William George Malone: Tough Man with a Soft Heart

Just hours before the Kiwi assault on Chunuk Bair, one of Taranaki's toughest men wrote about love. Sitting in the heat and squalor of battle-blasted Gallipoli, World War One soldier Lieutenant Colonel William George Malone penned the last letter to his wife, Ida.

These are the words the leader of the Wellington Regiment wrote on 5 August 1915:

“My Sweetheart:

In less than two 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 from 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 through my dear wife. If anything untoward happens to me 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.”

From the outside, Malone was considered to be a hard man. At Gallipoli, he put himself on the line for his troops and in Taranaki he fought other battles. But under his stern facade, Malone was a loving husband and father. Ida, the woman he poured his heart out to in that notorious warzone, was Malone's second wife. His first, Elinor Lucy (nee Penn), produced a daughter, Norah, and four sons, Edmund and Terry (both at Gallipoli), Brian and Maurice. But Elinor died during childbirth in 1904. A year later, Malone married Ida Katharine Withers. They had two more sons, Denis and Barney, and a daughter, Molly.

Malone himself was born on 24 January 1859, in Kent, England, to an English mother and Irish father, who was a well-known scientist. The young Malone was just nine when his father died at the age of 44. After that, the boy went to Catholic boarding schools in both England and France, where he became fluent in French and a stickler for rules.

Stratford historian David Walter says Malone also learnt about the sounds of war. "He heard the cannons from the Franco-Prussian War in the distance when he was at boarding school in France."

In January 1880, 21-year-old Malone travelled by ship from London to New Zealand. He arrived at Wellington and took a boat to Taranaki, landing on the beach at Ōpunake to join his brother Austin in the New Zealand Armed Constabulary.

In November the following year, Malone took part in the siege of Parihaka. After three years, he quit the Armed Constabulary and began working on the Ōpunake coast. He was involved with surfboats, and rowing out to ships to unload cargo.

The brothers Malone bought a large block of land near Stratford and then arranged for their widowed mother and two sisters to join them from England.

Historian Judy Malone, who was married to William's grandson, Edmond, has researched the military man's story. "He started as an axe and spade pioneer," she says. "Stratford was practically all standing bush when he arrived."

Mr Walter says Malone was involved in far more than farming. One of his claims to fame was inventing the lemon squeezer hat. The distinctive-shaped hat came into being because of wet weather. On a rain-sodden day in 1911, Malone was leading the 11th Taranaki Rifles during exercises at Takapau. The men, who all had mountain badges attached to their uniforms, were also wearing traditional felt hats, turned up at the left side. Malone took his hat off, pushed out the dent in the crown and pinched it in four corners so that it resembled the mountain and shed the water. All his men followed suit and the hat went on to become a distinguishing symbol of all New Zealand troops in war and peace until it was replaced in 1962. It has now been reintroduced as ceremonial headdress.

"He was so multi-talented," Mr Walter says. "He was a competent pianist. He had farms in Stratford and other parts of Taranaki. He played rugby for Taranaki in the 1880s. He was the first county clerk in the Stratford County Council. He studied law at night and became a lawyer and had four or five offices in towns around Taranaki. He tried two or three times to get into Parliament as an independent. He became a professional soldier and that led him to World War One."

In Gallipoli, swatting flies and surrounded by men worn down with dysentery, Malone pondered his highly active life in that final letter to Ida: “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. That was due from me. 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; forgive me also for anything unkindly or hard that I may have said or done in the past.”

Judy Malone says the military leader was a formidable man. "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 best at all times. There must be no slacking. Malone couldn't stand muddle and inefficiency, things being done in a slap-dash fashion. One must be 'thorough' (a favourite word). One must 'get down to bedrock' (another favourite)."

Grandson Edmond, a historian and reporter for the Taranaki Herald in Stratford after World War Two, tells how his grandfather was tough on himself. "Malone believed that war with Germany was inevitable, and that citizens had an absolute responsibility to prepare for it. He himself prepared for the conflict by rationing himself, sleeping on a military stretcher not a soft bed, and keeping himself in peak physical fitness."

A strict disciplinarian, Malone was the type of man who also expected his troops to buckle down. In late October 1914, when the 55-year-old boarded the Arawa in Wellington Harbour, he found a filthy boat and soldiers ready for a restful journey. "They were in for a rude shock" Judy Malone says. "Malone was determined to impose his standards, to get everything 'straightened out' (another favourite phrase). The quarters were cleaned from top to bottom. There was physical drill before breakfast and daily lectures to the officers.

"In Egypt he drove his battalion remorselessly. He weeded out incompetents. It must become the best in the force. He trained it harder and longer than any other battalion - and how the men resented it," she says.

But on the rugged Turkish coast of Gallipoli, Malone gained their trust. Facing up to his superiors, he pushed ceaselessly for better food, building materials to protect sleeping men, more ammunition, more telephones and periscopes. Again and again, Malone challenged the British military commanders, until they learnt to resent him. In a letter home, the Stratford man said: "He [the Brigadier, Malone's immediate superior officer] says I am more bother to him than all the three other Commanding Officers together."

On the other hand, his commitment to the troops turned him into a hero in the eyes of his men. Three weeks before the assault on Chunuk Bair, Malone wrote to his brother-in-law, Henry Penn, saying: "My officers and men are splendid ... So gallant, enduring and cheerful. They are wonderful; their people cannot be too proud of them. The wounded are so patient, so quiet, so brave, so uncomplaining. They bear all their pain like stoics; no troops like them ... I admire - nay, I love them so."

Malone was also skilled in war tactics, having read a huge amount on the subject. "His books on famous military campaigns are full of underlinings and crammed with his marginal notes," Judy Malone says. Early in the Gallipoli campaign he suggested a left-hook flanking attack on the high ground of the Sari Bair Range as the best chance of getting on top of the Turks. At that stage, his plan may have succeeded with few lives lost.

Months later, Malone was ordered to carry out basically the same operation he had proposed earlier. But this time, the Turks were in control of the heights. After a successful night of fighting, Malone's men took the summit of Chunuk Bair before dawn on 8 August. They held the peak all day, waiting for British backup. It never came. The Wellington troops were exposed to fighting from three sides. No help could reach them.

That evening, when the Turkish attacks seemed to have ceased for a short time, Malone stood up to study the battleground. As he looked around, a shell burst over the trench and the lieutenant colonel was killed. There is a bitter irony to Malone's death - the shell fired came from a British destroyer out at sea.

Of the 700 New Zealand soldiers who fought at Chunuk Bair, only 76 were not killed or wounded on that day. Malone, aged 56, was one of the fallen. He is buried in an unknown grave.

These are final words he wrote in his last letter to Ida: “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 needs. 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.” 

The British blamed Malone for the devastation at Chunuk Bair, with an official report saying he dug his trenches in the wrong position. This claim has been disputed time and again by historians, war tacticians and New Zealand Gallipoli survivors. One of those was World War One veteran Victor John Nicholson, from Palmerston North. "I remember Colonel Malone very, very well. He was doing the very best he could. He had no orders. He couldn't get sensible orders. The telephone line was brought through to him. He had the connection to headquarters, but he couldn't get any sense out of them," Nicholson says in the book, In The Shadow Of War.

In 1923, the same year the Malone family's Stratford homestead, Farlands, burnt to the ground, the colonel was honoured by the Wellington Regiment. The soldiers paid for the Malone Memorial Gates to be erected in Stratford and this monument remains the largest war memorial dedicated to an individual person in New Zealand.

Despite this, Malone has never received any national recognition for his brave efforts at Chunuk Bair and moves have been made to rectify this. However, those who died on that rocky, far-off coast will never be forgotten. The Turks themselves have seen to that. At Anzac Cove, a tranquil place cut by impossible cliffs, there is a huge sign written in English.

It reads:

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives

You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country

Therefore rest in peace.

There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets

To us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours

You, the mothers

Who sent their sons from far away countries

Wipe away your tears

Your sons are now living in our Bosom and are in peace

After having lost their lives on this land

They have become our sons as well.”

Written by Ataturk, the junior Turkish Commander in the Gallipoli campaign, who later became the President of Turkey.

Bibliography

Malone, W.G. (2005). No better death: the great war diaries of William G. Malone. Auckland: Reed Books.

Vennell, J. (2015). Man of iron: the extraordinary story of New Zealand WWI hero Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.