November 11, 2008 is the 90th anniversary of the end of World War 1, in which more than 100,000 young New Zealanders from a population of just 1.1 million saw service overseas. Some of them fought with the Otago Mounted Rifles, a regiment whose proud history has yet to be told in full. That is about to change, writes Shane Gilchrist.Cavalrymen are dashers, at least in the popular imagination, and there is an element of this in the story of the Otago Mounted Rifles. It is a story that awaits telling in full, but a project has now begun to put this to rights.
Historian and author Don Mackay has rounded up a group of fellow history buffs to collaborate on a book on Otago's mounted warriors, with a working title Faithful, Swift and Bold.
They met this week to launch the effort, on the 144th anniversary of the formation of the Otago Mounted Rifles, in Dunedin's Provincial Hotel, where the Otago Hussars held their first meeting in 1864.
Among the tales of tragic loss and derring-do to be chronicled are the efforts of Otago Mounted Rifles (OMR) men on the Great War's Western Front.
Some of the OMRs were deployed at that time with a squadron of Australian Light Horse and saw action on the Somme (1916) and at Messines (1917), Dr Mackay says.
"The OMRs had a very sharp pitched battle at Kemmel, France, in April 1918 during the German Spring Offensive.
They charged around and filled gaps.
It was one of their best battle honours on the Western Front as their speed and versatility proved invaluable.
They were lucky; they won the battle but quite a few of them were killed, several of whom were Main Body who had served since 1914."
Earlier still, mounted soldiers from Otago had sallied forth to fight in South Africa, again with not a little dash.
Dr Mackay is also researching and writing a section covering this period, the history of the New Zealand 4th Contingent to South Africa, as well as covering the legacy of the Boer War.
Organised in Dunedin in 1900, the 4th Contingent followed the volunteer Canterbury-based 3rd Contingent abroad.
Both contingents were known as the "Rough Riders" after American colonel then president Theodore Roosevelt's band of mounted fighters, whose charge up a Cuban hill in 1898 was pivotal to Roosevelt's subsequent political career.
"In the Boer War, speed and mobility were essential. They were very much the elite who went away. When the Main Body sailed in 1914, the mounted troops were considered, especially by themselves, to be the elite: they had a flasher hat; they had bandoliers over them; they were on horses, strutting around," Dr Mackay says by telephone from his home in Riversdale, Southland.
Some of the story of the OMR has already been written.
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 Cove, but a detailed account of the regiment's service in World War 1 and the contribution made by members of the regiment to New Zealand's Volunteer and Territorial Forces remains to be done, Dr Mackay says.
So earlier this year, on the initiative of Dr Mackay (who quickly enlisted the experienced help of fellow University of Otago history graduate Dr Aaron Fox) and with the support of the Otago Mounted Rifles Regimental Association, a group of military historians were contacted and asked to contribute to the project to ensure that the history and heritage of the Otago Mounted Rifles Regiment would be both recorded and celebrated.
The Otago Mounted Rifles Historical Trust, of which Allied Press managing director Julian Smith is patron, has been established to supervise the research, writing and production of a multi-author illustrated history of the Otago Mounted Rifles Regiment from 1864 through to 1956.
The book's working title, Faithful, Swift and Bold: the history of the Otago Mounted Rifles, was conceived by Dr Fox and is taken from the Latin mottos "Es Fidelis" and "Celer et Audax", which appear on badges from the 5th Otago Hussars and 7th Southland squadrons.
Among the military historians who have agreed to contribute are Dr Christopher Pugsley, of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, author of Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story; Lt Col Kinloch, author of Echoes of Gallipoli: In the words of New Zealand's Mounted Riflemen and Devils on Horses; and Dr Stephen Clarke, the Official Historian and Commemorations Officer for the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association.
It is hoped research will be completed by May 2009, with the aim of publishing Faithful, Swift and Bold before Anzac Day, 2010.
A travelling exhibition on the Otago Mounted Rifles is also planned, to be displayed in museums and galleries throughout Otago and Southland.
Dr Mackay hopes such an exhibition will "flush out" unpublished letters, diaries and photographs, material that would enhance the proposed publication. It is imperative to document the soldiers' stories, he says. Otherwise, they are in danger of not being told.
"More often than not, as the generations keep dying out, if this stuff is not handed down to someone who is interested, it gets biffed," he laments.
"People are also reluctant to hand over precious family memoirs or items."
Dr Mackay, who will edit the book with Dr Aaron Fox, is at pains to point out the publication will be no academic tome, but rather the soldiers' collective story; to the historical framework will be added the flesh and bones of personal experience.
Dr Mackay says he was initially inspired to take on the project while at a cemetery among the hills of Gallipoli last year.
"I was staying as a guest of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in their quaint little cottage near North Beach last year and visited Hill 60, north of Anzac Cove, where Canterbury and Otago troops fought a pitched battle in late August 1915 and a lot of men were killed.
"I was waiting in the cemetery for light to change so I could take better photographs and was sitting on the side of the memorial pylon. I turned around and here was this monument to the Otago Mounted Rifles boys.
"A week later, when visiting the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, I discussed the project with prominent New Zealand historian Dr Christopher Pugsley, who enthusiastically agreed to contribute to the book. With his stamp of approval, we were on our way."
The Otago Mounted Rifles saw plenty of action, from the South African (Boer) War to Egypt, Gallipoli, France and Belgium during World War 1, and while serving in other units of both 2 and 3 New Zealand Divisions in World War 2.
In addition, thousands of Otago men and horses have served with various units of the regiment in peacetime - from volunteer to territorial forces.
In January 1942, the regiment was converted to a light armoured fighting vehicle role. The regiment saw post-war service as the 5th Light Armoured Fighting Vehicle Regiment through to 1956, when it was placed in recess.
"Around 1941 they sent the horses home; they were used for home defence. By the end of 1942, horses were more valuable for the war effort in assisting in food production," Dr Mackay explains.
"Even though the unit was all gone bar the shouting by round the mid-'50s, it is still there in a very slight form."
There is an Otago Mounted Rifles Regimental Association still active.
"All the infantry and mechanised brigades active overseas were all eventually disbanded and gazetted out in the years following World War 2. The Otago Mounted Rifles were only one part of the Otago-Southland military district. I suppose the inheritor of all that is the 4th Otago-Southland Division."
Even before their horses were retired, the OMR did not always survey the field from the saddle.
"At Gallipoli, they landed and fought as infantrymen, while the horses stayed behind in Egypt with a contingent of farriers and the men went on as infantrymen in dribs and drabs from mid-May 1915," Mr Mackay says.
"After Gallipoli, the survivors from the Otago Mounted Rifles were joined by other mounted reinforcements in the Sinai desert where the regiment was reduced and the surplus strength broken up and then marched into either the new Pioneer Battalion, the NZ Field Artillery, or made to be infantrymen in the re-formed Otago Regiment.
"They were drafted - bang. The NZ Army, in those days, never matched your skill with the job. They didn't assess people."
Dr Mackay has a family connection to the project, too.
His paternal grandfather, Hugh Mackay, signed up at the outbreak of war and fought with the OMRs at Gallipoli.
In Egypt, Trooper Mackay was one of 50 selected from the regiment for duty as the bodyguard for Gallipoli expedition leader General Sir Ian Hamilton.
The OMR bodyguard accompanied Hamilton aboard the new battleship Queen Elizabeth and witnessed the landings at Anzac.
"I still live on the farm he left from in 1914."
Footnote: Anyone interested in providing information on the Otago Mounted Rifles, especially diaries and letters, are urged to notify major museums in the South, who will copy the precious material and return it to the contributor.
Personalities of the Otago Mounted Rifles
• Sergeant R. C. "Dick" Travis (VC, DCM, MM), the assumed name of Dick Savage from Opotiki, who joined the 7th (Southland) Squadron of Otago Mounted Rifles in August 1914, and forged a reputation as a sniper, scout and trench raider on Gallipoli and in France and Belgium.
Dubbed the "King of No Man's Land", he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his single-handed capture of a German position at Rossignol Wood in July 1918.
• Major-General Sir Alfred W. Robin (KCMG, CB), who commanded the 1st New Zealand Contingent to South Africa in 1899, returning a national hero, and who later became Commandant of New Zealand's Military Forces, and the Acting Administrator of Western Samoa.
• Colonel Joseph Cowie Nichols (CBE), who first joined the Otago Hussars in 1886, and who later went on to command both the Otago Mounted Rifles Brigade and the Otago Military District during World War 1. The coat of arms of Col Nichols forms the centre of the badge of the 5th Mounted Rifles (Otago Hussars).
Brigadier James Hargest, (CBE, DSO/2 Bars, MC), who embarked with the Otago Mounted Rifles in 1914, served with distinction throughout World War 1, and enjoyed a successful career in national politics before assuming command of the 5th Infantry Brigade, 2nd New Zealand Division.
He commanded the brigade in the United Kingdom, Crete and North Africa, before being captured in 1941.
In 1943 he made a successful escape from an Italian prisoner of war camp, and landed with the 50th (Northumbrian) Division in Normandy on June 6, 1944, before being killed in action in August 1944.
