The truth as they saw it
It is a thoroughly good thing that a Southland soldier’s letter that was sneaked past the World War 1 censors from Passchendaele is now illuminated for historical purposes.
It is the truth, as railway clerk Private Leonard Hart saw it, of the experience. Which makes it a far different perspective from the official accounts and edited letters that came home at the time.
We now know, of course, that its descriptions and assessments were accurate and, to that extent, may simply be seen as telling us little we didn’t already know. But two things can be added to that.
Hart’s 40 page letter, which had been entrusted to a fellow soldier bound for England, is usefully representative of the accounts that were – not easily, but occasionally – coming back home containing information that ran contrary to the official lines.
And, simply in its own terms, it contains some cracking writing that deserves to be told.
Spotlit as it now is, among the WW100 centennial projects, it stands among other contemporary accounts. From a southern perspective, Hart’s writing deserves to be seen in the honourable company of that of a far more elevated southern soldier, Gore’s Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Bowler, whose letters home from Gallipoli were sent from such a high-ranking, and highly connected officer that he was able to be unguarded.
While Hart wrote ‘‘the papers will report another glorious success and no one except those who actually took part will know any different’’, Bowler was similarly lamenting that the press ‘‘contains awful lies about our success’’.
Bowlers initial letters home had spoken of striking a blow for the Empire and fighting ‘‘the unspeakable Turk’’ – but soon enough turned into accounts of ‘‘a very gallant foe’’ and the whole campaign a show bedevilled by ‘‘spineless mismanagement’’. Convalescing in England he quietly campaigned at high level for a withdrawal from Gallipoli, for which he was just as quietly ostracised.
The WW100 campaign seeks to draw instructive connections between the realities of wartime censorship and modern ‘‘fake news’’ issues.
In some ways the truth was there to be seen for Southland readers during the war. It was there in the horrific casualty lists published and read with such collective dread. The Southland Times stories and editorials went from early acknowledgements of a paucity of information to railing against ‘‘the usual military euphemism’’.
Bowler’s biographer, Frank Glen, noted that on his return home to a well-regarded legal practice, Bowler retreated into silence about his experiences, in common with so many others.
As for connections that might be drawn between this and modern realities, the obvious difference is the sheer volume of information out there, as opposed to the lack of it.
Hart and Bowler’s writings were for loved ones. Perhaps, to the extent that they were whistleblowers, they knew their whistles weren’t capable of making all that much noise in a community that didn’t necessarily have ears to hear.
Nowadays, so many whistles are being blown all over the place, the challenge is more to detect, in the midst of the cacophony, the ones that ring true.