The man the army couldn’t tame

For many Kiwis, World War I was a chance to serve their country with pride and discipline. Fight the common enemy, and obey orders.

Some, however, gave the army nightmares.

Measuring the Anzacs, a project aiming to transcribe thousands of Great War files, reveals George McNicholl of Christchurch to be one such man.

McNicholl’s 70-page file reveals a chequered career of service, prison, escapes from prison and eventually an untimely and accidental death.

A bootmaker and farmhand, McNicholl walked into the Timaru Defence Office on May 11, 1916 and enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, age 20.

Details of Private George McNicholl’s combat service are scarce, although they do include a diagnosis of neurasthenia, linked to shell shock.

In contrast, details of his misdemeanours and ‘‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline’’ are not scarce.

The Cantabrian embarked from Wellington on July 26, 1916. After several months in England, he was transferred to France. Quite quickly, he was sentenced to 60 days’ Field Punishment No. 2 for disobeying a lawful command.

This penalty involved a soldier being handcuffed and fettered, while allowed to march with his unit, in McNicholl’s case the 2nd Canterbury Regiment.

In February 1917, McNicholl was again in trouble, this time sentenced to nine months’ hard labour at Prison Les Attaques in Calais.

He escaped, reappearing in hospital in September under the name of Reeves, an Australian private. He later claimed to be a Private Rouse. Confusion reigned in the army bureaucracy when his true identity was revealed. Meantime he was running up bills for losing his kit, including his greatcoat.

An almost plaintive note on his file suggests he be returned to New Zealand ‘‘by the earliest possible steamer’’.

Trawling through McNicholl’s records, it is at times hard to keep up with his escapades.

In June 1918, he was admitted to No. 39 General Hospital in Le Havre for neurasthenia, which caused temporary paralysis of his legs.

In October, a Medical Board deemed McNicholl unfit for punishment and military service of any kind in France, and he was shipped back to England.

On November 11, the Armistice was declared. But McNicholl’s private war against authority was far from over.

On January 2, 1919, he was ordered detained at Sling Camp in Wiltshire for misconduct issues. McNicholl had other ideas. On February 14 he was apprehended almost 150 kilometres away in London, in possession of a fake leave pass and masquerading as a sergeant.

With no intention of facing a court martial, he escaped his cell at Sling Camp and returned to London, another fake leave pass in hand.

He was quickly recaptured, only to escape again. On March 31 he was sentenced to a year’s hard labour.

Days after the Treaty of Versailles was signed on July 28, 1919, McNicholl underwent a medical examination and was cleared to be discharged from duty.

Things were looking up. He was told if he behaved himself on the return sailing to New Zealand, any existing sentence would be wiped.

But while on the troopship Ayrshire near Panama, he was lost overboard. The army ruled ‘‘death being due to misadventure with no blame attributable to anybody’’.

A decade later, his father had a memorial plaque made, and George McNicholl’s name appears on the Canterbury Provincial Memorial at Ruru Lawn Cemetery in Christchurch.

But behind the engravings is a larger-than-life larrikin, whose story can be told thanks to the Measuring the Anzacs volunteers.