A tragic history added to by a death from the front
WILLIAM Pennycook died in a manner that came to be seen as characteristic of New Zealand commanders in both world wars — leading from the front.
That’s not a bragging nationalistic view, but one borne out by both contemporary anecdotes and later academic study. It was not for New Zealand senior officers to sit back in safety and direct their troops in areas they could neither see nor know. Wayne Stack, in a doctoral thesis on a distinctive style of New Zealand command, wrote: ‘‘By being so close to the fighting, the battalion commanders could provide inspiration and confidence to the men under their command, but it also increased risks to their personal safety.’’
That philosophy cost William Scott Pennycook, Scottishborn 45yearold owner of the Clutha Leader newspaper in Balclutha, his life.
Pennycook, recently promoted lieutenantcolonel and only four days back in France from a lengthy period of treatment in Britain on a wrist shattered by a bullet, was killed by machinegun fire while leading the 2nd Battalion of the Otago Regiment during the Battle of Bapaume, one of the war’s last decisive battles. The author of the Otago regimental history, Arthur Byrne, thought Pennycook might have been further forward than his rank and prudence required:
‘‘It might be suggested that he had gone much further than in his capacity of battalion commander there was actual necessity for him to have done; but certainly under the heavy fire which he encountered when the enemy attacked he displayed fine coolness and selfpossession until his end came.’’
Pennycook’s batman saw there was no hope when his officer went down, and withdrew, but later went back to retrieve the body: ‘‘It was raining in torrents and pitch dark,’’ the batman wrote to Pennycook’s paper, ‘‘and Fritz was sweeping the road with indirect fire. I tried till midnight, but it was no good so a runner named Gibbs and I went out this morning at daylight and we got him in after a trying ordeal. It took us four hours to get him the threequarters of a mile to the cemetery but, thank God, I was spared to complete the task.’’
The first news in Balclutha of such a wellknown man’s death came when his oldest daughter, Ivy, just out of her teens, received a cable from Scotland. She sadly passed on the news and the paper reported: ‘‘Quite a gloom was cast over Balclutha on Friday afternoon when Miss Pennycook received cable advice from Scotland that her father ‘had been killed in action’.’’
In such a closeknit community, background didn’t need to be added to stories; the knowledge was part of the town. Pennycook had been a noted figure in the town since arriving in 1887; he was a regular footballer for the local team and was active in the quasimilitary activities of the time. He went to the Boer War with the 10th Contingent, the one that arrived in South Africa to find the war had ended.
Daughter Ivy was well used to family tragedy. The reason she received the cable advising of her father’s death was that by then, she was the senior child, older brother Robert having left home to be a telephone engineer. Their mother Katherine had died when their 10room family home was burnt to the ground in 1907. Katherine and William had woken when the house was well alight and were stopped from getting to the rooms of their four children because of the flames. Pennycook got out through a window, telling his wife to follow. He then reentered in a different part of the house and got each of the children out, but could not find his wife. It was only in the morning that Katherine’s body was found.
Pennycook married again two years later, to Mabel Graham, a daughter of Isabella and Andrew Graham. Isabella was from a Romahapa family and Graham worked for the Railways Department and had served as stationmaster at Balclutha, among other places. (By the time of Pennycook’s death in 1918, Graham was in Wellington and returned to Balclutha for a few months to oversee the management of the Clutha Leader and prepare the company for sale).
Pennycook and his new wife had two more children, a boy in 1910 and a girl in 1913, and he left Balclutha for war in March 1915. Barely six months later, when Pennycook was at sea on a troopship, his second wife also fell victim to a house fire.
Thirteenyearold Jack told the inquest he was woken at about 1 o’clock in the morning by his stepmother’s screams. He raced into the dining room where he found Mabel standing by the fire, her nightdress enveloped in flames. Jack wrapped a rug around her in an effort to extinguish the flames, then he and Ivy, then 18, got Mabel outside and rolled her in the grass, which put the flames out. They got her back inside and called a doctor but she died during the following day.
The anguish for fardistant Pennycook can be imagined. He cabled Ivy and said he could not return but that he would ensure care was provided, which it was. He also had a lawyer serving with the Otago Mounted Rifles draw up legal documents providing for the children’s welfare and also altered his will.
The war went on. Pennycook went from command to command, was mentioned in dispatches by the overall British commander, Douglas Haig, and at one time while in England was made commanding officer of the New Zealand Provost Corps. This was when he was recovering from the wrist wound. He also found time to get married again, this time to 33yearold Margaret Millar. The service took place at her residence in Couper Angus, west of Dundee and not far from Longforgan, where Pennycook had been born in 1872. The marriage took place on June 28. Pennycook had 56 days of life left.
He wrote and told Ivy that she and the other children had a new mother and that Margaret was looking forward to meeting her new family. In early 1919, her father dead, Ivy set about making that happen. She wrote to the New Zealand Shipping Company, and was told probable costs to get herself and the three youngest children to Scotland. Aware of the circumstances, the company told her of the possibility of ‘‘indulgent’’ passages for dependants put in difficult positions because of the war. Thus encouraged, she wrote to the Defence Minister, Sir James Allen, but he had to tell her they no longer applied because the scheme had been administered by the British Admiralty and it did not now have requisitioned passenger liners at its call.
Undeterred, Ivy went ahead anyway and took the three young children to Britain, then returned a year later, and married in 1922. She died in 1954.
The oldest child of the first marriage, Robert Royalston Pennycook, had served in the New Zealand territorials before the war, then trained as a telephone engineer and was working in Illinois when he signed up with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1917. In 1916, he’d married a French woman visiting Chicago, Anna Louise Slaby, who was from Verdun. He survived the war and spent the rest of his life in the United States.