Boys at War: Jane Tolerton AWRF 2013

It’s a terrible thing to talk about what I’m talking about, you know. But I saw it. I was there.

So said one of the 84 veterans of the First World War interviewed for the World War One Oral History Archive, which Jane Tolerton helped to set up in 1987.

In An Awfully Big Adventure Tolerton revisits these recordings and puts the reminiscences into a chronology for the present-day reader.  When the words “we will remember them” were intoned on ANZAC Days after the First World War, it was the fallen rather than the survivors who were being remembered.

The convention was that the New Zealand division was  ‘the silent division’. However, when researching her book on Ettie Rout, Tolerton discovered that those who had returned were willing to talk, but they had to be asked.

Just as well somebody did ask, as the World War One recordings are the most used part of the Oral History Archive. There were 84 interviews over three years and most of the men had never talked about the war.  Tolerton played some of the recordings and the voices came down all the years; vivid, candid and humble (the worst sin was to be a ‘skite’).

For an idea of what those at home were being fed about the war, Tolerton recommends looking at Papers Past. Small wonder civilians asked returned soldiers “did you have a good time?”  and no-one ever said “you must have had a crook time”.

Word of the session: tough.

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“We are in the trenches again …

… this time for a longer term, but it is a very easy life. In my present shelter there is actually a four-poster spring bed, and picture prints of distractingly pretty girls round the walls. What do you think of that, within two hundred yards of the Huns? … Of course we are only in the front line part of the time, but it really is the best place …

Letter to Hazel from Cecil Malthus, 11 June 1916

Timaru-born Cecil Malthus wrote two books about his war-time experiences. Born in 1890, he spent three years in service in the 1st Canterbury Battalion from 1914. The Canterbury College modern languages professor first published ANZAC: A retrospect in 1965. In the foreword of the book he wrote:

I offer nothing but the truth for those who want to know what the war was like for the average man. Readers can believe that whatever I relate of my own experience is very nearly the same as what happened to their own uncle or grandfather.

A collection of Malthus’ letters has been digitised and made available online by Christchurch City Libraries. The letters are penned to his future wife, Hazel Watters. Malthus died on 25 July 1976.

This collection of letters and documents dates from April 1914 to his discharge in April 1917. The collection is not complete, and portions of some letters are missing. The letters follow Malthus’ progress from training in New Zealand to his experiences throughout the war, including time in Egypt preparing for Gallipoli, and his time in France. Malthus was injured in September 1916 and returned to New Zealand in March 1917.

 

Stop Press: two electronic updates for history buffs

We have two new exciting electronic additions just in time for ANZAC Day.

Papers Past allows access to digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals from 1839 to 1945. It now includes the Otago Daily Times digitised from 1901-1920 which means the WWI period is covered online by this  major New Zealand daily paper. A great source of information for researchers of family and social history.

Find My Past AU has created the ‘Findmypast Anzac Memory Bank’ to honour the men and women who represented their country at war. This bank will contain personal accounts, diaries, expert articles, and photographs from ALL wars. The Anzac Memory Bank will commemorate not only the lost lives but also the brave men and women who made it home safely again. The memory bank will launch on the 1st of April and apparently there is already lots of New Zealand content. If you want to you can add to the memory bank by sharing your thoughts, stories and photos with Find My Past.

Christchurch City Libraries subscribes to a range of electronic resources at the Source including many to help in your family history searches. Take some time to have a play… you would be amazed how much there is to learn and see.

 

The other Anzacs – New Zealand e-book month

By the end of The Great War, forty-five Australian and New Zealand nurses had died on overseas service and over two hundred had been decorated. These were women who left for war on an adventure, but were soon confronted with remarkable challenges for which their civilian lives could never have prepared them.

They were there for the horrors of Gallipoli and they were there for the savagery the Western Front. Within twelve hours of the slaughter at Anzac Cove they had over 500 horrifically injured patients to tend on one crammed hospital ship, and scores of deaths on each of the harrowing days that followed. Every night was a nightmare.Their strength and humanity were remarkable.

Using diaries and letters, Peter Rees takes us into the hospital camps, and the wards and the tent surgeries on the edge of some of the most horrific battlefronts of human history. But he also allows the friendships and loves of these courageous and compassionate women to enrich their experiences, and ours. This is a very human story from a different era, when women had not long begun their quest for equality and won the vote. They were on the frontline of social change as well as war, and the hurdles they had to overcome and the price they paid, personally and professionally, make them a unique group in Anzac history.

You can read The other Anzacs  as an e-book from our Overdrive collection.

The other Anzacs is also available as a paper book

 

Toby’s room is Pat Barker at her best

Pat Barker, famous for her World War I Regeneration series has returned to a similar theme with Toby’s room.

Elinor and Toby are brother and sister, they have an incredibly close bond with Elinor being the youngest and Toby the adored older brother. Early on we encounter a ‘situation’ between these two that affects the rest of their lives, and has a lasting impression throughout the book. Adulthood sees Toby starting training as a doctor and Elinor at art school. Neither are unscathed and both become unlikeable – but fascinating – adult characters.

Jumping to the outbreak of World War I, Toby volunteers and becomes a fearless medic leading his men into more and more dangerous situations, seemingly with little regard for his life. Elinor learns that he is missing, presumed dead, and this starts her obsession with finding out what happened. Her friend Kit from art school, who was in Toby’s regiment and has come home suffering dreadful facial scarring, seems knows what happened but refuses to tell Elinor. Why? The famous Queen Mary hospital that treated these returned soldiers for their horrendous facial trauma becomes a macabre backdrop from which the story now unfolds.

What makes this book so compelling are the main flawed characters, the descriptions of hospital and life for the men having returned with scars both physical and mental, and an increasing sense of intrigue and angst around Toby’s probable death. Stories of the First World War are always harrowing and this book is no different. It’s not a light holiday read, but it is enthralling and incredibly well written.

 

I’m a bit in love with Stag and his book

I’ve just been reading (and looking at) a book which I feel like recommending to everyone. It’s the story of a hunting, shooting, fishing Kiwi bloke called Stag which might not sound like it has appeal to many women. But… this book, Stag Spooner; wild man from the bush by Chris Maclean, has everything.

First its a great story – as well as being a hunter, Stag was a talented artist who created what could be New Zealand’s first graphic novel. This is included in the book and will seem immediately familiar to people today. Stag went off to fight in World War II and made a bit of money designing envelopes and Christmas cards for his fellow soldiers to send home to their families. Examples of these also fill the book. Check the family archives – there might be one of these among your grandparent’s World War II memorabilia. Stag’s story also harks back to a time when hunting and fishing opportunities were far richer and many families supplemented their diet and their income by what they could shoot in the hills or catch in rivers and the sea.

Stag was very much an individual as photographs in the book show and also a man for whom his family was very important. The rest of his life story makes compelling reading, as does the story of how this book came to be.

Stag Spooner is also a beautifully produced book.  All the elements – the cover, the layout, the quality of illustrations and paper are just as a good book should be.

 

Hitler’s missing years – new evidence, new insights

Hitler’s early life has long been an inscrutable mystery. Read any book about him and you will discover how little can be pinned down as fact. What does stand out is the paradox that he was clearly an unremarkable drifter who somehow managed to garner significant popular support in the early 1930s and ultimately became Reich Chancellor. All books to date struggle to offer a convincing explanation for this, posing more questions than they answer.

The origin of this problem stems from the highly distorted and selective historical record Hitler left us. His book Mein Kampf is his largely invented heroic account of his experiences as a soldier in the First World War and how that crucible forged his world view and ‘calling’ to lead Germany back to greatness. At this time he was becoming a prominent public figure taking pains to suppress, destroy or distort any evidence or any one threatening to contradict his own version of his life. Historians have had to rely unsatisfactorily on Mein Kampf along with the few surviving crumbs of credible historical evidence.

However not all of the credible evidence has been lost to us. Recently the German historian Thomas Weber got lucky when the Bavarian State archives recovered the dusty, previously lost war diary of the regiment Hitler served in during the First World War. It proved a valuable mine of information which contradicts many of the assertions Hitler made about his war service and the war generally. The diary also provided Weber with leads to other previously unknown sources such as descendants of the men who served with Hitler. His book Hitler’s First War at last opens up a window on Hitler’s early life.

 

Two tales of Afghanistan

Marianne Elliott and Nicky Hager‘s books at first sight appear to be quite different beasts. Investigative journalist and author Hager needs no introduction, he has been illuminating New Zealand’s political, military and intelligence underbelly since 1996. His books are weighty tomes (metaphorically if not literally) replete with formidably detailed research. Zen under fire by Marianne Elliott, former United Nations’ human rights officer and lawyer, uses a more personal tale-telling technique to describe her time in Afghanistan and its impact on her, her nearest and dearest. Surprisingly the books taken together are complementary and sympathetic, providing a picture of Afghanistan, big and small.

Both Hager and Marianne felt compelled to write due to the lack of information on Afghanistan despite New Zealand’s involvement there. Further Marianne wanted to tell the stories of her Afghani colleagues, “to use the location and time in history to inform people”, to give context and reveal the discrepancies between the theory and practice of humans rights in Afghanistan.

For research Marianne relied on the almost verbatim notes she’d kept of interactions with warlords and non-governmental organisations. Her own “tenacious memory” informed the rest. Hager spoke to serving soldiers, senior officers and collected intelligence and military documents in the tens of thousands. The sheer volume of evidence “nearly melted down his brain” and Hager initially struggled to reduce this mountain of paper and find the essence.

Finding the “voice” of their respective books had challenges for them both. Hager didn’t want a critical, nagging voice. He wanted Other people’s wars to be a nation building book explaining who we are as New Zealanders, and to be read by the military, military families and the wider New Zealand public especially the young. Marianne wrote for her friends, women she knows and loves but who sometimes struggled to understand her experiences. She also felt strongly that most New Zealanders wanted to understand Afghanistan and be able to access nuanced information. The personal story was for her the best vehicle

Asked about what the next five years held for Afghanistan neither author was optimistic. Nicky Hager believes the slow collapse of Afghani society is inevitable once the West withdraws. Marianne likewise, despite her reservations about the West’s original involvement in Afghanistan, fears the lack of long-term political commitment will result in hardship for the many people who have experienced improved lives since Western forces entered Afghanistan. The transition needs to be slow and thoughtful and she hold real reprisal concerns for the many Afghani who have worked alongside the West.

This was a carefully structured and sensitive exploration of the writer’s craft rather than a febrile, political polemic. Well attended, the audience provided some thoughtful and topical questions.

 

Like mother, like daughter …

You wouldn’t want to have had a senior moment at this festival event. Two authors, both with names that begin with “M”, both “assimilated Jews”, both write books about the mother-daughter relationship, and photography plays an important part in both their lives. My brain synapses were hiring and firing like nobody’s business and to keep track of it all I devised a complex coding system that made absolutely no sense at all when I finally sat with a cappuccino and my laptop in a nearby cafe.

“Remind me never to blog for a festival” – I can hear you thinking, but you would be Oh So Wrong. I was attracted to this session with Miriam Frank and Mireille Juchau from the get go because I am one of those “piggy in the middle” women, caught between my 100 year old mother and my thirty something daughter and living far, far away from both of them.

Miriam Frank started the session with a reading from her memoir My Innocent Absence – Tales from a Nomadic Life. It was from the prologue to her book in which she sees her mother on her deathbed and thinks: “She looks so empty.” But her mother was dead whereas many people look empty long before their end has come. There is at least that comfort of a life lived to the full.

Miriam had a fraught relationship with her mother, but her death made Miriam feel “cast adrift, seeking my bearings, looking for answers.” She wrote her story as non-fiction because it was enough of a struggle to remember what really happened and she felt suspicious of tampering with the memories.

Mireille Juchau

Mireille Juchau wrote her book Burning In as a novel because “novels give you a chance to invent and exaggerate” and then, of course there is the care that a writer needs to take with regard to the potential betrayal of people because of exposure. Mireille gave a beautiful reading from her book which focused our attention on the many and varied ways in which mothers can really irritate their daughters.

There were lovely personal anecdotes as well. Miriam (who spent part of her youth in Christchurch having come here with her mother from Mexico in the 1940s) tells the story of coming down to breakfast in a red dress and being told by her aunt:

“We don’t wear red in Christchurch”

“What do you wear then?” asked Miriam and the answer came:

“We wear pastels.”

Mireille told a delightful story about a woman who was asked , before stomach surgery if she still wanted her bellybutton or could they just remove it. She replied:

Do not remove my bellybutton. It is my last remaining link to my mother.

Nothing like a good bellybutton story to focus the attention. So much so that at question time I found myself asking (and I know my network team colleagues will find this hard to believe) the only question I have ever asked at a festival:

Do you see yourselves, as mothers, repeating the same patterns with your daughters that your mothers did with you?

Miriam said that all she ever tried to do was the reverse of what her mother had done and that there was probably a whole book in that.

Mireille became very animated when she spoke of the push/pull that she was currently experiencing with her eight year old daughter. Then, she looked straight across at me, at my hopefully not empty face. She hesitated and then said (as if she knew my question came from some deep and sad place):

“You will do your best as a mother and your daughter will be who she is meant to be.”

And that is why I love to attend festivals. You never know what you are going to learn.

 

Lili Kraus – honoured guest of New Zealand

Lili Kraus was possibly the greatest pianist ever to live in this country, and made a big impact on the musical world in New Zealand in the years after World War Two.

She was born in Budapest in 1903 in impoverished circumstances, but her mother was musical and she taught her piano from the age of 6. By the age of 8 she had entered the Royal Academy of Music there “creating a sensation with her audition”. Her tutors included three renowned  musicians – Kodaly, Bartok and Schnabel. She became a teacher at the Vienna Academy by the age of 20 and embarked on a successful playing career.

Unfortunately her luck changed when she decided on a world tour at the beginning of the World War Two,  and was caught by the Japanese invasion of Java. In 1943 she and her husband were arrested and sent to separate prison camps. Lili was sentenced to hard labour and lived in dreadful conditions. Nevertheless according to the LA Times she spent her time in the Japanese camp “studying piano masterpieces in her head, seeking new insights”. A Japanese conductor who had heard her play in Tokyo rescued her and she and her husband were transferred to a privileged camp in 1944, where she presumably received more than the two cups of rice per day that had she subsisted on previously. In 1945 they were freed and travelled to Australia and then New Zealand to recover.

A music teacher who was a student in Nelson at the time tells me that she spent her first six months in New Zealand in Queenstown regaining her strength, then settled in Nelson where a family of emigres from Vienna gave her and her family a home. Her son and daughter were settled into local schools and Lili concentrated on developing her repertoire, giving local and regional concerts. She also became patron of the Nelson School of Music with which she maintained a connection for the next 30 years.  She apparently cut a flamboyant figure and my friend remembers that her favourite music was Schubert and Bartok – the latter a composer she was instrumental in introducing Nelson audiences.

Her concerts here were greatly treasured by the New Zealand musical community. An attendee at a recital in Christchurch told me how wonderful her interpretations of Schubert were – both her strength and charm shining through. He was delighted when a particularly strong finish to an impromptu was criticised by a local music critic, and she was able to point out that she had seen the original manuscript and the way she played it was the way it was written. I have a recording of her playing these impromptus and it is one of my treasured possessions.

Her tremendous strength reasserted itself and she was able to recover enough to begin touring again within a few years, starting with 120 concerts in 18 months! During the course of a successful career, she became known for her interpretations of Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven.

She eventually settled in America, where in the 60s the LA Times reports a critic as saying, the crowds ” applauded like baseball fans who had just shared in winning the first game of the World Series”

Luckily for you I don’t have to lend you my old LP, you can find her recordings on both Naxos Music Online and Music Online.

Further reading:

• Lili Kraus: Hungarian Pianist, Texas Teacher, Personality Extraordinaire  by Steven Henry Roberson
• Response to a Vision: The First Hundred Years of the Nelson School of Music by Shirley Tunnicliff