Operation diary return
As descendants of Kiwi soldiers search for ways to repatriate precious war diaries from a collection held by a UK university, one family share how they achieved it. By Jessica Long.
MURRAY Hunter is sitting at his computer in a wooden house his father helped him build, when an email from Leeds University shows up in his inbox.
It’s December 2008 in Parakao – a small Northland farming community.
Hunter is 75 years old but the message from Leeds prompts clear memories of the day more than 30 years earlier when he took his father, Henry George Hunter, to the local RSA to be interviewed by a British historian.
His father, known as ‘‘George’’, volunteered when the Great War broke out and served for the duration, seeing action on Gallipoli and the Western Front and winning the British Gallantry Medal.
In 1974 he was 85 and ‘‘quite deaf’’ when historian Peter Liddle, visiting New Zealand to research the Gallipoli campaign, requested a one-on-one interview. Murray was not present when his father’s two diaries describing his war experiences were handed over.
That was the last his father saw of them.
It was only through contact with historian Keith Sloane, who was researching his book on George Hunter’s trench mortar unit, that Murray learnt his father’s diaries wound up in the Liddle Collection at Leeds.
‘‘Father was adamant that he had only released them on the understanding they would be returned when Liddle had copied them,’’ he wrote in a stern letter, via email, in September 2008.
From 1974 to George’s death 22 years later, at age 97, the loss of the diaries ‘‘was something that distressed him’’.
Murray Hunter was prepared to seek help from the New Zealand High Commissioner in London, if necessary.
He opens the email from Leeds University Library head of special collections Chris Sheppard.
‘‘I hope you will understand that this places us in a difficult position,’’ Sheppard writes.
In the absence of objective evidence, it would be possible for any interested individual to suggest that a placement was a loan and was to be returned.
‘‘There is a risk not only that we are giving away the university’s legitimate property, but that we are acting contrary to an original donor’s wishes.’’
It came down to one word, ‘‘presenting’’. When Liddle finished a recorded interview with George he thanked him for the presentation of a longtreasured diary and some interesting papers, ‘‘and also of course a diary for 1917’’.
It was the only reference to the events that took place, but it was enough.
Sheppard wrote that the university was ‘‘unable to prove conclusively’’ the placement of material was a gift. ‘‘We feel obliged to surrender the material in this particular case.’’
On February 16, 2009, Murray held his father’s diaries once again after ‘‘a long, drawn-out battle’’.
Murray’s daughter, Susan Hunter, remembers the months she, her mother, father and sister spent at her family home in Mangakahia Valley poring over her grandfather’s diaries. ‘‘Dad was determined to do it.’’ She remembers her grandfather as an elderly gentleman with a strong sense of humour and a stern air. But the diaries, she says, gave her family a deeper connection to him.
With the help of a magnifying glass they were transported back to a time when George was spending his days running ammunition to the front lines – experiences recorded in pencil in small French pocket books.
George had been surveying land in Motueka when he heard war had been declared, and volunteered.
On Gallipoli he lost many friends and contracted dysentery. After recovering in England he went back to the front.
His diary entry from June 7, 1917, gives some idea of the horrors.
One of our planes came down just by us. One of our big shells must have cut a wing off. The two men fell out about a third of the way down. It was horrible to watch them falling.
‘‘I went up to front line with 8000 rounds of SAA [small arms ammunition] this evening. Had a rough trip.’’
It was an understated description for the actions that earned him a decoration for bravery. Other entries tell of coming into contact with chlorine and mustard gas.
‘‘We were issued with the first gas helmets. These were very primitive, just a hood pulled over one’s head. Had to keep still otherwise you were smothered.’’
Susan says these accounts were ‘‘fascinating’’. ‘‘This gap was a huge piece of jigsaw puzzle that had been missing from his [George’s] life.’’
She say the diaries were a family treasure and it is only right that soldiers’ descendants have access to those possessions. ‘‘It’s very sad that other families haven’t got theirs.’’
The ‘‘very short’’ interview with Liddle made Susan feel ‘‘in hindsight that the purpose was to get the material and not so much the stories, the verbal stories.’’
The Liddle Collection contains 14 original New Zealand diaries. Since Sunday News began investigating the Liddle Collection, four families have come forward to express concerns about the circumstances in which their ancestors’ war possessions were taken and have asked for their return.
One of those diaries was kept by Hartley Palmer of Nelson, and its loss has tormented his family for more than 40 years. In 1984 Palmer went public, pleading with Liddle to return his treasured possession, but to no avail.
Now the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Maggie Barry, ‘‘will seek advice from officials’’ in the hope of helping families in their quest.
Barry says she sympathises with them but ‘‘there is no mechanism’’ under the Protected Objects Act (1975), or the Historic Articles Act (1962) to return the diaries.
At the time Liddle visited, the legislation covered only documentary heritage over 90 years old.
The Ministry of Defence and the Alexander Turnbull Library have previously tried to recover the material but failed.
A Leeds University spokesperson said the institution sought to ‘‘uphold and respect the wishes of the original donors’’ and took that duty ‘‘very seriously’’.
‘‘Where we receive requests, it’s our responsibility to ask for clear evidence of rightful ownership before transferring materials.
‘‘It was not unusual for material to be collected from individuals without the type of depositor agreement that we would take for granted in museums and archives today, so we consider each request on a case-by-case basis and examine all evidence very seriously.’’
The university recognised the ‘‘enormous personal significance for the families and descendants’’.
‘‘We therefore make every effort to provide access to the original material, offering digital access and images wherever possible, and endeavour to make material available online to reach the widest audiences around the world. We have no outstanding requests about the ownership of the New Zealand materials.’’
Windsor Jones, collections curator at the National Army Museum in Waiouru, believed it would be possible to get the diaries back.
‘‘It’s obviously a political and difficult beast to deal with,’’ he said.
‘‘Should they be over in Leeds? Probably not, no. But how to get them back is more governmental or between an institution like the Alexander Turnbull Library.’’
A compromise could be met by Leeds University lending the material as an exhibition, Jones said.
‘‘It’s not impossible. If there’s a will there’s a way.’’
‘ This gap was a huge piece of jigsaw puzzle that had been missing from George’s life.’ SUSAN HUNTER