One of the very few senior Anzac officers whose reputation is seen positively in retrospect a century after the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 is the commander of the Wellington battallion: Lieutenant-colonel William Malone.
Now, he has a biography worthy of his achievements. Jock Vennell is a journalist turned military historian and his book is well-written and very readable.
Malone was a successful man in civilian life who took up territorial soldiering as a hobby.
His experiences as a pioneer settler farmer and then as a provincial solicitor framed the parameters for his soldiering.
As a settler and soldier, he moulded himself into the ''iron man'' of the book's title.
He was hard-working, self-confident, opinionated, intolerant and practical - all qualities helpful in commanding men.
His soldiers were probably the best-fed at Gallipoli, but their training was so rigorous many of his men hated him.
It was only after his death in action that most came to appreciate his virtues and how much they owed him.
Vennell's early chapters are an excellent snapshot of early pioneer life in the New Zealand bush.
It was not an easy life - especially for women. Malone knew his love of army affairs was self-indulgent.
He felt guilty as a family man in his mid-50s about leaving all his domestic responsibilities behind him.
Eventually, his second wife - his first died in childbirth - had to live out her declining years in genteel poverty with responsibility for two sets of Malone children.
It was the many tales of similar hardship which contributed to the creation of the Returned Services Association to look after the veterans and their families.
But there can be no doubt about Malone's commitment to soldiering.
The chapters on his attitudes to the approach of war, his training of his troops, the shipment of New Zealanders off to war, the rigorous training in the Egyptian desert, the arguments with his senior British commanders and (by inference) questioning their competence to command, are the kernel of the book.
So when he died during his final battle - Chunuk Bair - he was an obvious scapegoat for those incompetent British officers.
Twenty years later, balanced and competent accounts of him as a commander began to emerge, but by then it was too late for his reputation.
Everyone had moved on. It has taken the best part of 100 years before justice is being done to William Malone.
Some of the moves to repair his reputation have not been successful.
There was a campaign to have him awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
No New Zealand officer serving at Gallipoli was even nominated for a VC, because there was a conceit that all officers were exceptionally brave.
A few outstanding New Zealand officers were awarded a Military Cross instead.
One was Jock MacKenzie, of the Otago Mounted Rifles, who was a friend of my father and whom I knew quite well.
The decoration is still in the hands of his family.
The book is let down by its index.
For example, two important contemporaries of Malone - Russell and Hart - are mentioned in the text but do not make it into the index.
If there is ever another edition, such solecisms could be corrected.
Malone was not an obvious man to believe so devoutly, even passionately, in serving King and country.
He was an Anglo-Irish immigrant to New Zealand, from a family driven out of Ireland by the great potato famine of the mid-19th century.
He was a devout and practising Roman Catholic all his life at a time when they were often looked down on.
Altogether, he was a complicated and interesting man.
• Oliver Riddell is a retired journalist in Wellington.
