by Vicky Adin
Emma was in no state to answer him. Her grief was internal. She could not speak, she could not weep; she sat transfixed, staring into nothing. Even the crashing of china did not disturb her.
Amy, with tears coursing down her cheeks, unsure what to say, began picking up the pieces. The news that Lizzie had died of tubercular peritonitis at the age of thirty-two had shocked them all.
“It gets worse, Pa,” said Chas. “Ted says he has no money. She’ll have to have a pauper’s funeral.”
“God damn the bastard.” Daniel’s rheumy eyes looked at his son, distress written all over his face. Defeated, he slumped into the chair.
Emma rose from her seat and left the room. She returned in a few moments with the photo of Lizzie taken on her wedding day, ten years earlier. She placed it on the dresser where she could see it and sat down again staring at it, her face frozen. The photo remained there for the rest of her life.
“I say we don’t let that happen,” said William. “She’s our sister. Let’s bring her home from Wellington for a decent funeral.”
“I agree,” said Henry.
“I’ll never talk to the bastard again once this is over,” said Fred.
“You won’t have to. But let’s keep calm while we sort this out,” said William. “Leave it me. Henry, take care of Ma.”
True to their word, the brothers organised their sister’s funeral. How they did it, what was said to Ted Howe or what agreement they came to, Daniel didn’t know or care. She was laid to rest in the Foxton cemetery with all her family around her. That was all he cared about.
* * *
By late 1916, the exhortations from certain politicians, civic leaders and newspaper editors for greater sacrifices to be made, ‘For the Empire’s Cause’, had reached near fever pitch. Anything that looked or sounded like it might be German was denigrated. Rumours of German spies and conspiracies were rife, and those of German heritage were often abused and harassed in the streets. He was thankful Emma had not been accosted yet, but Daniel worried every time she went out without him.
Daniel found the reports disturbing and conflicting. One report would go on at length criticising the never-ending death toll, as the number of maimed and injured rose sickeningly high. The next condemned the men considered shirkers and cowards for not doing their duty, even though fewer than thirty per cent of eligible men had volunteered. Despite arguments against conscription from the newly formed Labour Party, and with costs rising and military numbers falling, the day came that Daniel feared the most – conscription was introduced.
Before the end of the year, William had received his call-up.
“It’s all right, Ma. Don’t worry. I’m left-handed and this arm doesn’t work like it should. I’ll take the risk. For now. They are sure to find me medically unfit. I can appeal; I can insist on medical examinations; I’ll delay everything as long as I can. I’ll even sign their silly forms, but I’m not going.”
Henry was the next to receive his call-up. The same conversation was had. “I’ll appeal and see what happens. I’ll keep hammering my Prussian heritage. They can’t make me fight family.”
Weeks of worry followed.
In February 1917, William’s appeal was dismissed, and he was ordered to present himself to camp. A few days later, Henry’s appeal was also dismissed. He, too, was ordered to report to camp. Daniel and Emma listened with dismay. They were too shocked to take it all in. The boys argued about the rights and wrongs of the war, the reasons for standing up for their rights, the horrors they had read about. Voices were raised. The table was thumped.
“But what it all boils down to is we’ll be ordered to fight and kill ordinary blokes just like us, whether we like it or not. It’s not right,” said Fred.
Fred’s call-up arrived soon after. The same stubborn determination he’d always demonstrated was not lacking now. “I’m not going,” stated Fred, staring at the summons. “They’ll have to take me there by force.”
“They will arrest you and send you to prison.” Chas was worried.
“Let them. I promised Ma I would not go and fight this bloody war. And I won’t.”
Chas recognised the stubborn lift of the chin. It was an Adin trait. Most of them could be as stubborn as the fence was long when they set their mind to it – especially if an injustice had been done.
“You can’t sit here and wait for them. You’ll have to go somewhere.”
“No. That’s running away. I’m not running. I’m not hiding. I’m just not going.”
Chas shrugged his shoulders. “Please yourself.”
By the end of March, Fred had been arrested. No news came. No letters. Nothing that told Daniel and Emma what had happened to him. Henry, too, disappeared into ‘the system’ along with William. Daniel had never felt such black despair.
Months passed.
Not until September 1917, when William was eventually declared unfit for service after a special medical examination and was discharged, was he able to tell his parents and Chas what had happened to him.
“They kept telling me to parade, forced me into uniform, which I took off every time. Ordered me to report to camp, pick up my gear and such things. I refused, so they threw me in the military gaol at the camp for a night. I’d come out the next day, and they’d order me to put the uniform on again and I refused, again. After four days of this, with only bread and water, they hoped I’d cave in. I was pushed over, shoved against walls, prodded and poked, but I didn’t give in. I kept insisting on a medical. This last time the doctors agreed my arm was useless. Not like those stupid blokes last year who said I was fit. Anyway, it’s all over for me. I’ve done my three weeks or three months, or whatever they said. It felt like years. But now I’m out.”
Daniel wept.
Chapter Twenty-one
Auckland
2010
Libby mourned as she read the official military personnel records of William, Henry and Fred, men she’d never met. Men who as pacifists were labelled traitors, shirkers and cowards, and whose families were treated like pariahs. Men like Archibald Baxter, who wrote in his autobiography We will not cease:
... war can do nothing but harm to every nation that engages in it. But in peacetime a nation must so live and act towards other nations as not to provoke war. We must be prepared to make sacrifices but they will be nothing like the sacrifices a nation has to make in war, to gain nothing by them but the prospect of further wars.
Whatever failings they might have had, cowardice is not what Libby would have called it. In hindsight, they were as brave as any of those who, filled with bravado, went to fight unprepared, not knowing or understanding what awaited them. It took courage and determination above the norm, whichever stance they took.
As she read historical texts on the computer, Libby was conscious she knew more than Daniel and Emma about what had happened to their boys.
Whenever Libby had asked members of the family about it, they all said the men had not talked about their experiences. As grandchildren they knew nothing and had never heard their parents talking about it either. Maybe the brothers spoke amongst themselves, maybe not. We’ll never know now. She doubted the sons ever told the full story of what happened to them. If Baxter hadn’t written his account, Libby wouldn’t know as much as she did. Except, perhaps ... Libby remembered, Emma knew Harry Holland.
The electronic text of the 1919 book Armageddon or Calvary, penned by the MP Harry Holland, held Libby enthralled. Holland made no bones about the duplicity of the government of the time. One section jumped out at her. She read it again then grabbed the telephone and punched in the number, excitement rising all the time. Without preamble or introduction, she spoke. “Tell me that story about Granny Adin again. The one about her knowing those politicians before they formed the Labour Party, and the one about her going to Wellington.”
She listened as the stories were repeated. Names of labour organisers and union activists were reeled off. Names like Holland, Semple an
d Fraser, who became famous, and others, not so famous, who stayed with Daniel and Emma. About the day she went to Wellington.
“Granny was quite politically aware, you know. Far more so than Grandfather Adin. She was the one who held the strongest socialist views,” said her aunt on the other end of the phone. “I told you all this before.”
“Yes, I know and thanks. I wanted to confirm a couple of things.” She hung up and reread the article. The more she read it, the more convinced she became. The woman Holland wrote of had to be Granny Adin – it had to be. The other names didn’t fit. Even so, Libby would never be able to prove it.
The mother of one CO came to me ... wrote Harry Holland. She had three sons, all of whom were conscientious objectors. The whole three had been called up ... two of them had gone to prison – one for 28 days and one for 84 days, while the third had just given himself up to the military authorities.
It’s true.
William had given himself up to the authorities and had been discharged on medical grounds. Henry had been sent to prison – for 28 days – but that wasn’t the end of the story. The records showed he was convicted again and imprisoned for a further eleven months with hard labour. He received his third sentence just six months before the end of the war in April 1918, of another two years and eight months with hard labour, much of it in the South Island. His decision meant he spent more time in prison, often in solitary confinement, during and after the war than many of those poor, wretched soldiers spent in the midst of cruel battle. He would not be released until 1920. He never talked about it.
Libby questioned if either situation could be considered worse than the other. Objectors and soldiers alike would be scarred for life.
She checked the records again.
Fred was a different story. Fred was the one convicted for 84 days following on from a 28-day detention. One sentence carried out in March 1917, the other followed less than a month later in April. She read on:
On the Tuesday evening the mother had come to Wellington for the purpose of visiting her sons on the following day. On the Wednesday morning, however, she heard that some conscientious objectors had been forcibly deported; and, ... with fear in her heart, she learned that one of her boys was among them. She had received no intimation that her son was to be taken away, and she was given no opportunity whatever of seeing him before he left. Her tears fell like rain, and the sobs that welled from the depths of her broken mother’s heart proclaimed the magnitude of her hurt.
Libby let out a sob of her own. She could feel a mother’s anguish.
A group of objectors, who later became known as ‘The Fourteen’, were marched through the streets of Wellington and herded onto the ship Waitemata in the early hours of one July morning and transported to England. Some walked. Some were pushed. Some were dragged. Fred was one of those men. ‘The Fourteen’ included Archibald Baxter and his two brothers. Oh, that poor mother. Three Baxter sons transported. How awful.
They were locked into a small cabin above the propeller with no windows, not enough bunks, nowhere to sit – no facilities at all. The seas were rough and men became seasick. Sometimes they were allowed to use the latrines on deck, sometimes there was no alternative but to vomit on the floor, or to soil themselves. The humiliations never ceased. The shame became an inescapable burden. Life was excruciating and still they refused to don uniforms – to become soldiers. The Waitemata stopped off at Cape Town where the South African authorities declared the ship unfit. Fred and some others were moved and put on the Norman Castle for the rest of the journey. If anything, the punishments worsened.
Everything Libby read said the men were pushed, pulled or dragged everywhere. Openly humiliated, stripped of their clothes and forced into uniform, no matter how many times they refused, and left either in their underwear or paraded naked if they removed the uniforms. The men’s heads were shaved by force or they were hosed down with high-pressure hoses, handcuffed and locked in solitary confinement, and the food was appalling, if they were given any.
How the authorities thought such harsh treatment would make these men change their minds was beyond Libby. Surely, it would just harden their resolve? She was thankful that even then, among those meting out the punishments, there were some who condemned such methods. Baxter had written he was alive thanks to the kindness of individuals. Harry Holland was one of those men:
Search all the long history of the ages, and you will find nothing more tragic than the spectacle of that bereaved mother – the light gone out of the years of her life – bowed down beneath the burden of sorrow endured by the mothers of the world through all the centuries of sin and suffering that stretch from the foot of Calvary’s Cross to the gangway of a Twentieth Century Transport. To me it was as if the Mother of God stood there uplifting a protest to Heaven against the crucifixion of Humanity, and levelling an accusation against myself and all the rest of New Zealand for the Wrong we had made possible.
As far as Libby could work out, a man was deemed a soldier whether or not he had taken the oath, passed a medical test or even refused to sign up. The powers that be had ruled that all men should have taken the oath, regardless of any personal reasons. If anyone refused, he was labelled ‘deserter’ and treated accordingly. Looking at it from an enlightened future, Libby found it hard to imagine the authorities held such abject fear of so few men – for fear it must have been – that such domination and harsh discipline was considered necessary. Leastways, Libby hoped the world was more enlightened.
Yet from her readings she learnt the governments were afraid of a mass mutiny or mass desertions and were tough on everyone. They were even terrified of their own war-weary soldiers. Libby thought it absurd anyone would think men who had survived after years in the field, suffering from shell shock and wanting to go home, were some sort of threat and a sign of a Bolshevik mutiny. Or that the same high command thought treating soldiers with any degree of humanity would lead to such a mutiny and, instead of sending them home, had put them before the courts for punishment, seemed even more preposterous. If that was the case, the objectors had no chance.
Holland wrote how he had challenged Massey in parliament in 1919, that men were convicted more than once for the same offence, which was against the law in this country. Massey denied it, even though there was evidence to the contrary. Henry and Fred’s records proved that. But Massey was adamant. He blamed the men for refusing to obey orders. Each refusal was treated as a new offence.
Libby wasn’t surprised to read that Archie, who returned a broken man suffering mental illness, was the father of James K Baxter, one of New Zealand’s best-known poets. Of ‘The Fourteen’, Archie Baxter, Mark Briggs, Lawrence Kirwin and Garth Ballantyne were the most stalwart. They were also the most targeted and severely punished men of the group. Their treatment was torturous. Baxter was subjected to Field Punishment No. 1 – the worst of all punishments, lashed to a pole in all weathers for hours on end, day after day – more than once.
The more she read, the more Libby was at a loss to understand the level of controls put in place. At one time there were more soldiers investigating, rounding up and guarding the objectors, than there were objectors. Madness, total madness. Surely the soldiers would have preferred to be fighting the real enemy and the objectors would have been more use at home doing the work of the men who had gone to war voluntarily? Helping to keep the country running.
But the law forbade anyone to give objectors work; she read that his own mother was liable to gaol, with harsh penalties including three years hard labour if she gave him shelter; his friends were liable to lesser penalties, fines and imprisonment if they knew where he was and didn’t tell the authorities. All his civil rights were taken from him for years – even after the war. The wives and children were ostracised and derided by their peers and made to suffer for what their menfolk had chosen to do.
Nevertheless, regardless of whether the woman was the loved one of a soldier or a pacifist, every woman suffered in s
ome way. Forced to take on their man’s role, the women struggled to keep the home going, to work and feed their children, never knowing where their man was or when he might be allowed to return to them.
Libby closed down the website, unable to read any more. She needed time to digest what she’d discovered and struggled with thoughts of the inhumane treatment those men received. She tried to imagine how Daniel and Emma would have felt. They would have read in the papers about the war, the atrocities and the loss of life. Seeing their sons’ names in the paper and not knowing where they were or what was happening to them must have been horrendous. How could people be so cruel? She knew how she would feel if it had been her son. Would society never learn? It seemed not, given all the stories of other wars, other prison camps, other atrocities.
Libby tried to talk to Ben about it later that night.
“It was a stupid war anyway.” She was fractious. “The leaders were mad as hatters to keep sending the men in those trenches in France ‘over the top’. It was nothing short of mass suicide. Miscalculating the strength of the enemy as they did – often – or landing them on the wrong beach, like at Gallipoli.” Her mind jumped from incident to incident and memory to memory without cohesion.
Ben tried to be calm and reasonable. “We know that now, but it wasn’t until after the events that people began to comprehend what a waste of life there’d been. It must have been awful. Decisions were made that held no relevance to the situation or landscape. Without thought for the destruction it wrought.”
Libby flung herself back into the chair, stubbornly clinging to her indignation. “Fancy sending men to their deaths like that. And how terrifying would it have been for those soldiers. Appalling conditions, watching men being killed all around them and being told, more or less, it’s your duty to die!”
“Make up your mind. Are you angry about the way the objectors were treated or the way the soldiers were treated?”
“Both,” Libby answered in confusion and distress. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like for either. I admire those soldiers who fought for what they believed in. They lived through terrible and terrifying times, with fear and despair their constant companions. Living in the most loathsome settings. I can’t understand how they did it, how they survived. But how would sending men to war who believed war was wrong make it better?”
