Website of the YearJust 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 I 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 August 5, 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 many battles. But under his stern fa?ade, Malone was a loving husband and father.
Ida, the woman he poured his heart out to in that notorious war zone, was Malone's second wife. His first Elinor Lucy (nee Penn) produced a daughter, Nora, 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.
In January 1880, a 21-year-old Malone travelled by ship from London to New Zealand. He arrived at Wellington and took a boat to Taranaki.
In November the following year, Malone took part in the siege on Te Whiti and his community at Parihaka, famous for its belief in non-violence.
His grandson Edward, an historian and reporter for the Taranaki Herald in Stratford after World War II, tells of grandfather:
"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"
"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 despise him. On the other hand, his commitment to the troops turned him into a hero in the eyes of his men
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 August 8. 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 Chanuk Bair, only 76 were not killed or wounded on that day
Malone, aged 56, was one of the fallen. He is buried at an unknown grave
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.
Stratford Press
