An ANZAC in the Family: Private McAlpine of the 4th Reinforcements

By Sherryl Abrahart

From the classrooms and playgrounds of early 1900s New Zealand to the battlefields of Gallipoli, the tragedy of the Marquette, and the trenches of France, this is the story of Private Leslie McAlpine. Many families in New Zealand have an Anzac who served in the First World War. Leslie is the Anzac in our family. He is a fit, healthy young man who never completely loses hope that he will get back home. His story shows how decisions made in the wider world affect our lives and our opportunities. Leslie leaves New Zealand as one of the 2235 men in the 4th Reinforcements and the story follows their lives and deaths. In 1914, as New Zealand goes to war, Leslie is in the navy, on the Torch, and loving it. But he wants to see a bit more action. He reads the accounts in the papers describing what the New Zealand and Australian soldiers are doing as they travel across the world in convoy and he wants to be part of that. So in January 1915 he enlists in the army in the 4th Reinforcements. He is just 18. With an adventure before him that everyone in New Zealand approves of and celebrates, what can possibly go wrong? The Allied forces and politicians plan strategies and make decisions. Leslie and the 4th Reinforcements follow orders and do their very best. Surviving Gallipoli and the Marquette disaster, Leslie is killed in action on the Western Front. He is just 19.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brown Dog Books
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781839521034

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This book is dedicated to all the men and women who served in the First World War. In particular, it is dedicated to the men of the Fourth Reinforcements who sailed away from New Zealand in April 1915. Although they did not take part in the Gallipoli landings on 25 April, many gave their lives on the hills of Gallipoli or on the fields of Western Europe. It is, of course, dedicated to my Uncle Leslie and to his brothers and sisters who missed him and mourned him all their lives.

Leslie isn’t tall enough to look over the front gate of Grandfather Dando’s house. He climbs up on to the first rung of the gate, and squeezes his bare feet between the vertical palings. His knees almost get caught. He’s looking but not quite believing. Where’re all the houses? Where’re all the people? There’s no noise, no trams, no thuds or bangs from the mines. Just trees, hills, bushes and birds, not even a proper road.

He thinks about his home in Waihi, the place they had left a few days previously. He’d lived with his mum and dad (Alice and Fred), his little brother Syd and baby sister Flo, and his dad’s father, Granddad McAlpine. And he can just about remember Grandma McAlpine too. He had loved being with her. She was always cooking, letting him lick spoons and bowls, with the kitchen full of steam and her apron covered in flour.

Waihi was a sprawling, noisy gold town in the early 1900s. By 1903, when he was six years old, Leslie and the McAlpine family were living in the centre of a town full of people. When he climbed up Granddad McAlpine’s gate, he could see miners’ cottages up and down the street, people walking, laughing, arguing, horses and carts. When they drove out in Granddad’s buggy, towards the end of town, the roads became lanes and the huts became tents. Leslie always wanted to join the children playing around those tents. Envious of their bare feet and wearing what his mum called ‘play clothes’, he wondered if they had to clean their teeth, brush their hair and eat everything on their plates like him.

Steam tractors hauling steel beams through Waihi to the Martha Mine around 1900 with lots of excited boys and girls looking on. (Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/2-019316-F)¹

Leslie didn’t really notice the noise, the bustle and the people in Waihi because he’d grown up with it. When he went out with his mum or grandma, he could look up the long, straight streets that rose up the hills. He could see mine heads where the goldmines were, where his dad and granddad worked. He and his mum would cross streets carefully and at a bit of a run, because there were tramlines coming down the streets, from the mines to the stamper batteries. His dad had explained how the gold they mined was inside rocks. The trams moved the rocks to batteries where huge stampers crushed them into powder, which was then put in large vats with water and cyanide to extract the gold. Main Street was covered with loose metal, but there were some footpaths, with shops on either side. He would walk down Main Street with his mum on shopping day, usually calling at the general grocery store and the butcher. Sometimes, they would go into Cullen and Co., the drapers, or McLeay’s, the boot maker. Leslie’s favourite place was the Ohinemuri Coaching Company, although all he’d ever managed was a peek in at the entrance. They had stables with buggies and coaches and lots of horses. Leslie always tried to slow his mum down so he could watch the horses being harnessed. He imagined what it’d be like going somewhere in one of those coaches.²

Leslie got to know other children his age at Sunday School. His mum’s family are Wesleyan Methodists and so, in Waihi, they had all gone to the Wesleyan Church in Hazard Street on Sundays. The church seemed huge to a small boy, and in fact it was big enough for around 250 people. But he and Syd went to the Sunday School in the building next door. He played with other children, they learnt simple prayers and sang lots of happy songs about Jesus loving them. His mum could play the piano and the flute and loved to sing. Leslie liked listening to music, but he didn’t really enjoy singing. Watching his mum and dad at church socials, playing a duet, with his mum on the flute and his dad on the mouth organ, made him feel very happy.

Leslie can remember something of his fourth birthday. It was December, just before Christmas. He’d got a wooden train set, painted red, for both his birthday, on 11 December, and Christmas. He was supposed to let Syd play with it too, but he never did. Then everything went very quiet. He didn’t really understand, but his mum said that Grandma had gone away and they wouldn’t see her any more. Both his parents were very unhappy. His dad loved Grandma, although she was actually his stepmother. He always called her ‘Mother’ because she’d looked after him since he was a baby. Leslie’s mum had loved Grandma too, because she had made her so welcome when she met and married Fred. Somehow, Leslie had a feeling that things weren’t the same after that. He still ran around a lot outside, played with Syd and teased baby Flo. But Granddad became very quiet and the house was sad.

So, here he is, six years old, in this new place, called Raglan, with his mum’s parents, Grandfather and Nanna Dando, and his mum’s brother, Uncle Sydney. They are all living on Uncle Sydney’s farm. The house is huge and rambling and there’s a very big yard. Everything is silent. Over the fence are hills and fields — is it all part of his uncle’s farm? He’s not sure. He doesn’t even know where his bedroom is and, if he wakes up in the night, how he will find his mum.

But getting here has been wonderful. He’d finally got into the Ohinemuri Coaching Company’s courtyard and had run off to look inside the shed. Coaches and buggies at the back, all sizes. Men rubbing horses down. But his mum had dragged him away. By now, 1903, there are three mail coaches a day running between Waihi and Paeroa, and they’d boarded one of these coaches heading for Paeroa.³ He and Syd were very excited. The driver shouted something, and the horses knew to move off. It was bumpy and the seat was hard, but it was great. After a long time, they were all told to get off the coach because the road was very narrow, with lots of bends, and his dad said that the horses had enough trouble just getting the empty coach through. Leslie had felt a little scared, but he didn’t show it. It was just that it wasn’t a town and it wasn’t the bush. There were no trees or grass. The hills were just clay and stone, stripped bare. In fact, the coach had stopped in the Karangahake Gorge, a major area of gold mining. Leslie could hear the explosions and the whine of heavy machinery in the battery at Waikino that echoed in the gorge. His mum had carried Flo and his dad carried Syd after a while, along with the suitcase. So he just walked and walked, between the highest and steepest mountains he’d ever seen, with one side of the road dropping down to the rushing Ohinemuri River. Sometimes they couldn’t stay on the road because there were coaches coming the other way. He struggled a bit up the rock face and waited till he could get back to the road again. He’d never walked this far before, but he couldn’t show he was a baby like Syd. He just kept walking. When they neared the end of the gorge, they all got on the coach again. He fell asleep straight away. It was getting late when they got to Paeroa. They stayed in a little boarding house for the night, all together in a small room with two beds. He didn’t like sleeping with Syd much because he kicked and took the blanket, and Flo started crying in the middle of the night. But he was so tired, nothing kept him awake for long.

Even more excitement the next day. They climbed on a train, heading for Hamilton. The noise when it started nearly blew his head off. It was slow at first, but then it got really fast and the grass outside seemed to be flying by. Looking out the window, all he could see was flat country and the train just went in a straight line. No bends, no hills, no having to get off and walk. Just before they arrived in Hamilton, the train went over a bridge. Leslie and Syd were thrilled. Where to look? Below was the wide Waikato River, and they were up so high on the bridge, flying over it. He yelled with pleasure and bounced on the seat. Syd did too. Mum told them, ‘For heaven’s sake, be quiet and sit still.’ They grinned at each other and knelt at the window.

At Hamilton Station, his mum’s uncle met them with his buggy. Mum said that this was his Great-uncle Thomas. The way to Great-uncle Thomas’s house was along wide main streets lined with shops and houses. The houses all had wide verandas and gardens. Hamilton was very quiet, not at all like Waihi. There were no trams or sudden explosions and everyone seemed to live in large houses. Great-uncle Thomas owned a shop in Hamilton on one of those big, wide streets. His house was upstairs and at the back of the shop. Leslie never got a real chance to explore properly, but he loved the idea that they all slept upstairs. Still, other than that, he couldn’t see what was so great about Uncle Thomas.

The next morning there was a rush to get everyone dressed, ready for the early coach. Leslie wasn’t at all sure where he was going this time, but Great-uncle Thomas gave him a bag of lollies, so he didn’t pay much attention. Syd got a bag as well, so he didn’t even have to share. The coach had four horses pulling it, and at first they went quite slowly over a bridge. There was nothing exciting about this bridge, especially after yesterday’s. But then they started climbing up what his dad called the ‘divvy’. His dad said that if it had rained, they would all have been walking up the hill because the road would have been just mud. But it isn’t raining, just a bit cold and very windy. So they sit in the coach as it slowly crawls up the hill. Leslie’s big hope is that they will hurtle down the other side. Do horses have brakes? They don’t race down the other side, but all the same, it was pretty good. The road twisted and turned as it made its way down to a valley. Then it sped up and headed across the valley floor to Raglan. When they got to Raglan township, Mum’s brother was there to meet them. Mum said his name was Uncle Sydney. Leslie laughed out loud because he had a brother called Sydney. But Mum said that little Syd and Uncle Sydney had both been named after Grandfather Dando. ‘Who was I named after then?’ Leslie wonders.

Leslie quickly settles into life in Raglan. There’s lots to do and here he can roam and explore as much as he likes. Grandfather actually has a car. Leslie and Syd are thrilled. Sundays become their favourite days because they all ride to church in the car. Grandfather drives into Raglan town most days because he is a land agent and has a shop in the main street. Sometimes, though, he stays at home and works on the farm. He’s very old in Leslie’s eyes. He walks slowly, but he still likes to be busy. He lets Leslie go with him. Leslie learns his way up the hills, all the way to the farm’s outer fences and down from the farm to the beach, with black sand that is always warm on his toes and a rolling surf. Sometimes they take Syd too and together they play, now and then stopping to help Grandfather by holding a fence post. Raglan’s farmland is difficult country. It’s hilly with outcrops of rock and hard earth. You can’t easily dig holes, except on the beach. Uncle Sydney’s farm is in the lower hills rising up to Mount Karioi, an extinct volcano. Leslie can see that mountain from everywhere.

Uncle Sydney seems to like having the family live with him. He doesn’t have a wife or any children, so Leslie thinks he’d be lonely if they weren’t there. He takes Leslie and Syd right up to the summit of Karioi. When they get near the top, there are lots of trees, but below that, there are just ridges and valleys rushing steeply down to the sea, covered with scrubby bushes. Leslie finds that it really hurts if you run down a hill too fast and fall over on the rocky ground. His knees always have some sort of scab on them. Uncle Sydney teaches Leslie to swim too. The water is cold and the waves in the surf wash over him as he tries and sweep him back to the beach. Then the sand and the tow underneath the surface pour back out to sea and pull him back out again. He laughs out loud at the thrill of it. He learns to dive over the wave then swim like mad till the next wave comes. Or swim down the waves. Or dive under them.

Nanna Dando loves to have Leslie and his family living with them. She works in the garden a lot, growing vegetables and fruit. There are shops in Raglan, but this is a rural area so there aren’t lots of shops as there were in Waihi. Almost everything they eat comes from the farm. Leslie likes to help Nanna, pulling out weeds and picking fruit. He doesn’t like going with her in the early morning to get the milk, though. The grass is wet and there’s often a frost so his toes freeze. He has to keep his eyes wide open and look carefully at every bush because he once walked straight into a spider’s web and it went all over his hair and up his nose — horrible. The spiders spin them between the plum trees or even between the tomatoes and the beans. In the evenings, Nanna lights lamps and reads stories to Leslie and Syd. There are lots of books in the house and a big piano. His mum now plays the piano and her flute every day.