But for two and a half years, he was. Steward Munford wore a uniform in the Great War and wrote up his memoirs six years after the armistice, using his memory and notes he made in code at the time, because it was an offence to keep a diary in case it fell into enemy hands.
Steward was born in 1881 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, so he was about 35 when he was called up to fight.
He tells how, in November 1915, he and his brother, Charles, fronted up at RGA Barracks where they were stripped, weighed, measured, eyesight tested and physically examined by doctors. He was passed but told he was medically unfit for overseas service. Somewhere along the line, that ruling was disregarded.
His experiences are surprisingly detailed, especially the first few months of training and mundane army life.
He describes his superior officers, sparing few details. If they were bullies, he says so.
Fatigues, parades, personalities, rations, sleeping in tents — and they were still in England.
By early 1917, they were in Etaples, France, and in April they were taken by train to St Pol, where they could hear the frontline guns just 20km away. It wasn’t long before they were at the front, digging or strengthening trenches, making and mending roads — typical “navvy” work.
His first experience of heavy artillery fire he describes casually, with an almost nonchalant air.
Steward saw action in France, rose through the non-commissioned ranks and would have made sergeant if the war had continued for longer.
It’s a remarkable story, filled with the day-to-day experiences of a man in a war zone. Life was hard, primitive and brutish, but friendships were made, a life lived, and none of them would ever be the same again.
This book would be worth a public printing, if that were possible. The National Library does hold a copy.
The second book takes us to a different time, another war, the same continent.
Captain Maurice George Wadey 5938 was born on April 3, 1913, in Whanganui, son of George and Ethel Wadey. He was the eldest of four children — with brothers Des and Paul and a sister, Maureen. At 14, he was apprenticed to RJ Bell Plumbers, which served him in good stead when he and Des started the plumbing firm of Wadey Bros after the war.
His World War II adventures are documented in a book A War Time Log, compiled from Maurie’s diaries and other documents.
In 1939, the year the war began, Maurie had been married to Marie for four years and was living in Wellington, a foreman plumber working on new state houses. He and his wife had one son at the time.
In 1940, he sailed with the 22nd Battalion on The Empress of Britain, arriving in England on June 16. He held the rank of lieutenant.
They spent time training near Aldershot, then were shipped to Greece in 1941.
These are the memoirs of an ordinary Kiwi plumber in extraordinary circumstances: they are told with humour and the relaxed, self-deprecating wit of a young New Zealander of the time. Examples of his handwriting adorn the cover of the book.
By Easter they were in the thick of the action, and he tells it as he saw and experienced it, from the ground. He recalls that half the time they had no idea what was happening. There was no “big picture”, nor the view afforded by hindsight and history, although his rank entitled him to some knowledge of allied movements. At the time it was all bullets, explosions, artillery shells, death, smoke and confusion.
In spite of all that, his tone is matter of fact and chillingly normal — “We, apart from being machine-gunned, were left alone.”
Maurie suffered a broken leg from a Stuka attack and he ended up as a prisoner of the Germans, recovering in an Athens hospital. The details of his internment are illuminating and nothing like what we would expect after watching war films.
A War Time Log is an immaculate record of everyday life during combat and as a prisoner of war, and includes photographs of people, places and documents.
That he was able to record everything without his notes being confiscated and destroyed is testament to his ingenuity and, one would like to think, his obligation to posterity. It is written by him, in his language, tempered with his personality and perspective.
His thoughts of his wife and son are always just below the surface, but that he was able to write so much about what he probably considered mundane is of huge benefit to his family and descendants. If only it were published and made available to the public.
There is a copy held in the National Library.
Maurie kept his diary through the camps’ liberation and beyond. His experiences range from hilarious to tragic, but he remained, at least on paper, the same Maurie who left New Zealand to go to war and, even with the added responsibility of his rank, he remained unassuming and ordinary. Lucky were those who met him.
The book is a first-hand account of many aspects of wartime — departure, training, combat, comradeship, POW camps and all. And it’s actually a very good read!
Maurie died in 1996, Marie in 1999.
“With souls unpurged and steadfast breath
They supped the sacrament of death.
And for each one, far off, apart,
Seven swords have rent a woman’s heart.”
— From Marching Men by Marjorie Pickthall
