion, Malone would sometimes be seen racing or skylarking with his boys on the journey home.

If playful at times, Malone was a strict father to all of his children. He insisted on self-discipline and high standards of behaviour, and according to Norah they were 'somewhat in awe of him'. From Egypt and Gallipoli, however, he wrote affectionate and often charming letters to Norah and his three younger children.

Norah was told of the concert that had to be abandoned because the songs were being drowned out by shell bursts, machine-gun and rifle fire. Denis was told of his encounter with a 'black man'—the 'Madrassee Hindu' Naran Sammey—while looking for shelter on a rainy night at Cape Helles.

To Barney he wrote: 'I see lots of strange things here too. Big ships and little ones. Aeroplanes and all sorts of guns and things. Soldiers and sailors, mules and horses and donkeys. Fields red with poppies. The other day a tortoise called on me . . .' His letter to three-year-old Molly described the beautiful flowers of Gallipoli and finished with the hope that she and her mother would one day come to see them.

Details of Malone's relationship with his older brother Austin are scarce. Their farming partnership was dissolved in 1889, after which Austin married and farmed on his own near Stratford. The two Malones had little contact in the following years and Austin appears to have fallen on hard times.

In personality, the brothers were very different. William was a devout Catholic; Austin refused to conform to any religion. William was gregarious and outgoing, Austin was reclusive and preferred his own company. William ended his life wealthy and socially prominent; Austin ended his in an accident while working on a road gang south of Auckland. William described his brother at one point as a 'miscreant', but on the news of Austin's death he regretted the loss of contact between them.

Malone's social and political beliefs were an intriguing mix—liberal and egalitarian on the one hand, Victorian conservative on the other. There was the liberal who believed that women should have equal pay and be allowed to vote, but the conservative who believed that 'hearth and home' was their true and honoured place. Aboard ship en route to Egypt, Colonel Napier Johnston's wife criticised 'society' women who spent time 'golfing' and 'bridging' instead of staying home and caring for their husbands and families. Malone quite agreed.

To Norah, a month before he sailed for Gallipoli, he wrote: 'You must my dear girl be a help to Mater while I am away . . . I want you to be a good housekeeper and to remember that the Pagan Japanese deem domestic work honourable. All real work is. I have I think always worked hard and should like my children to follow in my footsteps. Do what you have in hand with all your intelligence, will and might . . .'

The virtues of hard work and the evils of idleness were a constant theme. Those who were not honest workers risked not only unemployment but physical, mental and moral decay, Malone told an audience in New Plymouth. Although no prohibitionist, he deplored the 'physical and moral degradation caused by the abuse of strong drink'. Education, he believed, should include moral instruction as well as book learning.

Along with these beliefs went a strong egalitarian streak and a belief in equality and social justice. Called to give evidence to the Royal Commission on Land Tenure and Land Settlement in 1905, he was asked 'What are you?' He replied, 'I am a working man, and, by the way, a solicitor, and also, by the way, a farmer.'

Government, Malone told an election meeting in 1907, must govern equally for all classes, conditions and creeds. The poor and weak should be given more attention than the rich and strong, and every worker paid at a level that gave him and his family a decent standard of living.

As for the current system of land settlement, he told the Royal Commission, it was rooted in injustice:

I can but think that the very people who claim to put men on the land have forgotten that that system is a class legislation because the man who has plenty of money can pay his cash and get his freehold; the man who is between the poor man and the rich man can take up occupation with the right of purchase; but the poorest man is the only one who is not to have the right of freehold . . . That is a grave iniquity.

All existing lease-in-perpetuity tenants, Malone argued, should be given the right to acquire the freehold under the Land for Settlements Act. Large landholders should be prepared to sell surplus land to the state 'on fair terms' to give unemployed men and others the chance to go farming.

Malone's patriotism was fervent and unwavering. England was 'Home', and the power and influence of its Empire a source of great personal pride. But England was perceived to be a nation in decay, and its colonies—particularly New Zealand—places where newer and greater nations could be built. In this new country, there should be no repetition of the landlordism and tenant farming his Irish ancestors had known so well. 'The people we want to build up here into a nation,' he told his election meetings in 1907 and 1908, 'should be independent, free, thrifty, sturdy and clean, both physically and morally.'

The natural nation-builders, Malone believed, were the hardy pioneers who had braved the oceans in small ships to settle a new country far from home. 'I say that those men who go into the forest and back country with their wives and families and hew out homes for themselves, and live there their lifetime are true heroes.'

With this went an idealised view of country people and country living. 'The men in the towns, generation after generation, are becoming less fit members of the nation,' he told the Royal Commission. 'Life in the towns does not conduce to that sturdiness of mind, body, and even soul, which we desire to see in a nation.' The country boys, he told an election meeting in 1906, 'grew up stronger and more independent than the town boys'.

Prominent in Malone's thinking was the need to secure New Zealand against any military threat to its survival as a nation. Asian immigration, he told his election audiences, should be curbed and the country prepared to meet an invasion by overcrowded Asian nations like China and Japan. The best option, he thought, was a 'nation in arms', perhaps along the lines of the Swiss system, with every able-bodied man trained to defend it.

Malone's attitude to Asian immigration was clearly racist, but not untypical of the time. It reflected the fears of many colonists that New Zealand, as a small and underpopulated country, could be swamped by Asian nations to the north seeking outlets for their surplus populations.

Interestingly, Malone appeared to have no overt prejudice towards Maori, but they had no significant place in his vision for the future of his country. In his election campaigns, tribal Maori appear as little more than potential rack-renters of white farmers or as a source of more land for European settlement.

A powerful sustaining force for Malone was his Catholic faith, and despite first-hand experience of the brutalities of war it remained so to the end. At Helles he read from his _Imitation of Christ_. At Anzac he regularly attended Mass and Communion. Neither then nor before the war did there appear to be any conflict between his faith and his role as a professional soldier to destroy whomever the mother country selected as her enemies. Duty to King and country was the overriding principle, it seemed, and German militarism the evil that justified all.

As a man of his time, issues such as the wholesale confiscation of Maori land or the relentless destruction of Taranaki's lowland forests seemed not to have troubled him. Like the colonists of South Africa, Australia and the United States, the priorities of New Zealand's European settlers were the occupation and development of the land as a means to self-advancement, not the fate of forest ecosystems or the interests of its indigenous peoples.

Malone's brief foray into national politics, however, was a personal disappointment. His neighbour G.A. Marchant, a prominent Stratford citizen, was confident the new MP would have represented his province effectively and 'left his mark upon the scroll of Parliamentary fame'. His grandson Ted Malone, however, felt that his grandfather would not have been happy as a parliamentary MP. 'He wanted his own way too much. Expediency in politics is probably unavoidable, but his rule of life was "right" not "expediency".'

Again there are intriguing similarities between Malone and Russell, the two outstanding New Zealand commanders on Gallipoli. Both men were wealthy and socially prominent landowners in civilian life; both had attempted political careers and brought to their campaigns the same maverick spirit and independence of mind. Both had liberal ideas on the redistribution of land.

As men of their time, both shared the same conservatism in matters of family, marriage, and sexual morality. Both were men of education and refinement and deeply religious. Both were born soldiers who relished the experience of combat, but on Gallipoli came to regret the terrible waste of war.

'Your husband and lover . . .'

'I know your feelings and the great conflict that goes on in your thoughts. I am proud to know that my wife is so brave and so full of the sense of duty to country that her own personal desires and interests are readily set aside . . . Yours is the harder part, as is that of the women who perforce must stay at home, while their men go forth to war. Still my dear one, we have had great happiness together, and please God will be reunited when the war is over never in this life to separate again. I have a great feeling of confidence that all will go well with me, and so do not grieve. In any case, we have done our duty.'

—Malone writing to Ida on the eve of the Gallipoli landing

Malone's wartime relationship with his wife Ida is a story of a passionate love deepened by long separation and the shadow of impending loss. It had begun ten years earlier with the death of Malone's first wife Elinor in childbirth, leaving him responsible for the care of five children ranging in age from seven to sixteen. In daily contact with Ida, a strikingly attractive, educated young woman who was a member of his own household, it is not surprising that he was strongly drawn to her.

For Ida, the transition from housekeeper and companion to the wife of a prominent Taranaki lawyer and landowner would have been difficult. She had to fill the physical and emotional gap left by the sudden death of Elinor. She had taken on the full-time care of her husband's children, a mammoth task in itself, and in the early years there were strains in her relationship with the older boys. As the daughter of a flour-miller, she was also of a lower social class than Elinor and her husband at a time when such things still counted.

By the time Malone went to war, he and Ida had been married for nearly a decade and had produced three more children—Denis, Bernard (Barney) and Elinor (Molly), named for his first wife. If passion had been dulled by habit, Gallipoli gave it a new vigour and intensity. Her photo stood always on a shelf in his dugout and the arrival of her letters was said by his staff officer to be his happiest day.

'I drove out the flies,' Malone wrote, 'put the letters in due date order and then read and reread for an hour. The dear little photo of you and the Pickerings at Montevideo is a delight too. You do look so young and pretty and aristocratic.'

After more photographs of her arrived, he wrote: 'If I were a stranger I should fall in love with you at the sight of them, but you know that I am already in love with the bravest, and sweetest and loveliest woman in my world . . . My dearest, what rapture it will be when we meet again. I feel sure we will. God is and will be good to us.'

Then there were the flowers. 'I found some new wild flowers today, and some honeysuckle about to bloom,' he wrote to Ida from Helles. 'The fields and track sides are lovely—dog roses, poppies, big white daisies and many yellow purple lilac blues and white flower, also some tawny reds.' Some of these were sent to her in his letters; others were found between the pages of his copy of the Field Service Regulations after Chunuk Bair.

Meanwhile, she was always with him, at least on the field of dreams: 'It was after midnight when I finished last night, and to my great delight I actually discovered that you were with me, in my left arm. I dreamt that and then awoke, to rifle fire report and bomb explosions. Just the ordinary night music, and day too.' Ida had been having similar dreams, she told him. She had worried whether he was wounded or in danger and whether he was thinking of her. She had written a poem telling him of her love for him.

Her husband admitted, however, to feelings that at 56, nearly seventeen years older than she, he might be too old for her. He worried that the strain of combat might have turned his grey hair white by the time they next met. He might also be slow to 'bloom and blossom' once again. 'War makes hard lines at my age . . .'

In a very real sense theirs was a love rediscovered far from the demands of work and family, and now half a world away from each other. Malone admitted in his letters to Ida that family and marriage had often taken second place to his involvement in community affairs, to building up his farming and business assets, and, increasingly, to his involvement in volunteer soldiering.

From Quinn's Post he wrote: 'If at any time in the past I seemed absorbed in "affairs", it was that I might make proper provision for you and the children . . . It is true that perhaps I overdid it somewhat. I believe now that I did, but did not see it at the time. I regret very much now that it was so and that I lost more happiness than I need have done. You must forgive me.'

The surprise is that he had had time for Ida or family at all. Apart from his extensive farming and business interests and his soldiering activities, Malone was by 1914 president, vice-president or a committee member of over twenty sporting clubs in and around New Plymouth and Stratford, along with several other community and church organisations. 'In the old days he always headed everything that was doing in town,' recalled a legal colleague.

Inevitably, that workload had imposed stresses on their relationship. There are indications in Malone's letters of mutual neglect when he was preoccupied with 'business troubles and difficulties' and she with child-rearing. He had resented at times her focus on their children at what he saw as his expense, but conceded that this was only right and natural.

'The maternal woman is the only true woman. God so made her,' he wrote en route to Egypt. At these times, he admitted, he might have been 'much nicer and better' to his wife, 'but I am as God made me, hard and unforgiving or rather resentful. Believe me, when I was hardest I really loved the most and was miserable at heart.'

Ida's England-based granddaughters remember her as a gentle, affectionate and dignified woman who struggled for the rest of her life with poverty, the reality of her husband's death, and the maligning of his reputation after Chunuk Bair. Her stepdaughter Norah would write in later years that she and her brothers were all very fond of Ida, and Terry—who initially described Ida as 'hard'—kept in contact with her until her death in 1946.

Was Malone, a handsome and charismatic man, ever tempted to stray? Joe Worthington's daughter, Mary Ann Hill, recalled that Malone once gave her mother—'a beautiful woman with lots of dark hair and lovely eyes'—a splendid garnet brooch. Although a child at the time, Mary confessed in later years that she thought Malone was 'sweet on my mother'.

If Ida had had any doubts about his fidelity, he was quick to reassure her: 'You had no cause you know. On my part there was never any question . . . You have been my only love. I have always loved you more than you did me. I loved you before and above everything and everybody, including the dear children.'

If by harshness or neglect he had caused her any pain, he felt that war service had made him a better husband and man, and that all his 'selfishness and badness' had gone for good. 'I pray God that I may never forget what you have endured for me and be able to recompense you in full. You are my ideal woman and wife.'

Duty, however, was a demanding mistress and for Malone the military life was clearly more satisfying than the dull grind of civilian, and perhaps even family, life. But it was his family who bore the brunt of his decision to enlist for overseas service at the almost unheard of age of 55. This not only deprived Ida of a husband but left her to care for her stepdaughter Norah and three young children alone and with no close family or female relations to support her.

As Malone himself admitted, Ida and her children had already paid a heavy price for his preoccupation with his farming, business and community affairs. When he wrote in his last letter to her that 'The sacrifice was really yours', he acknowledged the real cost of his decision to go to war.

'Pro Patria Mori'

'So died one of the grand and original figures of the Gallipoli campaign, a free spirit who could stretch his mind beyond the clubby world of the Godleys and Johnstons and would stretch his integrity for no man. It seems unconscionable that he received no posthumous decoration for his day on Chunuk Bair. By the standards set at Lone Pine, he should have received the Victoria Cross. In death, as in life, Malone was not much loved by those in authority. He was always going to be an outsider.'

—Les Carlyon, _Gallipoli_

The Malone story is one deeply embedded in the pioneering history of New Zealand and of Taranaki in particular. Its background is the struggle with Maori over land in the 1860s; the settlement of the Taranaki bush country and the massive forest clearances that followed; territorial soldiering and its denouement as Britain and its Empire went to war in the early years of the twentieth century. Its climax was the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 and the heroic defence of Chunuk Bair in which Malone and most of his Wellington Battalion were to die.

The story began in the early 1880s, with the arrival of William George Malone on the beach at New Plymouth—a young middle-class migrant with energy and ambition, determined to better himself in the rough-edged society of 19th-century New Zealand. Through hard physical work, organising ability and a shrewd business sense, he became a successful Taranaki farmer and lawyer, an aspiring politician, and finally the Territorial Force commander who was to become his country's best-known soldier from the Gallipoli campaign.

At the time he went to war, Malone was a well-educated man, tall for the time and strongly built, his body developed and toughened by a decade spent extracting a farm from the Taranaki bush. Temperley would recall him as 'a picturesque rugged figure, a typical old New Zealand pioneer with a powerful jaw and an appearance of great strength and determination'.

Family sources and tributes reveal a man who was politically liberal but morally conservative, devoutly religious, generous to family and friends, scrupulous in his business dealings. He was ambitious in a personal sense, but also deeply concerned for the future of both his province and his country. The _Taranaki Herald_ would describe him during his first election campaign as 'a man of energy, ability, absolute honesty and high ideals'.

Malone was 55 years old when he left New Zealand with his battalion in October 1914 and need not have volunteered for war service. He did so willingly and for a mix of reasons—high among them a sense of duty to Britain and an empire he saw to be under threat, and an underlying belief in the regenerating power of war. From the war with Germany and its Allies, he believed, every member of the British Empire, including New Zealand, would emerge better and stronger.

At a deeper level, Malone was a soldier by temperament and training—aggressive, determined, physically and morally courageous, a skilled organiser and trainer of troops, and at Quinn's Post and on Chunuk Bair an inspirational battlefield commander.

Before leaving for Awapuni Camp in October 1914, he told a neighbour that he had been 'waiting for years' for the chance to go to war. Of all his occupations, he told another, he liked 'soldiering and war' best and farming next. Lawyering he did not like at all.

War, he wrote to Ida from Gallipoli, was 'one great pleasure of the best sort. The pleasure—or perhaps "la joie" of living, of doing a new job, of feeling physically and mentally absolutely fit to do it, of doing something for one's country, when it needs the service of its men. There are no real hardships under the circumstances, or so it seems to me . . .'

As an educated soldier, however, Malone was untypical of his day. Most of his fellow officers were products of a British military system that 'valued athletic skills over brains capable of mastering the intricacies of war'. Attributes of equal or even greater importance to a senior commander—intelligence, high educational achievement, resistance to breakdown under stress, and moral courage, tended to be ignored.

From his reading of the military theorists, Malone understood that war in the twentieth century required commanding officers to have a trained mind, which could only be achieved by wide-ranging study. He had studied the campaigns of the great commanders of the 19th century and the more recent South African and Russo-Japanese wars. He had grasped what many of his contemporaries appeared to have only dimly understood—a new and very destructive type of warfare had arrived and the tactics and mindsets of 19th-century conflicts would no longer suffice.

Malone was a man of unusually complex character and beliefs. There was the strict but loving family man, the man of high principles and egalitarian instincts, the generous friend who would not see anyone in distress if he could help them out, financially or otherwise.

There was the patriot who combined pride in Britain and its Empire with an idealistic vision of New Zealand as the birthplace of a newer and greater nation. There was the man who believed with Ruskin that peace inclined society to vice and decay, and that war was a regenerating force in the life of nations.

There was the soldier driven by duty—to his country and the Empire, to the men he admired and loved. There was the 'insubordinate' commander who refused to squander the lives of those men in a suicidal daylight attack on the crest of Chunuk Bair.

There was the soldier who could weep at the sight of badly wounded men and regret the deaths of even his Turkish enemies, the 'hard man' who loved wildflowers, classical music and small children. As the brute strength and physical courage of the warrior is often shot through with streaks of gentleness, so it was with Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone.

To his superior officers, however, Malone could be an abrasive and difficult subordinate—a man who would challenge their decisions if they did not make sense to him and who refused to take no for an answer. Where other battalion commanders on Gallipoli simply obeyed orders without question, Malone needed to be sure in his mind that they were the right ones. With good reason would Brigadier Earl Johnston complain that he was more trouble than his other three battalion commanders put together. For the welfare of his men he stood up to his military superiors as did no other commanding officer on Gallipoli.

As with most men of great ability and drive, there were less admirable traits. Malone's inflexibility of mind and narrow moral code made him prudish in matters of sexual morality, as shown by his opposition to the issue of prophylactics for the use of troops returning from leave in Cairo.

He could be both petty and prudish, as shown by his ban on 'suggestive' band music as the troopship _Arawa_ left Wellington, and his attempts to censor 'off colour' material from a shipboard concert en route to Egypt. His admitted prejudice against the Australian troops on Gallipoli in most cases made little practical sense. The Anzacs may have differed in character and in their approach to discipline, but they were equals in fighting ability and learners together in the art of war.

Malone's outstanding leadership abilities were eventually acknowledged. Malone's second-in-command, Major (later Brigadier-General) Herbert Hart, would recall him as 'a born soldier and a great leader' who had laid the foundations on which the fighting efficiency of the Wellington Battalion was built. After reading his diary and letters for the first time in 1936, the official British war historian, Brigadier-General Aspinall-Oglander, would pay a high (if belated) tribute to Malone's abilities as a strategist, tactician, and leader of men.

'Malone was probably one of the best military brains on the peninsula,' wrote H.V. Howe in the 1960s. 'Had he lived, he would most likely have become one of the most prominent of all Dominion commanders.'

One hundred years on, the issue of whether Malone's siting of his trenches was responsible for the loss of Chunuk Bair—and by implication the failure of the final Allied offensive on Gallipoli—has been convincingly settled. Temperley's report after the battle blatantly misreported what had happened on the ridge; the Anzac commanders and official historians accepted it as fact. Malone's memory was dishonoured and his family and friends were forced to live with this for another 50 years.

Vindication came in 1965 with the publication of Robert Rhodes James' masterly reinterpretation of the Gallipoli campaign. It has been reinforced in more recent times by military historian Dr Chris Pugsley and Defence Force historian John Crawford. Having emerged from the shadow of Chunuk Bair, Malone can finally be recognised as one of New Zealand's finest soldiers of World War I.

Ultimately, it will be for the capture and epic defence of Chunuk Bair that Malone will live in the memory of his country. 'For the first time since the landing, Anzac troops stood on the summit of Sari Bair gazing down at the Narrows,' Cecil Malthus recalled. 'If ever there was a leader who deserved this honour it was Colonel Malone of the Wellingtons. It was he who by his intelligence and tenacity had converted Quinn's Post from a shambles to a stronghold, and in the open fighting, too, he had shown brilliant and aggressive leadership.'

Under Malone's inspired leadership, the Wellingtons on Chunuk Bair would perform one of the outstanding feats of arms in their country's military history—'New Zealand's cruellest and finest hour', as playwright Maurice Shadbolt memorably put it. It was a cruel twist of fate that saw him fall to 'friendly' fire and see him denied the Victoria Cross he so richly deserved.

Despite his assurances to his wife, Malone felt he would not survive the war. Just before leaving New Zealand in October 1914, he told a fellow officer: 'Something tells me I shan't come back here, that I will go out.' Waiting under Chunuk Bair for the barrage to lift, he had made peace with his God and his beloved Ida. If death was to be, he had found a way to stand easy in its shadow.

_Dulce est pro patria mori_.

The Price of War

'Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.'

—Simonides' epitaph to the Spartan rearguard who in 480 BC held the pass of Thermopylae against an invading Persian army

Malone and some 400 of his Wellington Battalion lie now in a cemetery just below the crest of Chunuk Bair. In the distance is the objective they were never to reach—the Narrows and the Dardanelles Straits.

On 8 August, stretcher-bearer Private Arthur Carbines tried to recover Malone's body from the crest but was killed in the attempt. Ida, now a grieving widow, also wanted his body recovered and properly buried, but was told that with the Turks now in control of the heights of Chunuk Bair, it could not be done.

For the Malone family, the death of a husband and father was just the beginning. Terry was seriously wounded at Gallipoli and Maurice in Palestine, fighting with the NZ Mounted Brigade. Both returned to New Zealand and were discharged from the army as unfit for further service. After winning the Military Cross at Passchendaele, Edmond was killed during the German Spring Offensive in 1918. In 1943, Barney, Malone's youngest son by Ida, would die at Anzio during the Allied invasion of Italy.

Nearly 100 years after Malone's death on Chunuk Bair, his great-great-grandson, Lance Corporal Rory Malone, was killed attempting to rescue his company commander during a firefight in Afghanistan's Bamyan Province. At the time, it was described by Defence Force chiefs as the biggest battle New Zealand soldiers had been involved in since Vietnam.

Ida herself never really recovered from the shock of her husband's death and the maligning of his memory after Chunuk Bair. Her health deteriorated and she had difficulty coping with her children. Five-year-old Molly was placed in a convent and Denis and Barney put into English boarding schools just months after the death of their father. Despite the substantial provision made for her and the children in her husband's will, she lived in relative poverty until her death over thirty years later.

It should not have been so. At the time Malone left for overseas service, his estate was worth more than $5 million in today's currency and he had made good provision for his wife and family. All his personal property was willed to Ida, along with the right to live at _The Farlands_ and half the income from the estate for the rest of her life or until she remarried. The rest was then to be divided amongst the children of both his marriages.

A collapse in farm export prices in the early 1920s, however, greatly reduced the income from the Malone estate. As a result of this and some serious mismanagement by Malone's executors, Charles and Harry Penn, Ida's allowance was heavily reduced. She was unable to buy a home in England, which compelled her to live in a succession of rented rooms or cottages. Eventually, and much to her relief, she was allocated a small cottage for war widows in Surrey.

The unanswerable question is why Ida chose to live in England after her husband's death rather than return with Norah and her three children to New Zealand. She had the large family home in Stratford, the almost certain support of the community, and (eventually) the support of Malone's surviving sons from his first marriage.

In her grief she may not have wanted to return to the place where she and her husband had once lived, or she may in some sense have felt unwelcome there. Lack of money may have been a factor in the years after the war; more immediately, there was the threat of German submarines and she had the safety of her young family to consider.

Ida's struggles, however, were not hers alone. According to family sources, all three of her children suffered from homesickness and from the slur cast on their father's reputation by the British military establishment. For the three older sons who survived the war, life would also never be the same again. The big house at Stratford was eventually sold, their established family, once financially secure and socially prominent, was gone.

William and Edmond Malone are commemorated in Stratford's Hall of Remembrance, which features photographs of those from the Stratford district who died in World War I. In 1923 the Malone Memorial Gates were erected at the entrance to King Edward Park in Stratford. They were paid for by officers of the Wellington Regiment, which now commemorates Chunuk Bair Day annually.

In 1991, a substantial attempt was made to restore Malone's reputation and acknowledge his outstanding leadership on Gallipoli. It came in the form of the Exceptional Services Honours Bill, introduced to Parliament by the Alliance Party leader, the Hon. Jim Anderton. The purpose of the bill was to give posthumous recognition to New Zealanders who had given outstanding service to their country but were not recognised while they were living.

An Act of Parliament was needed, Anderton wrote, because Crown honours were not awarded posthumously and a creative new way had to be found to honour heroes of the calibre of Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone. 'After 82 years, the time has come to correct the history books and restore Malone's name to the place it deserves. He was one of our greatest soldiers. Recognition is long overdue.'

The bill did not get past the select committee stage, nor did an attempt to get a similar bill through Parliament in 1997. The campaign, however, did not end there. In August 2005, Prime Minister Helen Clark unveiled the William G. Malone Commemorative Plaque in the Grand Hall of Parliament Buildings. In 2010, the Stratford District Council agreed to have a statue of Lieutenant-Colonel Malone erected in the town's main street.
Postscript

The Gallipoli campaign of which Malone was so much a part is now part of the folk memory of his country. In hindsight, the campaign was wrongly conceived and tragically mismanaged, and salvaged only by the courage and endurance of the men who fought in it. One hundred years on, it has been given fresh life by the thousands of New Zealanders and Australians who flock to the peninsula every Anzac Day.

The men they honour—young and impulsive like themselves—came from the farms, bushlands and small towns of New Zealand and Australia. They came to fight for King and country, to test their courage in battle, but mostly for adventure and the sheer excitement of war. They went to war 'ignorant of its causes and innocent of its meaning. No alternative was suggested by the politicians, or the Press, or the parsons. To crowds of ordinary boys there seemed to be no other possible or decent thing to do but to go out and fight.'

Gallipoli was to be the second major military operation in the history of their two young countries, and the survivors would emerge from it with a stronger sense of their identity as New Zealanders and Australians. Over 10,000 of them would not return, and many of those who did would bear the physical and emotional scars for the rest of their lives.

They came from safety of their own free will To lay their young men's beauty, strong men's powers Under the hard roots of foreign flowers Having beheld the Narrows from the hill.

—John Masefield
Voices of Gallipoli

The following extracts are first-hand accounts of the Gallipoli campaign as experienced by six survivors of Malone's Wellington Battalion. They describe, often in graphic detail, what occurred at the landing at Anzac Cove on 25 April, at Cape Helles, at Quinn's Post, and in the final battle for Chunuk Bair.

Dan Curham

We were landed on the Greek island of Lemnos and put into training again. We learned to climb up and down rope ladders with pack and blankets and weapons, and to go ashore from barges. By then, naturally, we knew we were going to Gallipoli. Otherwise we didn't know very much at all, or what was supposed to happen, even when our vessel sailed for the peninsula. We only knew that we were not, after all, to be the principal actors in the drama. The Australians were to go ashore first.

As we arrived we had a grandstand view of the British fleet shelling the Cape Helles end of the peninsula. There were great geysers of water going into the air as Turkish forts were bombarded. We sailed on another eight or ten miles to the site of the Anzac landing and anchored there. We could hear and see the fighting going on ashore, and there were bullets coming over and popping in the water. The Australians had already fought quite a distance inland.

We scrambled down rope ladders until it was standing room only on the barge, a solid mass of men. Fortunately only one man was wounded on the way in to the beach. We jumped into the water, clambered to land, and looked for shelter. The first casualties were being laid out on the beach, both dead and wounded. Perhaps thirty or forty dead were lying there in the open. The dead didn't make me feel too happy. We knew then that things were going to be terribly tough. The hills ahead were stacked up one behind the other and almost all held by the Turks. We knew we were soon going to be uphill with the Australians among that heavy fire too.

Most of us managed to sleep that first night under the hills. Next day, however, was very different. The Australians were entrenching at the top of Walker's Ridge. We were marched along the beach and sent uphill to back them up. As we were hiking along the rough track up Walker's Ridge we heard the order 'Machine gunners to the front.'

We were pushed forward, no protection or covering fire at all, to set up our guns in an open space facing the Turks. Our officer was killed in the first seconds. Then one sergeant was killed and another wounded, again within seconds. Finally two corporals were killed. We didn't get one gun into action and never fired a single shot. The rest of us abandoned the guns and retired with our ammunition boxes into the shelter of the scrub.

There was no one to give us orders at all, and a lot of panic. Men wounded in the arm and shoulder, still able to walk, came rushing back from the line and panicked men lying in the scrub; they imagined the Turks were down on us and took off too. An Australian colonel threatened to shoot them and that controlled the situation. More and more New Zealand infantry moved in to reinforce the Australians and somehow the Turks were held off.

That day, that second day at Gallipoli, our company lost forty percent of its men. Some of them good friends, old friends, were buried before I even knew they were dead. School friends too, most of them. Boys I'd grown up with. It was an awful thing to discover they'd gone so suddenly.

As the situation stabilised on the Anzac sector, we occupied posts like Courtney's and Quinn's. Quinn's was such a restless place. We were practically looking into the eyes of the Turk, just 12 yards or so away. There was always someone, us or them, digging and tunnelling. No one could get a real advantage. It was always a stalemate.

Colonel Malone made us work on Quinn's so that it grew from an untidy, dangerous collection of trenches into a really strong fortified post, clean and tidy and with overhead protection against bombs. He worked us to death until it was safe. If Quinn's wasn't held, then no one in Anzac was safe. That was the fact of the matter.

We got no rest there and very little sleep under the stars. We could always hear the Turks coughing and talking nearby. And there was endless digging—the thud, thud, thud of picks and shovels just feet under our heads—and mines going off that weren't meant to. Not to speak of bombs hitting our chicken-wire protection to roll back into no-man's-land and explode.

And our food was never more than bully beef and hard biscuits. Men actually broke their teeth on the biscuits. No greens, butter or milk or real bread. Just a quart of water a day for cooking, washing and drinking. And of course there were bodies between us and the Turks, and the smell. I suppose you could say Quinn's wasn't boring.

Russell Weir

One of the few times we weren't underground was when we were shipped down to Cape Helles to help out with the British regular attack which had foundered at that end of the peninsula. We thought it was going to be something of a holiday from the Anzac sector. By then, well into May, I was no longer elated about war, especially about Gallipoli. I'd seen it all as easy, a walkover. Now I was into the reality of the thing. And it was no walkover, no holiday even at Cape Helles.

Nerves started playing up—there was the thought of being badly wounded or killed at any moment. You could see the casualty list growing longer. You could see the dead being brought down from the heights and carried from the trenches. You could see men shot in the head, with their brains hanging out, yet unable to die.

You could see men die suddenly, from shrapnel bursts, even while they were bathing on the beach at Anzac. Above all you were seeing friends die all the time. Comrades carted away with sickness and wounds. You felt regret deep down but didn't weep. Soldiers don't weep anyway.

There was every reason to be depressed about how things had gone, and Cape Helles was no great improvement on Anzac. I witnessed the big Allied advance against the Turk, and of the New Zealand infantry across the Daisy Patch. It was just hell. All those bodies lying across fields sprinkled with daisies and poppies—or perhaps the poppies were just patches of blood. It was somewhere around then that the New Zealanders got the name of 'the White Gurkhas'. We took huge casualties, especially the Aucklanders.

What I most remember about the Cape Helles end of the peninsula is leaving our trenches. We were relieved in the middle of the night to go back to Anzac. A Lancashire battalion took over from us. Little kids, they seemed, about sixteen. And they were blubbering, crying their eyes out. Terrified. We tried to help them by saying those trenches were safe. They weren't of course. We were just trying to soothe those kids. That was a fairly disillusioning experience.

So we were shipped back along the Turkish coast to Anzac. Then we were back to navvying, digging trenches in the rain from 4am to 7am, when the job was safest. The only respite was a swim on the beach, so long as you survived the shrapnel down there. Even fetching water was risky. There was always some Turkish sniper well placed to pick you off every day.

Being so pinned down we were actually anxious to get into the front line, into the trenches closest to the Turks. Very soon we were—first at Courtney's Post, then at Quinn's. At least we could have a turn at sniping now, instead of being sniped at and unable to reply. By the middle of June the Wellingtons were installed at Quinn's Post, a very steep place, and the Turkish loopholes only fifteen yards away.

Quinn's Post was so tight that when anyone got killed, there was no way of getting the body out. And you couldn't leave bodies lying around in the summer heat. They were dumped in a corner of a trench, sprayed with petrol and burned. You couldn't do it any other way. That was Quinn's Post.

Our casualties there were continuous, but they would have been worse still if it had not been for our colonel, Colonel Malone. He held us together in that situation, and held Quinn's too. Until the Wellingtons moved in there had been useless, suicidal attacks against the Turk line. Colonel Malone—so we heard—refused to make such attacks when they were ordered by General Godley. And General Godley, we also heard, threatened Colonel Malone with court martial. Malone still didn't take the Wellingtons over. He was a great bloke, a great soldier.

Would I say we disliked our General Godley more than the Turks? I don't know. But he wasn't very popular. I certainly didn't like him. He was too hidebound, a parade ground soldier. He was nicely dressed and very good on the parade ground, and no good off it. Never down to realities.

After I had been at Quinn's for two weeks, I went down with enteric fever. The truth is that enteric fever and dysentery was a bigger enemy than the Turks. In delirium I just lost one day after another—total blanks—and I was taken off Gallipoli and put in hospital on Lemnos. On the eighth of August—five days after my birthday—Colonel Malone and most of the Wellington regiment—most of my remaining comrades—were wiped out trying to hold Chunuk Bair. As for me, I never saw Gallipoli again.'

Vic Nicholson

A lot of Wellington's time was eventually to be spent at Quinn's Post. It was really a fort. It gradually developed from an open trenchline into a fortification with sealed-in trenches and overhead protection, the whole lot. We had wire netting up to stop the bombs thrown from the Turk line. If they hit the wire, they rolled back down the parapet into no-man's-land and exploded there. If they went over the top of the netting they rolled down a hill to our rear.

Quinn's was absolutely isolated, out on a little peninsula, as it were, from the Anzac sector. Turk guns were trained on it from all directions. There was only about 35 feet of no-man's-land between us and the Turk trenches. I thought I saw a movement out there. Lofty Chapman, my tent-mate, was asleep beside me. I gave Lofty a kick, and I said, 'Have a look at this, I think there's movement out front.' He got up in a bad mood. I moved off the fire step and Lofty moved up.

He clapped his eye to the loophole and was shot right through the eye. That was the end of my mate Lofty. I didn't cry, unless Gallipoli was one long cry. If you cried once you'd never stop. There were friends going every day and sometimes every hour of the day, wonderful friends. I grieved inwardly. That was all you could do.

At Quinn's you could never put your head up and have a good look. If some enterprising boy hadn't adapted a few old rifles and made them periscopic, there would have been even more casualties. They were crude but they were wonderful. They helped us hold Quinn's. The most terrible thing at Quinn's was the stench of the dead. The bodies were only yards away. There was no relief from that brain-numbing stench. Otherwise we were good landlords. We were proud of keeping the place tidy. Quinn's to all intents and purposes belonged to the Wellington Infantry Battalion, and we were very proud and proprietorial.

Then there was the tunnelling. It was a silly old business, but frightening. We'd tunnel toward the Turk trenches and they'd tunnel toward us and place charges. It was always night working down in the tunnels. You'd be pushed along one of these tunnels toward the working face and there you'd chip away with your little entrenching tool, and scrape the soil into a sandbag and pass it on down a line of blokes until it was disposed of.

It was even more frightening when you listened and heard a Turk tapping away somewhere underground nearby too. I don't think our main charge in the mine gallery under Quinn's was ever blown. I don't think anyone was game. I think it would have blown everyone, the Turks and us too, through the roof.

Boredom was something you had to fight too. Through June and July, up to the big offensive in August, the boredom was draining. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go to avoid it in a place like Quinn's. You'd look for someone you knew to talk to, like someone who'd been off wounded and had got back again. They might have seen a girl, a woman who was good to look at, while they were in hospital. They'd talk about her. Little things from another world.

Food was everything. At no time on Gallipoli was the food reasonable or fit to eat. Even the water ferried ashore through the breakers was brackish and foul. As for food, the tins of bully beef stood in hot sun, in probably 100 or 115 degrees Fahrenheit of heat for days and days and days. It was just cat's meat floating around in a tin of oil. That was your lot. Try making a hearty meal out of that.'

Harvey Johns

The day after war was declared I joined the army. I was as keen as mustard. I belonged to the territorials and we all had a little of the wild colonial spirit. It seemed to be born in us. And any war that involved the mother country, England, we wanted to be in it. Our country right or wrong, we wanted to fight for it.

I remember us cursing and swearing, when we finally got to Gallipoli, because the Australians were landed first. We could see the fight up in the hills, but we had to sit on our ship fuming until we were put ashore the next morning. Apart from a few shots falling, we landed safely and got into a small gully.

Finally we were moved to Quinn's Post. The Australians had been holding Quinn's and gave us to understand it was a pretty torrid place. You were in danger anywhere there. No one was safe with the Turks twenty yards off. Someone was always getting shot, killed or wounded. You would get that tired sometimes that you could hardly stand up and at night-time, when you were standing to, you would sell your soul for an hour's sleep.

There was always something happening at Quinn's. They were undermining us with explosives or we were undermining them. I was in a special detachment of six snipers. You got that good that you could shoot the left eye out of a fly. We'd shoot at the top of Turk loopholes to bring down dirt and widen them up, to shoot better at the Turks behind them. We split bullets—in the way we weren't supposed to, as dumdums—so that when it struck it branched out and made an even bigger mess. The Wellingtons had a very good reputation for its snipers at Quinn's.

Another thing that gave us a good reputation was Colonel Malone. The men respected him. He never denied himself anything, he got into the battle the same as anyone else, and that is why he got killed in the finish.

Chunuk Bair was where I got knocked, in August. The Wellington infantry went up Rhododendron Ridge in the dark, after the Maoris and Mounteds had cleared the ground. We went over Chunuk Bair and down beyond it, to a little bit of flat. As light came we could see the Narrows, the Dardanelles, quite plainly from there. We could have gone right through and cut the north of the peninsula from the south. Mind you, it's just as well we didn't. We could have had Turks coming at us from two sides.

Our trench was only eighteen inches deep, with earth thrown up in front. It hardly counted as cover. There was a dead Turk in front of me, at least a twelve stone man, and I got hold of him with one hand and slewed him round and pulled him in front of two of us. I was only ten stone, yet I shifted him with one hand. Phenomenal strength comes out on occasions like that. We were getting hit in all directions. I got donged in the foot. A bullet exploded in the arch, taking a lot of it away.

I was assisted out by a sniper while I was hopping along looking for somewhere to hide. When he got me to this gully there were about 300 wounded lying around. The sun was hot. The temperature was about 130 degrees. We were there all day, without even a drink of water. As nightfall came I said to a mate of mine, Charlie Clark, 'Well, I am getting out of this, one way or the other.' Charlie had a piece blown out of his leg, I had a piece blown out of my foot. So we started to crawl out of this gully and down Chunuk Bair. We got in about midnight. Our ambulance boys fixed us up. We were the only ones to survive from that 300 in the gully. The only ones to make it out.

We heard nothing had happened in Suvla Bay where the British had landed. We looked down and saw no movement or advance at all. New Zealanders did a fair amount of swearing. They were swearing at the system, the whole thing. At the waste of 3000 New Zealand lives. And we had no respect for our General Godley. We considered him a bumptious ass. He had no respect for the human being at all and he was army from A to Z. He had no tact and he was universally hated. More than the Turks.

I left Gallipoli with a rifle for a crutch. I was 18 months in England where they tried to sew my foot up again, before I was returned home, I suppose I felt more a New Zealander when I came back. Yes I did.

Charlie Clark

We knew we was going to go over Chunuk Bair sometime. And we knew it was going to be grim, that some of us was going to pass out. There was some there that did show they were scared. I don't want to mention names, but there was a Wellington captain who took off, who we never saw again after that night. He shot himself in the knee with his revolver, before the attack on Chunuk Bair came, and got himself off Gallipoli as a casualty.

After midnight the navy and the artillery hit the top of Chunuk Bair with everything. I never seen a bombardment like it all my time on Gallipoli. The summit was just a mass of flame from the exploding shells. Yet some of us managed to sleep through it. I did. That was how exhausted we were. At half past two men came along our lines pulling our feet to wake us up and telling us to get ready. The lieutenant who was supposed to lead us up Chunuk Bair . . . he wasn't to be found. He'd cleared too.

We charged the rest of the way up Chunuk Bair with hardly a shot fired. Halfway up we had a breather and waited till the last shell fell with a whoomp. The Turks had mostly scooted from the top. A couple of machine-gunners let fly at us but their bullets went over our heads and we shut them up. There was one bearded old Turk, about seventy years old, with a gun on us. We had to shoot him, poor old joker.

We went over Chunuk Bair, to the drop on the other side, about a chain and a half and were told to dig in there. We only dug down about twelve inches before we struck rock. Then there was a call for 100 men to go out in front, to form a protective screen, to watch for Turks and take the brunt of the counter-attack if it came. There was Turkish gunpits there. So we settled down in these gunpits and had a game of cards.

We were still playing poker when the Turks finally hit the Wellingtons on the left flank. We never saw them coming, but all this time they was accumulating for their counter-attack. Suddenly there was a terrific volume of rifle fire and yelling. We was going to be pretty well in the middle of the Turks unless we moved fast. My mates said to me, 'Well you led us down here. Now you lead us back.' So I took off, back towards the top of Chunuk Bair, with bullets hopping around me, and the others following behind.

I flopped down in a trench beside Lieutenant Jardine of the 7th Hawke's Bay platoon, a man as game as they make them, and he yelled out to fix bayonets and prepare to charge, to counter-attack the Turk as they came. I was never too keen on a bayonet charge. I seen one or two bayoneted and I didn't like it. Faced with a joker coming at me with a bayonet I could shoot him straight away.

While we were braced for the bayonet charge, Turks to our left and to our right now too, their shots started getting among us, I heard 'thump, thump, thump' and it was fellows falling all around me. Nine or ten of them, suddenly wounded or dead, all the jokers I'd been playing poker with just a minute or two before. Then I sighted a Turk, just standing up, shooting among us. I pushed my rifle over a sandbag, got a sight of this Turk, and shot him in the face.

Then someone hit me in the leg with a sledgehammer. It was a Turkish bullet taking a lump out of my calf and smashing bone too. I crawled back through Wellington men on the top of the hill who were shooting to keep the Turks at bay. There was some Englishmen there too, Gloucesters, but they broke and cleared. My mate Harvey Johns, a really cool gentleman, tried to stop them breaking, marching up and down and shouting at them. I said, 'Harvey, you'll get your bloody brains blown out.' He did get shot soon after.

I finally crawled down into this ravine, where the wounded collected all that day on Chunuk Bair. It wasn't safe, it was under Turk fire, but it was the best place there was. I got a tourniquet on meself and for a bit I talked to a captain of the Gloucesters who was ashamed of his men breaking. Especially their breaking in front of the New Zealanders and leaving the battle to us. He said we were the best troops that he could ever hope to see.

Soon the ravine was full of wounded. Two hundred of us, maybe more. It was terrible, terrible. No water and no attention and nobody could do anything. We were being shelled too as we lay there. Men were all smashed up, and getting smashed up even more. They knew they were dying.

On top of the hill the Wellington Battalion was still taking these Turk counter-attacks. We could see it all from where we were lying exposed. Sometimes it seemed the Turks was coming right over Chunuk Bair, through the Wellingtons holding the hill, and down on top of us. If we weren't killed, we would be taken prisoner. That put the breeze up us. There was no point in staying round to die or be taken prisoner.

But to get out, just for a start, Harvey and I had to climb from this ravine where we were with the wounded. Slipping and sliding, we both of us crawled in the dark, on and on, helping each other, and we must have got back to the dressing station about midnight. It had taken us most of the day and half the night to get a couple of hundred yards back down Chunuk Bair. The mates we left behind back in the ravine, they're still on Gallipoli. Colonel Malone is too.

Lieutenant Charles Lepper

Sunday August the 8th was a terrible day as I suppose you must have seen by the papers. We had been on the move for three days beforehand. We did a great night march on the Friday and early Saturday morning we landed on top of a big hill where several of us had some great sniping, which caused the death of some chap from Inglewood: Kennedy. You will know of them I think.

He got shot through the hip, the bullet passed through the bone and split, half going up into his stomach and the other half went on and passed through another man's head and he died as soon as we got a bandage on. Kennedy lived till night. The Gurkhas and the Auckland boys had a mad charge, and I spent most of the afternoon with Bob Woods of Stratford bandaging up wounded men. By Jove it was awful.

I was blood all over and we couldn't bandage them up fast enough. None of the others would give a hand. Somehow the men seem afraid of a wounded man. At last a team of ambulance chaps came up and we got a spell. I was getting quite a dab hand with a bandage.

All that night we were digging trenches to fall back on after the next move, if not successful. At 4am we marched up on to the Hill 971 and were digging ourselves in when the Turks saw us, and didn't we get proper Hell. It was a shame. Men fell like ninepins and there was a stream of slightly wounded making for the dressing station; but we hung on and gradually got dug down a bit into the hardest ground I ever stuck a pick into.

About an hour after daylight a Gloucester Battalion that had taken up a position on our right bolted down the hill, having found it too hot; and then, of course, the Turks got an enfilade fire on our trenches, and things were very merry until our Artillery drove them off. We had two machine guns put into position and were both put out of action before they had done much damage, and most of the men were out of action too.

At any rate we held on and they charged us five times, and we shot them down in fine style, like shooting a haystack. Some of our chaps absolutely lost their heads. They were standing up on the trenches firing away and yelling at the Turks in the best French, but of course those chaps were bound to get it in the finish, and so they did.

In the afternoon we were reinforced by our mounteds, and soon after they arrived our artillery opened out and they did more damage to us in half an hour than the Turks did all day. They killed out two trenches of our chaps, one on either side of the one I was in, and slapped up ever so many mounteds and also caught the old Colonel, Col Malone. One of the bravest men I ever saw. The worst of it was our telephone wire was cut by bullets, and we could not get word back to the artillery.

I shall never forget the night we put in there. We were working like mad fixing up our trenches and it was pitch dark, and every now and then there would be a lot of cheering from the Turks, and we would throw down our tools and seize our rifles expecting every minute that the Turks would charge us, but it never came off. But the tension was cruel, especially when we could not see a yard in front.

However, we were relieved sometime after midnight by Otago [Battalion], and Taranaki Company came out with 28 men of the 181 that went into action. When I left there were only three men of the Main Body of the Taranaki Company (250) left. The Quartermaster-Sergeant and his Assistant, who were not in the scrap, and myself, so I suppose I have been very lucky.'

Taranaki bush fighters—the Armed Constabulary as they looked during the Land Wars of the 1860s. In front are 'friendly' Maori who acted as scouts for the force. Puke Ariki, New Plymouth

The Armed Constabulary in smart uniforms at the time Malone joined the force in 1881. He was with them when it helped to destroy the Maori village at Parihaka and arrest Te Whiti. Puke Ariki, New Plymouth

Patriotic to the core: crowds in the main street of New Plymouth during celebrations held in 1887 to mark 50 years of the reign of Queen Victoria. Puke Ariki, New Plymouth

Malone as a newly promoted lieutenant-colonel in the Territorial Force and his first wife Elinor (Nellie) Penn. Nellie died tragically in 1904 giving birth to their sixth child. 'The iron entered into his heart and it was a long time before he was his old self again.' Malone Family Collection, Wellington (MFCW), Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL)

Malone and his second wife, 'the strikingly attractive and well-educated' Ida Withers. Her letters were a powerful source of comfort to him during his nine months of service in Egypt and at Gallipoli. MFCW, ATL

After the bush-felling gangs moved in, massive burn-offs cleared the land for farming. Stratford, like other Taranaki towns in the late 1880s, was forged in fire. Puke Ariki, New Plymouth

Ida, William and their three children, Denis, Molly and Bernard (Barney), just before he left New Zealand for overseas service. MFCW, ATL

_The Farlands_ , the second grand house of its name built by William Malone. Sited on a 25-hectare dairy farm, it had seven bedrooms and stables for horses. Two of his youngest children can be seen in the foreground. MFCW, ATL

Ida with her family about 1913. _From left_ : a family friend, Molly (on her mother's lap), stepson Maurice (in boater) and stepdaughter Norah. Barney and Denis are in front. MFCW, ATL

Carved from the bush, Stratford takes shape under Mt Taranaki in the 1890s. The Malone farm was five kilometres outside Stratford on the Opunake road. ATL

The 11th (Taranaki Rifles) Regiment drawn up under their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone, and his officers a year before sailing to war. MFCW, ATL

The Wellington Infantry Battalion embarks on the troopship _Arawa_ at the Wellington wharves in October 1914. ATL

The _Arawa_ in convoy with Australian troopships after leaving King George Sound on the south coast of Western Australia. The failure of the Australian ships to douse their lights at night irritated Malone intensely. MFCW, ATL

Malone on his horse Don outside the Wellington Battalion's tents at Zeitoun near Cairo. Over 3800 horses sailed with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force from Wellington in October 1914. MFCW, ATL

Malone's tent at Zeitoun camp. The art of war, he wrote, was the cultivation of domestic virtues, among them order and cleanliness. MFCW, ATL

Malone's men on the march in the fierce heat of the Egyptian desert. 'The men cursed and swore; cursed him for a martinet who kept them toiling like the coolies of the land.' National Army Museum, NZ

'Here's what I want done.' Malone issues orders to his officers during training exercises in the Egyptian desert. Morison Album (MA), ATL

Wellington Battalion troops rest during training in the Egyptian desert. These men marched up to 50 kilometres a day in temperatures as high as 38 degrees Celsius and carrying loads of nearly 30 kilograms. MA, ATL

Malone's men prepare to repel a Turkish attack at El Kubri on the Suez Canal in February 1915. MA, ATL

Malone and a staff officer at El Kubri. His Wellingtons were by this time itching for action but in the end they were not needed. MFCW, ATL

The landing at Gallipoli. By nightfall on the first day, 26,000 of General Hamilton's troops were ashore, including over 3000 New Zealanders. Casualties were heavy. MFCW, ATL

The Wellingtons dig in on Walker's Ridge on the second day of the landing. Turkish attacks here were beaten back with heavy casualties, saving the Anzac line. MFCW, ATL

Looking down from the old Turkish fort at Cape Helles towards the beached freighter _River Clyde_. From ports in her side, troops of the British 29th Division attacked on 25 April only to be slaughtered by Turkish machine guns. MFCW, ATL

Malone's bivouac in Reserve Gully, which he built himself, looked out to sea and to the island of Imbros in the distance. MFCW, ATL

Anzacs in the trenches, possibly at Quinn's Post. The Turkish positions were typically no more than 15 metres away. MFCW, ATL

Men of the Canterbury Battalion in the trenches above Anzac Cove. The man smoking a pipe is 44-year-old Harold McCoy who was killed at Helles on 10 May. ATL

Turkish prisoners captured at Russell's Top. National Army Museum, NZ

Malone outside his headquarters on Walker's Ridge during the critical first days of the Gallipoli landing. MFCW, ATL

Malone's men at rest in the trenches at the height of the Turkish summer. Heat, disease spread by flies, and poor food decimated the British and Anzac battalions at Gallipoli. ATL

One man observes, the other fires. Turkish snipers killed many Allied troops at Gallipoli until teams of snipers drawn from the Anzac battalions gradually took control. ATL

A New Zealand machine-gunner in action at Gallipoli. ATL
Acknowledgements

The help given to me by many people in the writing of this book is gratefully acknowledged—in particular Dr Judy Malone of Wellington, whose practical assistance and encouragement was invaluable; military historians Dr Chris Pugsley, Dr Ian McGibbon and John Crawford, and the former chief archivist of Archives New Zealand, Ray Grover. Others who helped me with my research or in other ways were Fiona Harvie, archivist at the Stratford District Council, David Walter, a former mayor of Stratford and collector of Malone memorabilia and, especially my ever-supportive partner Barb Freeman. My sincere thanks also to the National Army Museum Literary Trust for its generous financial support of this project.
Notes

Introduction

 C.K. Stead, _The Commanding Officer_.

In the Beginning

 Dr Judy Malone, Malone Family Collection, Wellington (MFCW), Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL).

Chapter 1: Carved from the Bush

 Sinclair, _A History of New Zealand_ , p. 163.

 Walter, _Stratford_ , p. 5.

 Cowan, _The New Zealand Wars_ , Vol. II, p. 496.

 Sinclair, _A History of New Zealand_ , p. 148.

 Walter, _Stratford_ , p. 12.

 _Hawera & Normanby Star_, 11 October 1886.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 20 October 1908.

 Arnold, _New Zealand's Burning_ , p. 158.

 Arnold, _The Farthest Promised Land_ , p. 355.

Chapter 2: Family Man

 Church, _The Stratford Inheritance_ , p. 175.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 19 June 1890.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 11 July 1890.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 24 February 1892.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 16 April 1893.

 Crawford (ed.), _No Better Death_ , p. 25.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 16 August 1906.

 Penn, _The Taranaki Rifle Volunteers_ , p. 45.

Chapter 3: Political Ambitions

 Sinclair, _A History of New Zealand_ , p. 170.

 Crawford (ed.), _No Better Death_ , p. 32.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 2 May 1907.

 _Taranaki Daily News_ , 24 April 1908.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 20 October 1908.

 _Taranaki Herald_ , 17 November 1908.

 King, _The Penguin History of New Zealand_ , p. 175.

Chapter 4: The Making of a Soldier

 Crawford (ed.), _No Better Death_ , p. 28.

 Crawford (ed.), _No Better Death_ , p. 26.

 Obituary, _Hawke's Bay Herald Tribune_ , August 1915.

 Henderson, _The Science of War_ , p. 2.

 Henderson, _The Science of War_ , p. 48.

 Malone's Field Notebook, MFCW, ATL.

 Field Notebook, MFCW, ATL.

 Burde, _Tactical Pr_ inciples, p. 23.

 C.L. Lovegrove Papers _,_ The History of the Wellington Battalion 1914–1916, p. 25.

 Interview with Dr Judy Malone, 4 December 1990.

 _Dannevirke Evening News_ , 16 April 1913.

 Enquiry—Disturbance at Takapau Camp, May–June 1914, AD 10/1 Archives NZ.

 Crawford (ed.), _No Better Death_ , p. 34.

 MFCW, MS-9049-5, ATL.

 MFCW, MS-9049-5, ATL.

 McGibbon, _The Path to Gallipoli_ , p. 203.

Chapter 5: King and Country

 All quotes from Malone are from his diary, field notebook or letters unless otherwise attributed.

 Henderson, _The Science of War_ , p. 242.

 W.H. Cunningham, _Taranaki Herald_ , 9 August 1923.

 C.L. Lovegrove Papers, The History of the Wellington Battalion.

 Crawford (ed.), _The Devil's Own War_ , 8 September 1914, p. 23.

 Westmacott, Memoirs 1885–1917 _,_ ATL.

 C.L. Lovegrove Papers, The History of the Wellington Battalion.

Chapter 6: The Path to Gallipoli

 MFCW, MS-9049-5, ATL.

 Cunningham et al., _The Wellington Regiment NZEF, 1914–1919_ , p. 7.

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 8.

 Crawford (ed.), _The Devil's Own War_ , p. 34.

 Special General Order, 30 November 1914, Archives NZ; Pugsley, _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , p. 75.

 Crawford (ed.), _The Devil's Own War_ , p. 34.

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 10.

Chapter 7: Desert Storm

 Author unknown, quoted in introduction to Diary of Lt Col William Malone, MFCW, ATL.

 C.L. Lovegrove Papers, The History of the Wellington Battalion.

 Westmacott, Memoirs 1885–1917 _,_ p. 1713.

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 13.

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 13.

 Westmacott, Memoirs 1885–1917 _,_ p. 1726.

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 14.

 Westmacott, Memoirs 1885–1917 _,_ p. 1696.

 Letter to Allen, 17 January 1915, WA 251/1, ANZ.

 Crawford (ed.), _The Devil's Own War_ , p. 49.

 Cunningham et al., _The Wellington Regiment NZEF, 1914–1919_ , p. 20.

 Letter to Birdwood, 11 March 1915, MFCW, ATL.

 Crawford (ed.), _The Devil's Own War_ , p. 49.

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 19.

 Keegan, _The First World War_ , p. 256.

 Crawford (ed.), _No Better Death_ , p. 146.

 Crawford (ed.), _The Devil's Own War_ , p. 52.

Chapter 8: The Force Gathers

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 22.

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 23.

 Crawford (ed.), _No Better Death_ , p. 155.

Chapter 9: The Landing: 25 April

 Burton, _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , p. 29.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 114.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 130.

 Cunningham et al., _The Wellington Regiment NZEF, 1914–1919_ , p. 28.

 Carlyon, _Gallipoli_ , p. 222.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 169.

 War Diary, NZ & A Division, WA 20/2, Archives NZ.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 141.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 71.

 Hickey, _Gallipoli_ , p. 149.

Chapter 10: Helles and Back

 Malthus, _ANZAC: A Retrospect_ , p. 60.

 Laffin, _Damn the Dardanelles!_ , p. 65.

 Pugsley, _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , p. 199.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 84.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 38.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 157.

 Laffin, _Damn the Dardanelles!_ p. 106.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 70.

Chapter 11: Holding On

 Waite, _The New Zealanders at Gallipoli_ , p. 177.

 Burton _,_ 'A Rich Old Man', unpublished manuscript, ATL.

 Malthus, _ANZAC: A Retrospect_ , p. 80.

 Pugsley, _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , p. 217.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 206.

Chapter 12: 'A dilapidated, demoralised and filthy Hell'

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 45.

 Temperley _,_ 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair, Aug. 6–10, 1915', Archives NZ.

 H.V. Howe was a member of the Australian Historical Mission that returned to Gallipoli in 1919. In 1926, he was appointed Private Secretary to the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes. From 1940 to 1946 he was Military Secretary to the Australian Minister for the Army.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 12 May 1964.

 Sir Ernest Harston, Letter to Denis Malone, 16 March 1965.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 12 May 1964.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 12 May 1964.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 12 May 1964.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 12 May 1964.

 Terry Malone, Letter to Aunt Lucy, 13 June 1915.

 Waite, _The New Zealanders at Gallipoli_ , p. 181.

 _Daily Telegraph_ (UK), 11 March 1934.

 War Diary, NZ & A Division, 1 July–31 December 1915, WA 20/2, Archives NZ.

 War Diary, NZ & A Division, 1 April–30 June 1915, WA 20/2, Archives NZ.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 183.

Chapter 13: The Guns of August

 War Diary, General Staff HQ NZ & A Division, 1–31 August 1915, WA 20/17, Archives NZ.

 Divisional Order No. 10, Appendix 73, 3 August 1915, Divisional order No. 11, 5 August 1915, War Diary, General Staff HQ NZ & A Division, 1–31 August 1915, WA 20/17.

 Operation Order No. 7, War Diary, HQ NZ Infantry Brigade, 1–31 August 1915, WA 70/94, Archives NZ.

 Cunningham et al., _The Wellington Regiment NZEF, 1914–1919_ , p. 67.

 Cunningham et al., _The Wellington Regiment NZEF, 1914–1919_ , p. 67.

 Temperley _,_ 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Temperley _,_ 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Temperley _,_ 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 62.

 Westmacott, Memoirs 1885–1917 _,_ Vol. 18, B343.

 Sir Ernest Harston, Letter to Ted Malone, 14 February 1962.

 Hamilton, _Dispatches from the Dardanelles 1917_ , 8 August 1915, p. 186.

 Hastings, 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade, 5 November 1929, MFCL.

 Captain Ernest Harston, Letter to Denis Malone, 5 March 1942.

 'Tale of a Taranaki survivor: Charles Lepper and Chunuk Bair', _Daily News_ , 24 April 2004.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 66.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 94.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 286.

Chapter 14: Once on Chunuk Bair

 Malthus, _ANZAC: A Retrospect_ , p. 121.

 Stowers, _Bloody Gallipoli_ , p. 195–6.

 Hamilton, _Gallipoli Diary_ , p. 90.

 Godley, _Life of an Irish Soldier_ , p. 183.

 Report on Operations Against the Sari Bair Position, 6–10 August 1915, Appendix 79, WA Series, Archives NZ.

 Waite, _The New Zealanders at Gallipoli_ , p. 261.

 Pugsley, _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , p. 335.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Pugsley, _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , p. 278.

 Dr Chris Pugsley, Interview with author, 27 October 1914.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 2 October 1965.

 'Zeki Bey's story', MS papers 11408-10, ATL.

 The official history of the New Zealanders in the Gallipoli campaign gave these accounts some support. It states that Statham's men reached a point on Rhododendron Spur where they could overlook the Sazli Beit Dere and see 'scared' Turkish troops streaming back towards Battleship Hill. 'Some of the bolder spirits of the Otagos went right on to the Apex and Chunuk Bair!': Waite, _The New Zealanders at Gallipoli_ , p. 214.

 Sir Ernest Harston, Letters to Denis Malone, 14 February 1962 and 9 March 1965.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Sir Ernest Harston, Letter to Denis Malone, 5 March 1942.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 19 September 1964.

 Sir Ernest Harston, Letter to Denis Malone, 5 March 1942.

 Pugsley, _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , p. 301.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 19 September 1964.

 C.E.W. Bean, Official History of Australia in the First World War. Vol. 2, p. 690.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Prior, _Gallipoli: The End of the Myth_ , p. 175.

 Godley, _Life of an Irish Soldier_ , p. 187.

 Cunningham et al., _The Wellington Regiment NZEF, 1914–1919_ , p. 72.

 Malthus, _ANZAC: A Retrospect_ , p. 118.

 Dr Chris Pugsley, Interview with author, 27 October 2014.

 Pugsley, _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , p. 303.

 Prior, _Gallipoli: The End of the Myth,_ p. 176.

 'Zeki Bey's story', MS papers 11408-10, ATL.

 H.V. Howe, 'The Chunuk Bair disaster', MS papers 11408-10, ATL.

Chapter 15: Mission Impossible?

 Prior, _Gallipoli: The End of the Myth_ , pp. 249–52.

 H.V. Howe, 'The Chunuk Bair disaster', MS papers 11408-10, ATL.

 Final Report of Dardanelles Commission, Part 2—Conduct of Operations, MS papers 11408-12, ATL.

 Laffin, _Damn the Dardanelles!_ , p. 196.

 Laffin, _Damn the Dardanelles!_ , p. 144.

 Sir James Allen to Godley, 12 January 1917, WA 252.1/5, Archives NZ.

 Sir Thomas Mackenzie, NZ High Commissioner to UK, Supplementary Report, MFCW, ATL.

 Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, cited in North, _Gallipoli: The Fading Vision_ , p. 30.

 B.H. Liddell-Hart, cited in North, _Gallipoli: The Fading Vision_ , p. 19.

 James, _Gallipoli_ , p. 350.

 Prior, _Gallipoli: The End of the Myth_ , pp. 249–52.

 Pugsley, _The Anzac Experience_ , p. 103.

Chapter 16: 'No finer soldier . . .'

 Letter to Ida Malone, 25 August 1915, MFCW, MS-9049-1, ATL.

 Letter to Ida Malone, 10 August 1915, MFCW, MS-9049-1, ATL.

 Letter to Ida Malone, MFCW, MS-9049-1, ATL.

 Letter to Ida Malone, MFCW, MS-9049-1, ATL.

 C.H. Weston, Obituary, _Taranaki Herald_ , 15 August 1915.

 C.H. Weston, Obituary, _Taranaki Herald_ , 15 August 1915.

 Obituary, _Taranaki Herald_ , August 1915.

 Pugsley, _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , p. 302.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 12 May 1964.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Henderson _, The Science of War_ , p. 307.

 C.F. Aspinall-Oglander, Letter to Barney Malone, 3 December 1936.

 Temperley, 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 C.H. Weston, 'A fearless leader', MFCW, ATL.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 61.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 61.

 Shadbolt, _Voices of Gallipoli_ , p. 39.

 Captain Ernest Harston, Letter to Ida Malone, 12 August 1915.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 25 February 1964.

 C.L. Lovegrove Papers, The History of the Wellington Battalion.

 Dixon, _On the Psychology of Military Incompetence_ , p. 48.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 12 May 1964.

Chapter 17: 'A strong man, a true gentleman . . .'

 C.E. Major, _Hawera & Normanby Star_, 1 September 1915.

 G.A. Marchant, _Taranaki Herald_ , 20 August 1915.

 T.C. Fookes, _Hawera & Normanby Star_, 14 August 1915.

 Arnold _, New Zealand's Burning_ , p. 154.

 Denis Malone, Letter to H.V. Howe, 12 November 1964.

 Dr Judy Malone, Interview with Miss Kathleen Laverty.

 Evidence to the Royal Commission on Land Tenure and Land Settlement 1905.

 Evidence to the Royal Commission on Land Tenure and Land Settlement 1905.

 Evidence to the Royal Commission on Land Tenure and Land Settlement 1905.

 G.A. Marchant, _Taranaki Herald_ , 20 August 1915.

 E.P. Malone, Unpublished typescript, Diary and life of W.G. Malone, p. 11, ATL.

Chapter 18: 'Your husband and lover . . .'

 Justice Sole, Obituary, _Taranaki Herald_ , 15 August 1915.

Chapter 19: 'Pro Patria Mori'

 Temperley _,_ 'A personal narrative of the Battle of Chunuk Bair'.

 Dixon, _On the Psychology of Military Incompetence_ , p. 212.

 Brig.-Gen. Herbert Hart, Letter to Brian Malone, 16 March 1966.

 C.F. Aspinall-Oglander, Letter to Barney Malone, 3 December 1936.

 H.V. Howe, Letter to Denis Malone, 25 February 1964.

 Malthus, _ANZAC: A Retrospect_ , p. 118.

Chapter 20: The Price of War

 _Taranaki Daily News_ , n.d., MFCW, ATL.

Postscript

 Burton, _The Sil_ e _nt Division_ , p. 121.
Bibliography

UNPUBLISHED SOURCES

Burton, O.E., 'A rich old man', Unpublished manuscript, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (ATL)

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OFFICIAL REPORTS

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PUBLISHED SOURCES

Arnold, Rollo, _The Farthest Promised Land: English Villagers, New Zealand Immigrants of the 1870s_ , Victoria University Press, 1981

—— New Zealand's Burning: The Settlers' World in the Mid-1880s, Victoria University Press, 1994

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Burde, J., _Tactical Principles_ , Hugh Price, London, 1908

Burton, O.E., _The Auckland Regiment NZEF 1914–1918_ , Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland, 1922

—— _The Silent Division: New Zealanders at the Front 1914–19_ , Angus & Robertson, New Zealand, 1935

Carlyon, Les, _Gallipoli_ , Pan Macmillan Australia, 2001

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—— _The Devil's Own War: The Diary of Herbert Hart_ , Exisle, Auckland, 2008

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—— _The First World War_ , Hutchinson, London, 1998

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—— _The Penguin History of New Zealand_ , Penguin Books, Auckland, 2003

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—— _British Butchers and Bunglers of World War I_ , Macmillan Australia, 1989

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—— _Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story_ , Reed, Auckland, 1998

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Walter, David, _Stratford: Shakespearean Town Under the Mountain_ , Dunmore, Wellington, 2005

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Wright, Matthew, _Shattered Glory: The NZ Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front_ , Penguin New Zealand, Auckland, 2010

ARTICLES

Harston, Major E.S., CBE, 'Gallipoli. What did happen? A New Zealander answers Mr Moorehead', _Empire and Commonwealth_ , April 1957, MFCW, ATL

Pugsley, Dr Christopher, 'Malone of Chunuk Bair', _Fix Bayonets_ , 1990, Reprinted from _Australian Defence Force Journal_

—— 'Malone, William George', _Dictionary of New Zealand Biography_ , _Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand_

—— 'We have been here before: The evolution of the doctrine of decentralised command in the British Army 1905–1989', Sandhurst Occasional Papers No. 9, Central Library, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, 2011

'Tale of a Taranaki survivor: Charles Lepper and Chunuk Bair', _The Daily News_ , 24 April 2004

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