THE DEVIL'S OWN WAR The Diary of Herbert Hart
Ed. John Crawford
Exisle, $39.99, pbk
This book is a notable addition to New Zealand's library on World War 1.
It contains the edited diaries of Brigadier (later Sir) Herbert Hart, one of the young, capable, professional, reliable officers thrown up by the Boer War who then rose through the Territorials and went on to Gallipoli, Flanders and France.
Unlike so many soldier's diaries, Hart did not use his to blow off steam and bag his superiors, colleagues and inferiors.
The entries read very well and are edited by John Crawford, the New Zealand Defence Force historian.
Hart was lucky, of course. Anyone who survived was lucky.
He provides a grand retrospective of what it was like to be there.
He had a dark sense of humour and enjoyed the irony of his first day back at work in his provincial (Carterton) solicitor's office after all he had endured.
The maps often seem unrelated to the narrative they accompany, and there is no map at all for Gallipoli - a sad lapse.
Also, the title seems more suited to a war comic and is not a good snapshot of Hart's war or of the diaries.
The phrase does appear in the text, but refers to the cold at Passchendaele rather than the war itself: 4-7 February 1917.
"Cold, cold, cold. I have never known the like. This is the devil's own war. The snow has been on the ground for a month continuously."
Hart ultimately became New Zealand administrator in Samoa during the 1930s and was curator of Middle East war graves during World War 2.
It was a useful life and he deserves to be remembered.
But this is also a grand read in its own right.
- Oliver Riddell is a Wellington writer.
