The Battle of Messines Road is rather a curiosity; a peculiar hybrid interweaving the authentic First World War diary of the author's grandfather, JK Moloney, which he found in the New Zealand National Library, with the entirely fictional story of Zac, a troubled 10-year-old boy charged with reading the account to an ageing soldier in Wellington, New Zealand.
Set in the late 1960s, Zac’s tribulations arise from the absence of his father, who has left home to serve alongside the Americans in Vietnam. He finds comfort in a friendship with the old man who himself finds catharsis in reliving his experiences in the charnel house of Flanders.
The Battle of Messines Road, where Zac lives, alludes to his own battle with fear and grief as well as to the actual battle of Messines in 1917 in which New Zealand soldiers played a major part.
Military history enthusiasts will probably find the interplay between this factual diary account and dramatic storyline jarring at times. But this is not a history book and it sometimes reads more like a screenplay (Peter Jackson take note).
Moloney’s use of fictional licence prompts more interesting consideration of what inspired young men from the outlying territories of the British Empire to travel thousands of kilometres to join the great conflicts of the 20th century, aside from a youthful lust for adventure.
In his diary, JK glories in the “pageant of Empire” represented by the diversity of those gathered under the British flag when he reaches a key staging point in Alexandria. He is a first generation New Zealander who is proud to be part of something bigger.
Elsewhere, upon encountering an ardent Irish nationalist, he says: “I tried to explain to him how we in the colonies had lived in great freedom, protected by the flag ... it was quite beyond him of course.” One suspects this notion to be “quite beyond” the understanding of the current generation, but the history of the Anglosphere in the last century is important in understanding modern day geopolitics.
The dynamics that inspired “the colonials” to join two world wars were in some ways similar to those that explain allied intervention in modern theatres such as Afghanistan.
The introduction of Vietnam, Zac’s father’s war, is an invitation to consider the constants in all wars, so-called “good wars” and so-called “bad wars”: “Soldiers don’t get to pick and choose where they fight,” Zac is told by the old man. “All war is the same” and the courage and selflessness of combatants in a good war is in no way less courageous or selfless in a conflict that has failed to capture public support.
JK’s diary is for the most part relayed in the detached tone typical of a generation that valued understatement and discretion.
Characters ranging from the Prince of Wales (who nearly falls off his startled mount when reviewing a Maori war dance laid on by the New Zealand contingent), to the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George observed from the House of Commons Public Gallery, play bit-parts in a narrative that commences on a New Zealand troop ship bound for France and ends in the Flanders quagmire.
But the book is above all an invitation to remember what is slipping away from public consciousness – to explain to today’s generation (in this case exemplified by young Zac) the reason why medal-bedecked old men huddle around war memorials to the sound of the Last Post each year. It would perhaps make a good classroom set text.
The book is a 12-year labour of love for WJ, a self-confessed “war nerd” who lives in the UAE. Literary or military history purists may take issue with muddying an authentic wartime recollection, but the novel offers a new perspective on the sacrifice of those, as JK puts it, with “a blanket and a few feet of Flanders earth” as their epitaph.
Martin Newland is a regular contributor to The National.
