The story - or many stories, in fact - of the Otago Mounted Rifles is finally being told in full, writes Shane Gilchrist.
Pride and relief. Historian and author Don Mackay admits to feeling a bit of both, having just completed The Troopers' Tale: The History of The Otago Mounted Rifles.
Dr Mackay is speaking by telephone from his farm in Riversdale, Southland. This is worth mentioning largely because of the strong family connection that binds him both to the land and to his subject: his paternal grandfather, Hugh Mackay, left from the very same farm for war in 1914.
Trooper Mackay signed up at the outbreak of World War 1 and fought with the Otago Mounted Rifles (OMR) at Gallipoli.
In Egypt in early April 1915, he was one of 50 men selected from the regiment for duty as the bodyguard for Gallipoli expedition leader General Sir Ian Hamilton. The OMR bodyguard accompanied the English general aboard the new battleship Queen Elizabeth and witnessed the landings at Anzac, then the horrific slaughter during the British landings further south at the toe of the peninsula at Cape Helles.
The OMR's active history spanned 1864 to 1956, yet its legacy continues to the present day. The Otago Mounted Rifles Regimental Association, first formed in 1946, is still active, and by coincidence, its president is Dr Mackay's cousin, Ken Mowat, of Mosgiel.
However, the story of the Otago Mounted Rifles has been until now a scattered affair.
In 2005, Lieutenant-colonel Terry Kinloch released Echoes of Gallipoli: In the words of New Zealand's Mounted Riflemen, which included part of the OMR experience at Anzac, but detailed accounts of the OMR's service both before and beyond the Dardanelles expedition were still to be fully assessed.
Dr Mackay, who wrote six of the book's 12 chapters, as well as having overall editorial control of the project, believes he and his fellow writers, researchers and historians have finally settled that score.
"The book ended up being a three-headed creature: a narrative; a selection of histories on people and their lives that went beyond what they did on the battlefield; and all placed alongside the history of Otago and Southland.
Essentially, what was meant to be an 18-month project became a four-year marathon." The book's original working title, Faithful, Swift and Bold (taken from the Latin mottos Es Fidelis and Celer et Audax, which appear on badges from the 5th Otago Hussars and 7th Southland Regiments) was changed to The Troopers' Tale to reflect the many personal histories that bring life to its pages.
"The title was changed because an ordinary narrative of the `doings' of the regiment was not going to cut it after all this time," Dr Mackay explains.
"As the project progressed, I realised this topic now needed to get the 'big treatment', in part because of all the fabulous stories unearthed, but also because there had already been a substantial financial investment - mine, to be exact.
"When we started fielding information from the hundreds of replies from a public appeal campaign, the overwhelming type of information received was the stories handed down by the soldiers themselves, which were corroborated by further research before including them in the book. I felt it was important to bring these troopers' stories out from the anonymity of their initials.
Hopefully, we've done that," Dr Mackay says.
"Some of these personal histories were great yarns - spectacular even - but would really clunk if included directly into the narrative, so I decided to interlace these within the text in what I termed 'inserts'. There are just on 100 of these stories, of which I ended up penning 75.
But, I also wrote another 20-30 of these which I didn't include, as it was becoming a 'more is less thing' and would have overwhelmed the reader." "For every man we featured, there were at least another two soldiers who I or my fellow experts had researched - and there is also a few prominent southern women included, especially war nurses."
The OMR saw plenty of action, from the South African (Boer) War to Egypt, Gallipoli, France and Belgium during World War 1, and while fighting in other units of 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the next war. In addition, thousands of southern men and horses have served with various units of the regiment in peacetime, from the volunteer to the Territorial forces.
In January 1942, the regiment was converted to a light-armoured fighting vehicle force, then a fully armoured regiment the following year.
Post war demobilisation of New Zealand's armoured units saw the regiment reconstituted in 1950 as "C" Squadron (OMR) of the 3rd Armoured Regiment, and based in Invercargill with Valentine tanks.
"A conscious effort was made to keep this a parochial southern history book, despite going outside the region to use experts Christopher Pugsley, Terry Kinloch and Jeff Plowman for four of the chapters," Dr Mackay says.
He also had enormous help from a large team of historians and experts whom he "used to bug every day by email to get information from them on obscure troopers that they knew well".
Integral to this personal dimension of the OMR history were Phil Beattie, Bruce Cavanagh, Brian Connor, Dr George Davis, Dr Aaron Fox, Bryce Horrell, Matt Pomeroy and Graham Scott.
"In the main, most are southern historians. Dr Paul Sorrell did an excellent job as copy editor-cum-adviser and I used local designer Ralph Lawrence to squeeze the massive amount of information and illustrations into 380 pages.
"And, as the 4th Otago Southland Battalion's traditions are an amalgam of all the old military units in the South, including the OMR, it was great to obtain the patronage of its then honorary colonel, Julian Smith (OBE). His company, Allied Press Ltd, swung into action and provided free access to the Otago Witness pictorial sections, which were invaluable for a people-orientated book like this."
The project was inspired by a visit to a Gallipoli cemetery in 2007. Enjoying the privilege of being a guest of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Dr Mackay visited the cemetery at Hill 60 to the north of Anzac Cove, where Canterbury and Otago troops fought the Turks to a bloody standstill in late August 1915.
While sitting beside the memorial pylon, he received a metaphorical "jog in the ribs" to record the OMR history after viewing the troopers' names on the Memorial to the Missing there.
A week later, when visiting the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, he discussed the project with prominent New Zealand military historian Dr Christopher Pugsley, who told Dr Mackay he "was mad" but almost straight away agreed to contribute to the book. Once Pugsley and Terry Kinloch were involved, the OMR project was under way.
Technically, the mounted rifleman was a different creature from either the cavalryman or the more stolid mounted infantryman. He was, in effect, a hybrid between the two extremes. The mounted rifleman was expected to do everything the cavalryman could do except galloping full-blown charges towards the enemy, and this gradual philosophy change was a timely recognition that advances in defence technology by the end of the 19th century - namely the machine gun and barbed wire - rendered such charges suicidal.
The mounted riflemen nonetheless retained all their "cavalry detached duties", including scouting, escorts and rapid flanking movements.
From 1885, closer settlement and more hedges and fences rendered rollicking cavalry charges with swords almost useless, given a foreign invader would more than likely attack urban areas with a port.
Dr Mackay cites Dunedin as an example, saying the area would not have offered a suitable field to conduct the type of ludicrous full-throated charge of the type featured recently in Stephen Spielberg's War Horse.
Among Dr Mackay's contributions is a chapter covering the history of the South African War, focusing especially on the Otago and Southland-raised Fourth Contingent.
This gruelling war against "the stubborn Boer" nevertheless presented to many impressionable young New Zealanders in the early 1900s a false image of war as a romantic undertaking, full of mad gallops and derring-do, and little human cost. With their flasher hats and bandoliers, and astride horses, the mounted riflemen were regarded by most, including themselves, as elite - it was a belief that persisted until they were confronted in 1914 by a major European "industrial war".
"A culture of manliness permeated the Victorian-Edwardian era," Dr Mackay says.
"Some of these men were confirmed bachelors, having never settled into colonial life, which was incredibly dull by any standard. So you had these restless bored men who had feasted on a diet of all these noble heroic defeats in Africa, wanting to set off, regardless of the outcome.
The British psyche seems to be captivated by noble defeats and fighting in faraway places - and a stirring last stand against all the odds was even better. It's no wonder all these young, like-minded Lord Byrons wanted to take off on an expedition."
In World War 1 at Gallipoli, the mounted riflemen's role was largely reduced to that of infantrymen (their horses stayed behind in Egypt with a contingent of farriers). Later, on the Western Front, the OMR were grouped with two squadrons of Australian Light Horse to form the unique Anzac Mounted Regiment and saw action at Fleurbaix in France in 1916, and at Messines in Belgium in 1917.
"After a stirring but bloody attack at Messines across no-man's-land, in which many of their horses were killed, they switched to conducting four-man reconnaissance patrols and these were very effective in the last six months of the war when the Allies were pushing the Germans back.
"It was during this period when the OMR were awarded most of their gallantry medals.
They were out every day, often galloping like crazy, trying to get hidden German machine-gunners to fire at them so others could locate the target and destroy these gun crews."
The book is full of interesting stories, some sad but others humorous.
The OMR's ranks were filled with many notable men, from a Charge of the Light Brigade veteran to prominent mayors, architects and explorers, Otago's first general, child buglers, a "mischief-making" chaplain, perpetrators of numerous scandals, the first New Zealander to land at Anzac Cove, and Dick Travis, our most decorated soldier.
The OMR had historic connections with the daring Dunsterforce expedition to Mesopotamia, the Legion of Frontiersmen, elite British cavalry regiments, hunt and pony clubs in Otago and Southland, and a special link with Otago Boys' High School.
Dr Mackay said the OMR book threw up a lot of "incredibly interesting" characters, several of which would make great topics for biographies in their own right.
One such character was Arthur Bauchop, of Port Chalmers, who enlisted in the Fourth Contingent to South Africa as a corporal and came back as a colonel, and was recommended for the Victoria Cross and mentioned in despatches four times for his bravery on the veldt. He went on to command the Otago Military District and the OMR at Gallipoli. Bauchop's unwavering zest for life, his good humour and incredible strength of character were remarkable, Dr Mackay says.
For example, just before heading out to lead his men into battle at Gallipoli, Bauchop bumped into war correspondent Malcolm Ross outside his dugout and presented him with his stick, and in his trademark manner told the former Dunedin journalist that "no man is anybody on the Peninsula, who does not carry a stick!".
A few hours later, while cheering his men on, Bauchop was mortally wounded by a Turkish sniper on the hill that still bears his name.
The book
The Troopers' Tale: The History of The Otago Mounted Rifles is officially released today.
March 17 is a special date for the OMR, as its three main Territorial regiments came into being on this day in 1911.
A private get-together of soldiery, both old OMR troopers and new service people from 4 OS Battalion, will be held at the Garrison Hall at the Kensington Army Hall at a date to be announced, and another at the Invercargill Barracks later this month to celebrate the OMR's long-standing connection with the New Zealand Army.
Co-author and editor Don Mackay hopes to follow this with a public book launch, possibly in conjunction with the RSA, in the next few weeks in Dunedin or Mosgiel.
