Zero Hour (10 page)

At the end of their leave, the men returned to France on trains that were quiet and dull compared to those that had taken them away from the front-line. Some overstayed, only going back when their money ran out. A few deserted for months; there were rumours that one soldier had joined the Irish Republican Army and that ‘most of the bus and tram drivers in Ireland were New Zealanders and Australians'.

Although Lieutenant Edgar Worrall didn't fancy spending another winter in France, he returned to be back ‘among the old familiar faces—or what are left of them'. As the war dragged on, the men's units and comrades became their family, and almost their reason to continue fighting. Soldiers returned to look for their mates to bury them, and gave up leave to visit their graves. Their friends died in their arms, and beside them during charges. Soon, they became friends with the next man they shared dugouts with or fought beside, until he too died or went missing. When shells fell heavily, the men talked to each other to ease the strain until the shelling had ended and they could return to sleep.

KILLED IN ACTION
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SERGEANT CECIL BALDWIN
Accountant. 2 March 1917

LIEUTENANT EDGAR WORRALL
Medical student. 4 October 1917

DIED OF WOUNDS
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LANCE CORPORAL ERNEST WILLIAMS
Lawyer. 29 December 1917

CORPORAL JOHN ALLAN
Dairy farmer. 3 October 1918

EXECUTED
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PRIVATE FRANK HUGHES
Labourer. 28 August 1916

PRIVATE JOHN SWEENEY
Labourer. 2 October 1916

PRIVATE JOHN BRAITHWAITE
Journalist. 29 October 1916

PRIVATE JOHN KING
Miner. 19 August 1917

PRIVATE VICTOR SPENCER
Engineer. 24 February 1918

CHAPTER SIX
VOTE NO, MUM

GLASSINGTON—Died of wounds in France, April 6, 1918, in his 24th year, Private J. P. Glassington, dear loved husband of Myra, and father of little Jack and Millie.

Our home is always lonely,
Our hearts are always sad;
I miss my loving husband,
The children miss their dad.

NEWSPAPER ‘IN MEMORIAM ' NOTICE

BACK IN AUSTRALIA and New Zealand, friends and colleagues read the long casualty lists printed in newspapers or posted outside town halls, while families waited for the dreaded telegram that would inform them their loved ones were missing, wounded or dead. Later, a letter from a friend or officer would arrive from the front, explaining, where possible, how they had died or where they had last been seen. Often the families were told, the death had been heroic and quick.

From the beginning, those unable to fight had set up committees to collect bedding, clothing and money for the Belgian people and for the Red Cross. They contributed packages of cocoa, condensed milk and tobacco, home-baked cakes and hand-knitted socks, underwear and balaclavas to be sent to the troops. After finding out that a pair of socks lasted a soldier only two weeks, New Zealanders held a ‘sock day'. To provide the fighting troops with basic comforts, which the army considered luxuries, committees organised shows and galas, workers donated a percentage of their wages, and school children raised funds by selling rabbit skins, leeches, frogs and firewood. Some of this money was used to set up hot cocoa and soup stalls for the soldiers. One group, the Otago Patriotic League, used its funds to have meat pies made and distributed close to the front-line.

Some women wanted a more direct active role. Although the Australian and New Zealand governments prevented women from being stretcher-bearers or ambulance drivers, female nurses served in hospitals and casualty clearing stations close to the front-line. Ten New Zealand nurses drowned in 1915 when their ship was torpedoed en route to Europe. At the front, they faced the same perils and conditions as the soldiers, and their stations were often shelled. During major advances they were overwhelmed with casualties. ‘The Last Post is being played nearly all day at the cemetery next door to the hospital. So many deaths…' Australian nurse Sister Alice Ross-King wrote in her diary. Once, when her station was bombed:

The noise was so terrific, and the concussion so great that I was thrown to the ground and had no idea where the damage was. I flew through the chest and abdo [abdomen] wards and called out: ‘are you alright boys?' ‘Don't bother about us,' was the general cry.

With the hospital lights out, and under a night sky full of searchlights and the roar of artillery, Ross-King found one of the tents collapsed. When she eventually found a way in, she tried to lift a delirious patient:

I had my right arm under a leg which I thought was his but when I lifted I found to my horror that it was a loose leg with a boot and a puttee on it.

She was later awarded a Military Medal for her ‘great coolness and devotion to duty'.

HOME WAR

As well as bringing together people back home, the war also created divisions. People with German heritage living in New Zealand and Australia were abused and harassed. Some of them changed their surnames, while others had to quit their jobs. Anyone who had been born in Germany had to report to local police stations, and if they were considered a risk they were locked up in internment camps. The Australian government even changed town names—Germantown in New South Wales became Holbrook, named after a British Victoria Cross recipient.

As the war progressed, tensions grew. In January 1915, two Turkish sympathisers killed four and wounded seven people on a picnic train in Broken Hill, before being shot themselves in a 90-minute gun-battle with police and vigilantes. A mob, believing local Germans had agitated the two gunners, burned the local German club to the ground. In May 1915, a 5000-strong New Zealand crowd looted German-owned shops in Wanganui. In South Australia, Lutheran schools were shut down, and in New Zealand, Lutheran church bells were smashed and a church burned.

Eventually, the divisions broadened and new fractures arose; people even began to turn on those they believed weren't doing enough to support the war.

THE WHITE FEATHER

The heavy Somme casualties of 1916 cast a dark shadow over homes and communities in Australia and New Zealand. The enthusiasm at the outbreak of the war was evaporating, and, with fewer men now volunteering to replace the fallen, both governments raised the question of conscription, through which it would be compulsory for selected men to go to war.

At home, the sight of seemingly ‘eligible men' who hadn't volunteered as soldiers angered many people, particularly those who had family at the front. Despite the initial rush to volunteer in 1914, most eligible men in New Zealand and Australia hadn't enlisted. There were many reasons for this: some believed it was unacceptable to kill; others felt the war was about profit and trade, not justice; some of Irish descent objected to fighting for England while it still controlled Ireland; and increasingly there were men who feared being killed or badly maimed.

After the heavy losses of Gallipoli, these men were called ‘shirkers' or ‘cowards'. Some were handed white feathers— symbols of cowardice—by women. The New Zealand Rugby Union banned anyone over 20 years of age from playing. A Bay of Plenty newspaper article suggested shirkers should be given the death penalty. People refused to work with eligible men, and some employers either sacked or refused to employ them.

After Britain introduced conscription in January 1916, many within New Zealand and Australia called for the same system, arguing that all able men had a responsibility to fight. Why should the shirker stay at home, they asked, while others died fighting for his freedom? Although both Australia and New Zealand had compulsory military training, it was for home defence only. Conscripting men to fight overseas was another matter.

THE BALLOT

In New Zealand the unions and the newly founded Labour Party opposed conscription, believing that more men would volunteer if soldiers' pay was raised to the minimum wage. ‘War profiteering' by businesses had also increased; since 1914 food prices had risen by 16 per cent, but wages hadn't gone up. The Labour Party argued that if there was to be conscription of manpower, then the government should also conscript wealth, take over major industries, raise taxes to pay for an increase in soldiers' wages, and put an end to war profiteering.

Despite this opposition, the New Zealand government cautiously introduced conscription, telling the soldiers at the front and the British government that the New Zealand Division would be kept full ‘as long as men are available'. The first ballot was held in November 1916. Using numbered balls dispensed by a machine, female clerical workers selected cards with the names of unmarried New Zealand men aged from 20 to 46. Unless two or more members of that family had already been killed in the war, balloted men were automatically conscripted into the army.

Afterwards, the rate of volunteering quickly fell; men waited instead to be conscripted. By 1918 almost all reinforcements were conscripts, and by the end of the war over 30,000 soldiers had been conscripted: one-quarter of the troops sent by New Zealand.

NO BLOOD TO FLOW

Although Maori men were not included in the conscription ballot, their enlistment numbers had also dropped after Gallipoli. At the outbreak of war, several prominent Maori leaders, including the politician Sir Apirana Ngata, had encouraged Maori to volunteer to prove their equality with the Pakeha—Europeans. At first, with recruitment numbers high, Maori volunteers were rejected—Britain didn't want ‘natives' fighting Europeans—but as the war dragged on, this attitude changed. A Maori Native Contingent fought at Gallipoli, but on the Western Front, as the Pioneer Battalion, the Maori built roads and communication trenches. They wanted a combat role, not to be labourers, and this led to a fall in recruitment numbers. In February 1916, of the 314 ‘Maori' recruits, 203 were from the Pacific Islands.

The lack of Maori volunteers was also an after-effect of the 1860 Land Wars between Pakeha military forces and some Maori. These long-running battles over land ownership had effectively ended in defeat for the Maori, and the resulting bitterness and division were long-lasting. Those iwi (tribes) that had had vast tracts of their land confiscated by the government as punishment for ‘rebelling', had decided not to fight for the British King. Now Iwi leaders who had supported the government during the Land Wars and had initially sent volunteers to the Great War argued that it shouldn't be only their men getting killed.

In June 1917, just as the first New Zealand Pakeha conscripts were arriving in England, the government extended conscription to the Maori, but only for its most vocal opponents—the Waikato Maori. Waikato leader Princess Te Puea Herangi immediately offered her pa as a safe place for those who'd been balloted but did not want to fight. The newspapers labelled them ‘traitors'. When police entered the pa to arrest those who'd been conscripted, no one stood up when their names were called. The police arrested seven random men—one was 16 years old, another 60—and sent them to a military training camp. Of 552 Maori balloted, only 74 made it to the camp, and none went overseas. Those who continually refused to follow orders were sentenced to hard labour or put on bread and water diets.

RESISTING CONSCRIPTION

Belonging to one of three minor religious groups that opposed war before the outbreak of the Great War was the only way healthy conscripted men could avoid combat; even so, they were still expected to serve in non-combat roles. Men, Maori and Pakeha alike, who didn't want to serve, fled. Some went bush for the rest of the war; one man lived rough around One Tree Hill until he grew too weak to continue and gave himself up. On the West Coast, deserters lived in the hills above the mines. The miners left them food and warned them when the police were searching for them. One man joined the circus; many others stowed away on ships bound for the United States or Australia. One of those men, Robert Heffron, went on to become premier of New South Wales.

Despite laws making it illegal to speak out against conscription, opposition Labour members and other critics of the government still did. Paddy Webb, a Labour member of parliament for the West Coast, was sentenced to three months in jail for praising workers who went on strike because they opposed conscription. Then, in 1917, he was balloted to serve at the Western Front. Once balloted, men had a choice of serving or being imprisoned. When Webb refused to fight, he was court-martialled and given two years' hard labour planting trees.

Paddy Webb wasn't the first or last New Zealander to refuse to fight; 273 men were imprisoned by the war's end. They were given hard labour, forbidden to talk and then, when they had served their sentences, shipped to the Western Front to make it clear to others that prison wasn't a safer option than fighting. The government wanted equality of sacrifice; anyone who was fit and single was to fight.

‘IT'S YOUR SUBMISSION WE WANT'

Archibald Baxter, a farmer from Otago, was one of those sent overseas after refusing both combat and non-combat roles. He was a pacifist who believed that if enough people refused to fight, governments would be forced to resolve conflicts peacefully. Like others, he claimed it was against his conscience to fight. After being balloted under the Family Shirkers Clause, which conscripted men from families in which no one had volunteered, Baxter was arrested and later put on a ship to England with other conscientious objectors.

Over the next six months, the army set out to break their beliefs. After being threatened with execution and given hard labour in the gruelling Dunkirk Prison, most agreed to non-combat roles. One soldier, Private William Little, agreed to be a stretcher-bearer, and later died from wounds.

Baxter was sent to France, close to the front-line, and was subjected to Field Punishment No. 1. The officer in charge tied the ropes so tightly that Baxter's circulation was cut off and his hands turned black. Frustrated by his continued resolve, an officer told Baxter that violence would be used until he was broken.