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Writing Wellington: Twenty Years of Victoria University Writing Fellows

1994 Christopher Pugsley

page 74

1994 Christopher Pugsley

Wellington City, a Career Choice

Living in Wellington was a career choice. It was 1987. I was in Singapore and decided against some family opposition to become a freelance historian. I enjoyed my twenty-two years in the New Zealand Army, and was content enough, but had the itch to write. That came from writing Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story, published in 1984, and working on the television documentary of the same name. If I left writing until I retired I believed I would always be an amateur so I left the world of an Infantry Officer and took the plunge. Wellington had to be our base. From Waiouru and then Auckland I had found the difficulty of mounting smash and grab raids to National Archives and the Alexander Turnbull Library, bunking over in Mike Wickstead's flat in Hobson Court. So Wellington had to be home.

The family home in Sefton Street is a typical Wadestown house looking to the western hills bathed in afternoon sunlight, the downside being the northerly winds. In my first years I wrote there each morning. Walking David to school with Blue the dog, then writing from nine till one. The Maurice Shadbolt routine, 1000 words then stop even if I had more to say. Just let it come, good days, bad days, the next time through it would get better. My draft was my file, layering in the research as I went, writing early, writing often, just like tennis, practising my craft every day.

The Army gave me three months resettlement leave on full pay and I offered my services to the National Archives checking and listing the First World War holdings. It was letting loose a child in a lolly shop. Sheer marvellous indulgence, being allowed to look into every War Archives box in the bowels of the Air New Zealand building in Vivian Street. After the three months finished I kept on with it. No money coming in, living on what we had put aside to get me started. Dee at university, the kids at school, enjoying every day. I got involved in the War Art collection. Tony Murray-Oliver had done wonders in gathering the Second World War collection from RSAs various. But on his death, little had been done with the First World War collection. Sorting them out was difficult, the records messy, and identification uncertain. That's where I came in. I could not tell how it was painted, but I could identify scenes and individuals. One thing led to another. The 1990 sesqui-centennial exhibitions: The Honorary Rank of Captain, A Loss of Innocence, and Crete: A Tribute from New Zealand and I was now earning money. Archives were also good company, Ray Grover and his team endured my singing. Georgina Christensen administering each exhibition with me as curator. Walking daily from Wadestown to Vivian Street. Lunchtimes in the Cuba Street galleries and second-hand bookshops. Jazz 78s in Slow Boat Records, sheer delight. Archives led me to the New Zealand Film Archive identifying and cataloguing official New Zealand First World War documentaries and newsreels, equally good company and equally enjoyable.

I was also writing a history of the New Zealand Division on the Western page 76 Front which ten years on is still in draft. One chapter on discipline was giving me trouble. Wherever I put it in the draft, it did not fit and seemed better as a stand-alone project. In Archives I came across the court-martial register of the New Zealand Division. Defence Headquarters Legal Branch and Base Records threw up the records of those New Zealanders sentenced to death, but not executed in the First World War, and the Judge Advocate General Sir John White gave me access to the records of the five New Zealanders executed. What started out being a 'quickie' took two years. It became my D Phil thesis. Laurie Barber at Waikato encouraged me to apply to complete a doctorate, despite no formal academic qualifications, on the strength of my writing and publications. On the Fringe of Hell: New Zealanders and Military Discipline in the First World War was the result.

I also got a contract to write the official history of New Zealanders in South East Asia working to both Historical Branch and Headquarters New Zealand Defence Force. It gave me an office in Defence House, access to files, research trips overseas, and a project that I have only just finished many years on. Writing a contract history has been a salutary experience. You have to anticipate where you are going and stick to it. That was the difficult part. At times, in despair, I sought and enjoyed distraction. Books, two during my time as Writer in Residence at Victoria, feature articles for Kate Coughlan at the Evening Post, being one of the team that started the New Zealand Defence Quarterly magazine, now five years old and going strong. Curator and then Creative Director of Scars on the Heart at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, commuting to Auckland every second week for two years. It is only in the last two years that I fell in love with Fighting a Jungle War, as I have with all my other books. Looking forward to 5.30 or 6.00 am starts, writing the daily quota, finally doing it justice.

Wellington is an inextricable part of all this. Meeting everybody on Lambton Quay. Long café discussions with Ray Grover and Oliver Riddell. DQM breakfasts and lunches with Jim Rolfe and Lindsay Missen. Art gallery afternoons and coffee with Christopher Moore when punch-drunk from writing.

I am typing this in Armidale in northern New South Wales. Our delight during the two years here have been the weeks we have stolen in Balmain. Last week I rang my wife, back visiting family, and asked Dee how Wellington struck her after Australia. Her reply: 'A windy Balmain.' But really, it's the other way round. Balmain reminds me of Wellington and it's time to go home.

Night Attack (from Anzac: The New Zealanders at Gallipoli, 1998)

The assault began at 9.30 pm, 6 August 1915. The Auckland Mounteds seized Old No 3 Outpost, the Otago Mounteds and the Canterbury Mounteds took Bauchop Hill, and the Wellington Mounteds stormed Table Top. Reinforced by the Maori Contingent, they attacked with rifle and bayonet. The flash of rifles and the Maori war cry indicated progress. At 11 am on page 77 7 August, the Auckland Infantry Battalion attacked and lost 300 men in twenty minutes for a gain of 100 metres. The Wellington Infantry Battalion were ordered to continue the attack but Malone refused to send his men 'to commit suicide'. In the early morning of 8 August, Malone's battalion occupied the Turkish trench on the crest of Chunuk Bair, and dug a supporting trench behind it. The Turks' dawn counter-attack saw the British battalions, with the Wellingtons, break and run. The trench on the crest was lost and the fight continued on the seaward slopes. Men dug trenches behind the original support line as it filled with dead and wounded. Turkish grenades were hurled back, and even stones were thrown. All day the Wellingtons, reinforced by the Auckland Mounted Rifles, fought off Turkish attacks that were announced with a shower of grenades.

By nightfall Malone was dead, killed by New Zealand artillery fire. The Otago Infantry Battalion and the Wellington Mounted Rifles, led by Lieutenant Colonel Meldrum, replaced the Wellingtons. Throughout

9 August, the Wellington Mounted Rifles desperately held on to a line just below the crest of Chunuk Bair. But by evening they had no more to give. Out of 3000 men, the New Zealand Infantry Brigade had 1700 casualties; both New Zealand brigades were exhausted. The position on Chunuk Bair was taken over by two British battalions, with Meldrum leaving the best of his scouts. On the morning of 10 August, a Turkish counter-attack panicked the raw British infantry, and the New Zealanders were recalled. But the effort required was too much for exhausted men and the Turks regained the slopes, so determining the fate of the Gallipoli Campaign.

If New Zealanders have a day that is uniquely ours, it is 8 August 1915. For thirty-six hours, the New Zealanders at Chunuk Bair on the Gallipoli Peninsula held an opportunity to directly influence the course of world events. Had they held on to the crest of Chunuk Bair, the First World War may have ended some two years before it finally did. But the heights seized by the New Zealand battalions were surrendered by those who relieved them, and a priceless opportunity lost. No country went so far to fight in this campaign, nor suffered as much, for the size of its force. But the real casualties were those who lived. Racked with guilt at having survived when their mates had died, they returned to an uncomprehending New Zealand and had to fit back in as if they had never been away.

Christopher Pugsley was a career army officer before becoming a full-time military historian. His books include On the Fringe of Hell: New Zealanders and Military Discipline (1991), Te Hokowhitu a Tu: the Maori Battalion in the First World War (1995) and Gallipoli: the New Zealand Story (1984, 1990, 1998). From 1996 to 1999 he was at the University of New England, Armidale.