On March 3, 1918, a "tragic affair occurred’’ on the Western Front. Mike Houlahan looks back at the day when an Otago Regiment soldier killed two officers, and then himself.
It sits there, tantalisingly, on page 270 of the official history of the Otago Regiment.
"A tragic affair occurred in the 2nd Battalion lines on March 3. Captain R.J. Hill MC and 2nd-Lieut. D. McLean MM were fatally shot without apparent reason by a private in the Battalion transport who, presumably insane, subsequently shot himself.’’
After noting a funeral service was conducted at Hondeghem Cemetery the next day, the official history turns the page and lets the sands of time fold over the events in the small northern French town on March 3, 1918.
Such an event would be front-page news today, but in war-weary New Zealand the army was not releasing details: Hill and McLean were "accidentally killed’’.
A century later you might think it would be hard to discover details of such a briefly described incident, but in this case time is the friend of truth.
With the increased interest in family history - and especially family military history - service records of New Zealand armed forces personnel from past wars are readily available online.
It takes a few minutes to find the records of Hill and McLean, photographs of the two men - and one of their funeral.
Soon after, the records of Avon Roderique - the private who killed them - and his picture, are also on screen.
The files contain the documents generated by the army board of inquiry into the "tragic affair’’ and witness statements.
All the details are there but, ironically, the more you have the less you know.
What brought these three men together and linked them forever in time?
Avon Roderique left no final note; if he gave a friend or fellow serviceman an explanation, it is not recorded.
The documents tell a story, but you can only guess what the story is.
Lt Duncan McLean
Duncan McLean - the family grave marker spells it Maclean - was a Highlander.
From Killearnan, on the other side of Beauly Forth from Inverness, McLean migrated to New Zealand in 1906.
Settling in Lady Barkly, Winton, he followed his farmer father Donald on to the land: his obituary in the Ross-shire Journal said McLean had established a successful agricultural business, although when he enlisted as a private in the Otago Mounted Rifles McLean’s profession was noted as labourer.
Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, and in subsequent weeks 14,000 New Zealanders volunteered for service. Duncan McLean was one of the first to sign up.
McLean survived some of the bloodiest battles of the war: he was wounded at Gallipoli, and at Passchendaele he won the Military Medal, was mentioned in dispatches and promoted to officer rank.
His award citations refer to McLean’s "cool judgement’’, "conspicuous gallantry’’ and "contempt of danger’’.
On March 3 McLean - a former transport sergeant - was behind the lines with the Otago’s transport section.
That morning his task was to find a driver for a mess cart, and he was in the stables briefing Sergeant John Sim.
Capt Roland Justice Hill
Roland Hill - "Roland Justice Hill’’ in his military records, but "Rowland Justus Hill’’ on his birth certificate - was named after his father, prominent artist Justus Hill.
Born in London, Hill was a ship’s steward who started working New Zealand waters in 1906, and married Catherine Hughes in Dunedin in 1910.
Four years later Hill was a clerk at the Oriental Hotel, and the father of two children, Roland and Phyllis.
Despite his family commitments, he was not far behind McLean in enlisting for the army: Hill swore his service oath on December 20, 1914.
His army career path mirrored McLean’s: starting as a private, he was made a quartermaster sergeant upon arrival in Egypt in 1915 and became a commissioned officer when the Otago Regiment moved to France in 1916.
Mentioned in dispatches in 1917, in January 1918 Hill was awarded the Military Cross for personally taking rations and supplies to the front line under heavy shellfire during the Battle of Messines the previous year.
On March 3 Hill was doing what he did most mornings: working in his office by the quartermaster stores.
Pte Avon John Roderique
Avon Roderique, the son of a sea captain, was born in Riverton: when he enlisted in October 1915 he was just 20 and working as a labourer for his uncle.
Roderique signed on as a trooper with the Otago Mounted Rifles, but after arriving in Egypt he was transferred to the 8th Southland Company of the 2nd Otago Infantry Battalion as a private.
Soon after Roderique and the rest of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force were sent to France - but his military file is silent on what happened to him there.
Unlike McLean and Hill, there were no field promotions, no reports of valorous deeds. That isn’t to say Roderique was a bad soldier: equally, there are no blemishes on his record, no reported run-ins with the military authorities.
Until March 3 that is.
MARCH 3
Did the three men know each other?
McLean and Hill, quite possibly, as brother officers engaged in the same task of keeping the Otago Regiment fed, watered and supplied.
Roderique? In an army with plenty of privates he may have come to the notice of McLean or Hill, or he may not: the board of inquiry is silent on the point.
Of the six witnesses interviewed, Private Alexander Ballantyne was first to see Roderique: their paths crossed at 8.30 and at 9, and Roderique "seemed to be in his normal state of mind.’’
Sergeant Sim also saw Roderique at 9 and saw nothing untoward; Private George Turnbull was there too, and recalled laughing and joking with Roderique.
The timeline then becomes confused: none of the witnesses agree when Roderique started shooting.
However, it is clear Duncan McLean was the first man killed.
Hondeghem resident Suzanne Lobbedez was the sole witness to see Roderique with both McLean and Hill.
She saw Roderique point a revolver at McLean then follow him, before seemingly losing sight of the pair. Sim and Turnbull - both in the stable - did not see Roderique kill McLean, but both heard the fatal shot.
However, Sim obviously had a suspicion of what had happened, as he then looked about for Roderique before heading to the quartermaster stores - where he thought the private might be heading.
Indeed he was: Lobbedez saw Roderique running in that direction. She followed, intending to warn Hill. As she did, Hill emerged from his office and walked into the stores - where he was confronted by Roderique. The accounts of Lobbedez and Ballantyne - who was in the stores putting away brushes - tally.
Roderique asked Hill if he was going to send him back to the trenches: Hill’s answer was "Get back to your work’’ - and Roderique shot him in the head.
Ballantyne then rushed Roderique, but Roderique was able to fatally shoot himself with the revolver before he could be disarmed.
"He was a private so he shouldn’t have had a side arm,’’ Southland historian Iain Davidson, who has researched the tragic affair, said.
"No-one knows where he got it from. It may have been a souvenired German one, but you can only guess about that . . . A lot of this is guesswork, but it’s educated guesswork.’’
THE AFTERMATH
A court of inquiry was convened that day, and on March 6 it made the terse finding that Pte Roderique had killed Captain Hill and Lieutenant McLean.
The issue of why was not recorded, if it was even raised at all.
"It was unprecedented: there were some incidents like this in the British army but not in the New Zealand army,’’ Davidson said.
"Avon Roderique, I’m pretty sure he was just fed up: he had had enough of the war. He had had a brother [Sylvester] killed and another brother [Maurice] badly injured at Gallipoli.
"He’d probably seen a lot of sights that we would never experience, and every man has got his limit.’’
The officers were buried at Hondeghem Cemetery on March 4, and they remain there today - a Kiwi curiosity in a tiny French cemetery.
Duncan McLean
Duncan McLean made it home to Killearnan just a few weeks before his death: the Ross-shire Journal obituary reported his visit was to see his aged and infirm parents.
The paper quotes a letter from the regimental chaplain David Herron to Donald McLean: "Just a few days ago he had been offered the position of Transport Officer of the brigade with the rank of Captain, but evidently his service in this work was finished and God took him to other work through the thin film which we call death.’’
Donald McLean died in Killearnan in 1922 and his wife Anne soon after. Duncan McLean’s brother John had died in infancy, and his sister Annie died in nearby Parkton in 1941.
Roland Hill
Like so many other families, the Hills were torn to shreds by World War 1: Roland’s younger brother Harold was killed in October 1918 and two brothers-in-law were also killed.
Two sisters also died, one of the flu and one in an air raid, and Roland’s mother also died around this time: the strain saw Justus Hill stop painting and eventually be sent to an asylum, where he died in 1924.
Meanwhile in Dunedin, Catherine Hill received a letter from Mr Herron dated March 4, which explained her husband had been "shot dead by a mess cart driver who was clearly deranged’’.
The letter is very similar in places to the letter Mr Herron wrote to Duncan McLean’s parents - it was no doubt his sad duty to write hundreds of such letters.
"The tragedy has cast a gloom over the whole battalion,’’ Mr Herron wrote.
"As you may readily judge from the way in which he received promotion from one rank to another during the time he has been here Captain Hill was one of the ablest officers in the battalion. More than that, he was one of the most popular.’’
Capt Hill was honoured in his adopted home town later in 1918. The Otago Daily Times reported on September 25 that "A ceremonial parade was held last night in the Kensington Drill Hall for the purpose of allowing his Excellency the Governor-General [Lord Liverpool] to present medals either to those who had won them or to the relatives of men who had gone west without receiving the honours which were their due . . . [including] Master Roland Justice Hill, Carroll St, Dunedin, son of the late Captain Roland Justice Hill, for "distinguished service in the field’’.
Roland junior died in 1969: his sole child moved to Australia and his descendants live in Perth.
His sister Phyllis married and had two daughters. One died childless in Oamaru, the other had four children, and her descendants may still live in Otago. Catherine Hill remarried, and died in 1963.
Avon Roderique
Young when he enlisted, Avon Roderique died unmarried and childless.
Roderique is not an uncommon name in Southland. There are plenty of them in the phone book, and almost all of them spoken to for this story had heard of Avon Roderique - and what he did - but had few details to share.
That wasn’t reticence: while they knew the basic story, its details have seemingly not been passed down the generations.
However, they did not condemn Avon Roderique - and, possibly, neither did his community.
Although Roderique’s military record has "Ineligible for medals, etc’’ written in large red letters across the top, Southland still honoured the fact that Avon Roderique served King and Country: his name is on war memorials in Invercargill, Riverton and Colac Bay.
Either no-one knew the story - or everyone knew the story and chose to ignore it.
Possibly, just possibly, Roderique’s community decided the tragic affair was the act of a young man who had gone to war, and whose mind rebelled at having to see and do battle again.
A hundred years on, no evidence remains . . . just documents, stories and tantalising questions.
(Research by Bryce Horrell, Iain Davidson and Maggie Petch was of great assistance in writing this story.)
