Woman wins war diary fight
‘‘It’s home.’’
For Stoke woman Margaret Kearns, Tuesday marked the end of 44 years of waiting for the return of her father’s World War I diary.
In 1974, Hartley Palmer took the diary from Richmond to Blenheim, to speak with visiting English historian Peter Liddle. Palmer agreed to lend Liddle the diary, which contained a fourmonth account of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign, but never saw it again. Until his death in 1987, Palmer had tried in vain to get it returned.
At an official ceremony at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington on Tuesday, the memorabilia of Palmer and two other New Zealand soldiers were brought home.
The items had been part of a collection at Leeds University in Britain, after Liddle sold them to the university.
Before the ceremony, Kearns, along with her two brothers and sister-in-law, had the opportunity to see the diary for the first time in 44 years.
She said it was a huge sense of relief to get it back.
‘‘It felt like it was closure – it’s back where it should have been, as far as I’m concerned.
‘‘I’d seen it before, I’d held it when I was little, but it was something Dad never really talked about – he would have been pleased to see it back.’’
At the ceremony, Kearns spoke on behalf of the families on what it meant to see the items returned.
‘‘We were only expecting 20 or 30 people, but there were over 100 that turned up,’’ she said.
‘‘Afterwards, the people who came forward and spoke to me, it was overwhelming, just to thank me for doing what I had.
‘‘A lot of the people I spoke to didn’t realise all this stuff had gone on overseas, until we stirred the pot a bit.’’
For years, Palmer’s family had believed the diary was lost to them, before a Nelson genealogy group discovered it was in the university’s collection.
Kearns said the university initially agreed to send the family a digital copy of the diary, as it did not want to part with the physical copy.
Last year Kearns spoke to the Nelson Mail about her campaign to get the diary returned. The cause was picked up by the then arts, culture and heritage minister Maggie Barry, and in May it was confirmed that the diary would come home.
Palmer kept the diary in a small French notebook he had bought in Cairo, and it accompanied him throughout his time in the trenches. ‘‘I had a mate who was writing in diaries, so I bought one and thought I would write one, too,’’ he wrote.
The diary will be held at the Alexander Turnbull Library, and along with the other items will be digitised and added to the online collection.