by Michael Gill
‘Reinforcements filled their places and we kept up rifle fire but this was useless against their bombs. These brutal, cruel murderous missiles poured on us, and we tried to erect bomb proof shelters and get bombs to throw back. But it seemed useless, for our men were falling like leaves and a stream of wounded flowed endlessly back to our rear. I saw men writhing in death agony with wounds too fearful to mention, others with injuries nearly as gruesome, stumbling along the trench, dragging their poor, bloody bodies past us, frantically trying to escape another thunder-bomb. Poor fellows! Some of them had better been hit again than survive as they were. The bottom of the trench was red, the world swam about us and death held our hands, ready at any moment to pull us across the Rubicon. The incessant, thunderous bursting of bombs was a fitting death chant to prepare our hopeless, desperate spirits for almost any fate, and those who came out unscathed were filled with wonder at the marvel of it. At length the position became untenable and at 8am we retired, and then peace and comparative quiet descended upon the scene. Our loss was heavy, my platoon being reduced from 31 to 14.
‘I was in it all and can never forget it. I stayed there fighting and keeping the fellows at it till only a corporal and I were left of the original occupants. At length a bomb burst just above me with fearful effect. I just had time to put an overcoat over my head and so escaped its direct force, but I must have been dazed by the concussion for I hazily remember getting out of the trench and wandering into an Australian’s dugout where I lay down for a good while, afterwards going back to my bivouac where I remained. I had previously been covered with dirt dozens of times from nearby explosions. Dozens of our men are suffering in the same way as I – no wounds, just shock from the concussion. I had nightmares all Saturday night, but felt almost all right on Sunday morning. I continued my duties and didn’t bother the doctor as I only felt a bit “groggy”.
‘It was Auckland again who stood all the losses, and our Fifteenth Company which bore the brunt as usual. We sustained practically 80% casualties, an absolutely unheard of percentage, 20% being considered extremely high.’
To England as an invalid
11 June – Anzac Cove. ‘Flies! I thought Egypt was bad for flies but I had not then known what I now do. This place, since summer has come, is very hot during the day. The dead have been lying unburied for weeks between the trenches and, although all were interred during the Armistice, scores soon took their places and Colonial and Turk lie side by side in sad neglect between the two posts of entrenched men seeking each other’s lives day and night. It is impossible to do anything about these dead. The air is tainted revoltingly, the sun beats like a furnace into our deep, narrow trenches. The flies swarm in millions on the poor, silent forms, and also on us, voraciously swooping on our food, and in our mouths, obliterating with their endless myriads anything left down. They swarm over each other in heaps fighting to get beneath. There is no escape from them. They are a condition to be suffered in loathing, in disgust. As a danger to health they are a menace to us all. Woe to anyone not strong – the bullets of the enemy are safer. Our survival is due to only two things – the natural, outdoor health of the sturdy New Zealanders, and inoculation.’
26 June – Courtney’s Post. ‘Today a Turkish aeroplane dropped some papers which blew into the Turkish trenches where they tied them on to an old bomb and threw them towards us. They were invitations to us Colonials to come and surrender, “as we are being merely used by England for her own purposes” and were thus practically betrayed. They invited us to surrender and promised us the best of treatment with splendid food. They are sick of the war too.’
2 July – Courtney’s Post. ‘We are all heartily sick and tired of this trench warfare, awaiting an attack, working at all hours of day and night at navvies’ work – digging trenches, roads, tunnels; carrying timber, bags of earth, gravel, stores, water, up these fearfully steep hills and cliffs. The men’s tempers and spirits are becoming ragged and grumbling is now continual at every little thing. We have been nine weeks under fire. In the reserve gully we lost men almost every day and we have had no spell. A week away from hostilities would refresh the men but we push on. The men want to finish Turkey off and get the job done. Then, after a couple of weeks in Constantinople, sail for England for a month or so, then off to France – this is their cry.
‘For the last three weeks I have had diarrhoea and feel entirely run down and ill with it.’
5 July – Lemnos Hospital. ‘Because of my illness Major Craig ordered me away and I am now in hospital. For three months I had splendid health not parading sick once, although all that time was spent in action under most trying conditions. I am one of only 18 men left of our original group of 227 – the race is not always to the fast! Captain Algie has told me to stay away till I am completely better.’
13 August –Malta. ‘At last I feel well, though a bit weak, and I have taken to my diary again. On my way here I was given a first-class cabin. There was an electric fan and all sorts of comforts – cupboards, electric lights, and fresh water in plenty to wash in as often as I wished. I have been living like a millionaire: Soup, fish, rissoles and sauce, savoury mince and mashed potatoes, curry and rice, roast meats and vegetables, pie or pudding. There are nurses on board, such nice, obliging girls, anxious for everyone’s comfort. Two men died and were buried on the way, the steamer just stopping for a couple of minutes each time.
‘When I found I was unable to sleep enclosed by walls I moved onto the deck in the sea breeze. I am afraid I shall advocate the simple, primeval life when I get back – just a roof to keep off the rain; and I think I could eat anything, even grass, after being alive for three months on bully beef and iron biscuits.
‘Do you know that the Turks are fighting as fair a fight as could possibly be, not using any of the dirty German tactics and treating the wounded well. At first in the rage and ferocity of those few awful days after landing, terrible things were done – on both sides, our men were equally to blame. Some Colonials captured a German officer with soft-nosed bullets on him that inflict awful wounds. They tied him to a pine tree, lifted bayonets and charged him, just as they reached his chest, dividing and passing to either side of him not having touched him; the officer fainted, was revived and the performance thrice repeated, then finally he was shot dead with his own soft-nosed bullets.
‘The Turks brutally bayoneted our wounded and some of our own men replied in kind. But when the savage fever abated many gallant acts were performed. There was a Turk who picked up a wounded Australian calling for help and carried the injured man to his Australian mates. Another brought them water. They bandage up our men well and give them every attention.’
15 September – Bristol. ‘We landed at Southampton and were brought here to Bristol through countryside where orchards were glowing brightly with ripening fruit, and the harvests being gathered under thatched barns. Rabbits and pheasants were thick as bees. Our hospital is a beautiful place. The staff is very large and the nurses are so very good, gentle and willing.
‘Regarding my own health. I certainly am better than when I left Malta, for I have gained eight pounds in weight during the fortnight after leaving there, which is not so bad. I still lack energy for, as the doctor says, I am in a quiescent state, recuperating after a prolonged physical strain. My digestion too is weak. However, I am having a splendid time, new experience being gained, seeing fresh countries and people, and having a thorough change and rest.’
On 2 February 1916, Percy returned to Auckland. He was suffering from that state of anxiety, exhaustion and depression that became known as shell-shock – later post-traumatic stress disorder – and he was not drafted back into the war. As was almost invariable in Gallipoli veterans, he never spoke of his experiences. One might have thought the average Kiwi bloke would return from the war with a fund of yarns that he would tell for the rest of his life, but this rarely happened. Men had indeed overcome their fears, shown extraordinary courage and risked their lives, but to
what end? They had been defeated. Great Britain had been shown to be far from great. Her vaunted army and navy had been grievously in error in planning and execution. When the final evacuation from Gallipoli took place at the end of 1915, almost one-fifth of the 100,000 Allied troops were dead and nearly half had been wounded. Military historian B.H. Liddell Hart wrote, ‘Thus the curtain rang down on a sound and far-sighted conception, marred by a chain of errors in execution almost unrivalled in British history.’3
Many war veterans returned weak, disillusioned and alienated. Heroism had not been an easy code to follow. At Gallipoli, the usual reward for a conspicuous display of heroism was death. For many there must have been acts of commission or omission that could make them feel ashamed of themselves. Humanity itself, they might have thought, should feel ashamed of perpetrating this vast theatre of insanity on the Turkish peninsula. When Percy passionately advocated pacifism throughout the rest of his life and taught his two sons to be conscientious objectors in the Second World War, he was speaking from the depths of his own bitter experience.
– CHAPTER 3 –
Growing up in Tuakau and Auckland
Percy’s ship arrived in Auckland on 2 February 1916. A week later he had married his Gertie at the church of St Matthew-in-the-City. A week is a short time in which to set up a wedding. Such speed suggests desperation, a need to reach a safe haven – at least on Percy’s part. For the rest of his life he would carry the reputation of being a hard, withdrawn man, tough on his children, but the few surviving letters he wrote to Gertie show the softer side of a man who remained in love with his wife and dependent on her – a trait that would be inherited by his son.
Here is Percy, aged 55, away from home and writing to Gertrude in 1940:
My Dearest, Do you know what today is? The 24th anniversary of our wedding. Heaps of love and happy memories! What a dainty bride you were, sweet, sensitive and charming. And what a wonderful wife you have been, steadfast as a rock, willing and full of constructive action.
I wish I were home instead of miles away. I miss your love and affection and wise counsel. Every daily silence I send you my whole heart full of love and protection, and I also send each of the children thoughts of love, harmony and happiness. And my last thoughts at night are of you … Heaps of love …1
For four years between 1916 and 1920, Percy and Gertrude lived in Auckland, possibly with the Clark sisters at Herbert Road in Mt Eden. In May 1916, Percy was discharged from the army as ‘medically unfit’. From time to time he found work as a freelance journalist. Gertie, to begin with at least, was teaching, but by 1917 she was pregnant, and on 19 June their first child was born, a daughter, June St Hilaire Hillary.
Two years later, Edmund Percival was born at the Kelvin Private Hospital in Clonbern Road, Remuera. And 15 months after Edmund came Wrexford Fleming. These were grand names that said something about the social aspirations of their parents. Much later in life, Wrexford gave up the struggle of signing his name Wrex and changed his name by deed poll to Rex.
Tuakau, 1920–1934
By 1919 beekeeping has appeared in the Hillary family: this was the occupation given by Percy in the electoral roll for that year. Returned servicemen could learn about bees at a government-run model farm in Ruakura, near Hamilton, and perhaps Percy had taken advantage of this. Whether he kept hives in Auckland is doubtful, but the family’s next move opened up the opportunity for bee farming across as much farm and scrub land as he could reach.
As a returned soldier Percy was offered a grant of land, and in 1920 he became the owner of seven acres of flat, fertile land in the small farming town of Tuakau, 60 kilometres south of Auckland. Situated on the banks of the Waikato, the North Island’s largest river, Tuakau had begun life in 1840 as a flax-milling centre. In the war of 1863–64 between Māori and colonial forces, an important redoubt covering the river was located on a promontory just south of the town.
By the time of the arrival of the Hillarys in 1920, Tuakau, along with its larger neighbour Pukekohe, had become a prosperous agricultural and farming centre thanks to its fertile, volcanic soils. There were market gardens supplying Auckland with potatoes, onions, cabbages and carrots; there were dairy and poultry farms, orchards, apiaries. Whitebait from the river were canned in a local factory. The road to Auckland was narrow and rough, but Tuakau had an excellent rail link to the big city, only one hour away on the Main Trunk Line. Percy’s land was centrally located at one end of what is now the main street, with the railway station a kilometre away at the other end. The house came with two rooms, to which Percy would add home-built extensions that were usable but left incomplete for lack of time and priority in his busy life.
A farm of seven acres was unlikely to make its owner much money, but it provided food for subsistence from its gardens, orchards, chickens and six cows. Surplus milk was sold to the butter factory just across the railway line. Percy got bored with milking six cows by hand twice a day, but eased the tedium by reading from a wooden book-holder hung off the back of his cows. The land was also a base for farming bees, which collected nectar from clover in the surrounding paddocks and from mānuka growing on the steeper land not under cultivation. After purchasing an old van, Percy could buy new hives and locate them further afield wherever there were nectar-bearing flowers.
Soon he was back in his old profession of journalism as founding editor and publisher of the Tuakau District News, a weekly, two-page local news-sheet selling for the modest sum of one penny. The paper was owned by Northern Waikato Newspapers Ltd and printed locally, and the Pukekohe Race Day was added for punters at the big racetrack nearby. The District News was centred on advertising, but included coverage of local social and sports news, especially rugby and tennis. Percy was particularly enthusiastic about rugby and developed a sound technical knowledge of the game which he passed on to his sons. Ed remembered accompanying Percy on Saturday afternoons to watch the winning Te Kohanga team, composed mainly of Māori players and with a fullback described by the District News as a genius.
Percy became an important figure in local affairs. He was president of the Tuakau Chamber of Commerce and secretary of the local rugby and tennis clubs. In his District News he shaped and reflected local issues through his editorials, which were accompanied by poetry that Gertie had selected from Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics. Percy’s powerful work ethic was not always sustained, and June remembered how there were days when her father would lapse into a depressive lethargy, lying around doing nothing.
As a father, Percy was a good storyteller. The lounge in their small house was a cosy room with an open fire, and June, Ed and Rex would curl up while Percy told them Jimmy Job stories. Jimmy lived in a hollow tree at the bottom of the garden and though each day he’d be in Africa riding cheetahs or finding sacks of diamonds, he slept back home in a hollow tree stump in the Tuakau garden.
The evidence, including that from June and Rex, suggests that Ed had a reasonably happy childhood in Tuakau up to the time he went to secondary school.2 The children had a loving mother and a caring, though stern, father who was always engaged in interesting projects. They lived in the sort of rural environment that wistful memories are made of: farms all around, fields of hay, farm animals with their warm smells, trees of all shapes and sizes to climb in, the banks of a great river. Ed and Rex would make driftwood rafts and float downriver to a landing where Percy and Gertrude would be waiting with a picnic beside their Overland Tourer. They had beach holidays at the Waikato Heads with Auntie Leila, and other family holidays with Uncle John (‘Jack’) Hillary at Tatuanui, where he ran a successful country store.
Writing of his years in Tuakau, Ed grudgingly concedes ‘my memories of those early years are happy enough’,3 but added later:
I was a restless, rather lonely child and even in my teens I had few friends. My father was a man of rigid principles and any straying from the path by me was usually severely punished. Not that I believe my behaviour was irresponsibl
e, but I had a stubborn temperament and would often refuse to admit to errors – at times because I didn’t think I was to blame. This infuriated my father who would take me to the woodshed and thump me until his anger or his arm weakened. But I rarely if ever gave in.4
It is a strong image and one that has been used by documentary filmmakers to summarise Ed’s childhood: a looming adult male with a wooden slat in one hand, leading a very small boy out to a woodshed for an apparently sadistic beating. There can be no doubting Ed’s sense of injustice but he was also aware that his father had good qualities. In Two Generations, published in 1984, he qualified the image:
And yet, strangely enough I had a considerable respect for my father. I admired his moral courage – he would battle fiercely against society or the powers-that-be on a matter of principle and he also had the ability to make his children laugh – and there was nothing I enjoyed more in life than laughing.5
In 1991 Ed was still trying to soften the image he had created when he wrote to script writer and film-maker Tom Scott:
… my father was not as big a bastard as you make him appear. Although I argued with him a great deal I had quite an admiration and respect for him too. He was a man of principle with very determined views – and such people are always troublesome to their kids – or so say I …
Can’t we somehow build in my father’s good points – his tremendous work ethic; his courage and refusal to give way to oppression; his constant concern for the underdog; his strong principles which maybe I inherited – although I must have been a sore trial to him at times …