During the last year of his life, August 1914 to August 1915, William George Malone wrote a substantial quantity of official, demi-official and private correspondence, kept a detailed diary and took many photographs. Like other soldiers in the Great War, Malone wanted to document his military service both to aid his own memory and to inform his family. The letters he wrote and received were highly important to him as the key way in which he could maintain contact with his family, friends and former life.1 He went to some trouble to ensure that this material was preserved, periodically sending copies of his diary and letters to his wife Ida.2 Malone’s diaries and letters do not simply set out the work of a capable, hard-working officer. They tell us a great deal about his character, his relationship with his wife and children, his values, view of the world and his place in it. He regarded his service at Gallipoli as the high point of his life. On 27 May 1915, for example, he wrote that he was ‘Living as I never lived before’. His wartime experiences led him to reassess his life and made him determined to be a better husband and father in the future.3
The diaries and letters reproduced in this edition are drawn from the W.G. Malone collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. This collection consists, with a few exceptions, of Malone’s demi-official and private writings. The papers amount to more than 135,000 words, and in this edition it has been necessary to delete some diary entries and letters and sections of others that are repetitious or contain material of limited interest. The great bulk of the deleted material relates to the period before the start of the Gallipoli campaign. The letter books contain copies of correspondence with a large number of people. The correspondence ranges from highly personal letters to his wife to fairly routine correspondence about business or military matters. The books also include copies of a few pieces of official correspondence, but mainly contain material of a personal or demi-official nature. Malone usually wrote up his diary daily, except when he was particularly busy. In general he wrote substantial entries for the great majority of days.4 He illustrated his diaries and letters with many small drawings and sketch maps, some of which are reproduced in this edition.
Malone’s diaries and letters were deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1988 by a grandson, Edmond Penn (Ted) Malone. He had earlier received them from his uncle, Denis Malone, who had in turn received them from his mother, William Malone’s widow, Ida. Earlier, in 1980, the New Zealand High Commission in London had given the library a copy of a typescript copy of the diary held by Mrs Massey-Stewart, the widow of Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Stewart. She had no idea how her late husband, who was the author of the official history of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force [NZEF] on the Western Front, had come to have the document in his possession. This typescript is most probably a corrected version of a typescript prepared in the 1920s by Ida Malone with the assistance of Denis Malone. A copy of this earlier typescript was given, it appears, to Brian Malone, a son of William Malone, most probably during the 1920s.5 As part of this project, a new complete transcript of the diaries and letters has been prepared and deposited at the Alexander Turnbull Library.
The diary and letters were written, in pencil, under often difficult circumstances on whatever paper Malone had available. The first group of diaries and letter books [Alexander Turnbull library references, MSX 2541, 42, 43, 48 and 49] are manifold books that Malone had purchased in New Zealand. These books were specially designed so that carbon copies of whatever was written in them could be easily produced. Malone purchased several similar books in Cairo that he used during his stay in Egypt and during the early part of his service at Gallipoli [MSX 2544, 45, 46 and 47]. He then resorted to using official NZEF field service correspondence books (Army Book 152), [MSX 2550, 51, 52 and 53]. When he first landed at Gallipoli[25 April to 14 May 1915] and towards the end of his life, Malone was obliged to use NZEF message and signal form pads (Army Form C2121) for his diaries [MS papers 4130]. These form books were not specifically designed for making copies of material written in them, so if Malone continued to make copies he must have used loose writing and carbon paper. The last few entries in Malone’s diary[2 to 5 Aug 1915] are written in the correspondence book of Lieutenant Douglas Bryan who had earlier been wounded and evacuated from Gallipoli [MSX 2547]. This book and MSX 2546 [diary 10 Apr 1915–25 Apr 1915 and 29 May–1 Aug 1915] contain both the original and carbon copies of the diary, probably because Malone was killed before he had sent these parts of his diary to his wife. The collection at the Alexander Turnbull Library, therefore, consists of a mixture of original diaries and carbon copies.
On at least one occasion during the Gallipoli campaign Malone made use of paper from the haversack of a dead Turkish soldier that he had found while searching for material with intelligence value. We only know of the existence of this letter because it was published in New Zealand newspapers. It is quite possible that he did not make copies of all his letters or that the copies of some letters have been lost.6 In particular, Malone seems to have written more condolence letters to the next of kin of men from his battalion than are included in the collection.7
After William Malone was killed, his effects were sent to his widow. It follows, therefore, that Ida Malone should have had both the original and carbon copies of the diaries, the letter books and at least some of the letters Malone received while on active service. The Malone family in London hold a few of the letters received by Malone between August 1914 and August 1915, but none of those sent by Ida. They do not hold the original diaries missing from the Alexander Turnbull’s collection. The missing letters were destroyed by Denis Malone. On her deathbed Ida Malone instructed Denis, who was particularly close to his mother, to destroy her often intimate letters to William Malone and his letters to her. Denis did as his mother asked, but overlooked the carbon copies that William Malone had kept of his letters to Ida.8 The fate of the missing original diaries is unknown.
The circumstances under which he wrote, Malone’s handwriting, his extensive use of abbreviations and a number of idiosyncratic conventions, combine to make much of the manuscript material reproduced in this volume very difficult to read. Malone, for instance, attached the ampersand [&] he almost always used in place of ‘and’, to the word that followed it. He also often placed question marks in front of the word being referred to. Although considerable effort has gone into deciphering the original letters and diaries, some words are illegible and are marked as such. In cases where there is doubt about what Malone has written, this is indicated by: [?]. In order to make the text more readily understandable, it has been necessary to make a number of editorial decisions. The guiding principle in the editorial process has been to keep the published text as close as possible to what Malone actually wrote in his diaries and letters.
All material that appears in square brackets is editorial insertion. The most important editorial conventions concern the use of abbreviations, punctuation and spelling. The number of abbreviations used in the material, especially in the diaries, has been reduced. For instance, when Malone uses ‘Sfd’ to refer to the town of Stratford, this edition gives the town’s name in full. Similarly ‘about’ and ‘enough’ are rendered in full, rather than as ‘abt’ and ‘eno’. Malone was not consistent in his use of abbreviations, sometimes giving a word in full and on other occasions using two or three different abbreviations. In such cases, when a word appears in full it has been left in this form and when it has been abbreviated, the abbreviation most commonly used by Malone is generally used. For instance, the abbreviation Bn for Battalion is used throughout the published text. The list of abbreviations used in the book includes words that are generally abbreviated by Malone, but that appear in full in the published text.
In his diaries and letters, Malone rarely used apostrophes and where necessary these have been inserted into the text in the interests of clarity. Where Malone repeatedly mis-spelt a word, such as a person’s surname, the mis-spelling is corrected in the first instance and the correct spelling used from then on. The names of ships are referred to in various ways in the letters and diaries, and in the interests of clarity and consistency they have all been rendered in italics in the published text. Italics are also used for non-English words and phrases and the titles of books and other publications. Malone made use of some obscure colloquial expressions, especially in his diaries, and whenever possible the most likely meaning has been noted. The diaries and letters include many short, unnecessary paragraphs and in some cases these have been combined in order to save space. Malone’s idiosyncratic use of commas and capitalisation has not been corrected unless it makes the meaning unclear. The book includes endnotes that identify and give information about people mentioned by Malone and additional material relevant to the text. The biographical notes are set out in the following way: Rank at time of Malone’s mention (highest rank achieved)–Christian name–other initials–surname, regiment or corps (if significant); awards (listed in order of precedence); date of birth–place of birth–date of death; marital status–occupation–place of enlistment; regimental number–subunit–unit; fate; service in South African War (if relevant); later significant details, including service in World War II. The biographical notes and many of the other endnotes were prepared by Peter Cooke, who also did a great deal of work on the transcription of the diaries and letters. In addition, Peter carried out the photographic research for the book and assisted with research on other matters.