DEATH AMONG GOOD MEN
Nathalie Philippe
Bateman Books
Euripides wrote: "When good men die their goodness does not perish/But lives though they are gone." Such men people this book. After something of a barrage of memoirs and letters from the trenches come reflections from a little behind the lines as historian and lecturer in French Nathalie Philippe has skilfully woven the letters and later memoirs of Lindsay Inglis into an officer’s wide-ranging appreciation of tactics, man-management and new weaponry.
Letters to his wife May provide moving commentary on marriage from afar. "I want to get back to you, darling. I hate the war, but I can’t leave it until I’m forced to."
As a brigadier in World War2, Inglis provided controversy over his leadership in Crete and in North Africa but these writings from the earlier conflict are from a young man with a keen appreciation of men and battles and whose performance, while marked by courage and skill, was less likely to be debated at the highest levels if things went awry.
During World War1 he became the acknowledged New Zealand expert on the use of the machine gun, the weapon which dominated many trench battles, and for the latter part of the conflict commanded a machine gun company.
His finely crafted letters give much colourful detail about army life and foreshadow the narrative skills demonstrated in his later memoirs which form a major part of Death Among Good Men.
We read of some of the battles which provided dark days in New Zealand military history, learning from Inglis of the mistakes made by the generals and sharing sometimes gruesome descriptions from the front line.
He tells of his sergeant arriving at headquarters to report. "He had one eye blown out and he had seven or eight other wounds, including three in the abdomen, any one of which would have put an average man out for the count." Sgt Collins insisted on giving a full report before Inglis could dress his wounds. Inglis visited the man in hospital but Collins died there "game to the last".
Inglis’ day-by-day account of warfare, strong on both strategic and housekeeping elements, is one of the best memoirs of the war and it is a wonder the material has not been published long before this.
But the wait is worthwhile as Philippe has brought to her raw material a marriage of diaries, letters and reminiscences, spiced with her own specialised family knowledge of the areas of France in which Inglis was fighting, which makes Death Among Good Men one of the best of the wartime histories.
That Inglis was born in Mosgiel, educated at Waitaki Boy’s High School, studied law at the University of Otago and later practised in Timaru gives southern readers a special link with his story. The book includes something of his civilian life in later years, serving as a magistrate in Hamilton with mediocre success according to some lawyers who appeared in his court, and his liking for a drink leading to his universal nickname "Whisky Bill".
The chronicle of his later years, prefixed by his supposed blunders in WW2 have given an unhappy slant to his memory, but Death Among Good Men shows him at his best, both as a soldier and a man, and should be read by anyone seeking to know the full story of a remarkable life and wanting an appreciation of the front-line horrors of those New Zealanders who suffered them.
Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer
