Family view plaque for snubbed WWI officer
A Timaru plaque honouring a WWI officer snubbed after speaking out against Gallipoli, has been visited by family members for the first time, after its official unveiling last year was cancelled because of Covid-19.
Edmund Bowler, then of Gore, left for war on December 14, 1914, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, one of New Zealand’s highest ranking officers, and is believed to be the first member of the New Zealand forces ashore during the landing.
He came home after being sidelined for speaking out about the situation in Gallipoli, calling for New Zealand and Australian troops to be withdrawn, and lived the rest of his life without recognition.
Speaking to Stuff at the Timaru cemetery on Monday where the plaque has been installed on Bowler’s grave, Elizabeth Francis, the wife of Bowler’s grandson, said it would have ‘‘made my mother-inlaw quite beside herself with delight that he’d been recognised in this way’’.
Francis said the fact his brother and niece’s husband were both killed by friendly fire in the same incident at Gallipoli ‘‘may have reflected why he just couldn’t see that they were ever going to capture what they were supposed to capture’’.
Bowler was taken off Gallipoli with illness while the campaign was ongoing and sent to England, where he went straight to the New Zealand High Commissioner ‘‘pointing out all the things that were wrong on Gallipoli and asking that they get all the Australian and New Zealand troops off’’.
‘‘Of course after the war they found he was right, but at the time the British didn’t see it that way, so it was decided that they didn’t want him interfering any longer, and it was a good idea to send him home.
‘‘He wasn’t given any further recognition. He was unwell as a result of happenings during the war. Lots of the men you couldn’t point and say ‘they’ve got a broken leg’, or ‘they’ve got this or that’, but they just weren’t well, and he was one of those people. He decided to retire in Timaru.’’
Bowler’s story came to light through a cache of his letters, which formed the basis for a book on his life called Bowler of Gallipoli: Witness to the Anzac Legend, published in 2004.
Francis said the book came about after she started talking with a neighbour on Anzac Day about the letters Bowler left behind.
‘‘What I didn’t realise was that [the neighbour] was actually the President of the New Zealand Military Historical Society.’’
The neighbour asked to read the letters and ‘‘arrived back a few hours later and said ‘there’s a book in this, there’s a book in this, you’ve got to have a book done’’’.
An author was found, Frank Glen, who suggested that in recognition of Bowler a plaque should be placed on his grave in Timaru. However, Francis said things got in the way.
‘‘Frank died, three months later my husband died, and I sort of inherited the plaque on the grave
and started talking to Ray [Bennett, from the South Canterbury Historical Society]. But in the meantime I had a stroke, and then in the year after that I had a brain seizure.
‘‘It was one of those things that just went on and on.
‘‘We finally got a date, and we got it all arranged, and we were all flying down from Auckland, and the relatives were coming from the south. One was coming from Melbourne.’’
But the date they set in 2020 was the week before the Covid-19 alert level 4 lockdown and the unveiling was cancelled. Francis told Bennett to install the plaque anyway, and on Monday she, and daughter Vicki Parker, travelled to Timaru to see it for the first time.