The Silent Division

📖 The Scoop

Twenty-one-year-old teacher Ormond Burton sailed with the New Zealand 1st Field Ambulance to Gallipoli, where as a medic he tended the wounded and dying on bard the Lutzow. He then became a stretcher-bearer closer to the fighting. By May 1916, he was serving on the Western Front and, after a friend was killed in a Spring 1917 offensive, he joined the infantry in his place. He gained a reputation as a gallant soldier, winning both the Military Medal and the French Medaille d'Honneur. He trained as an officer as the war ended. In 1917, Magor-General Sir Andrew Russell asked him to write a short account of the New Zealand Division in the war. The resulting monography, Our Little Bit, was given to every New Zealand soldier at the Armistice. It was later extended and published as a book called The New Zealand Division. He was also asked to write the history of the Auckland Infantry Regiment. Based largely on interviews with the soldiers with whom he fought alongside, it was published in 1924. In 1935, he wrote the last of his war books. The Silent Division was remarkable for its stark realism and eulogies of the sacrifices of the common soldier. By this time, he had become a resolute pacifist after recoiling in horror at the vengeful nature of the Treaty of Versailles. With Archibald Barrington, he formed the New Zealand Christian Pacifist Society in 1936. It was active up to teh early days of the Second World War when CPS activists were imprisoned for proselytising against the war. By now a minister, Burton spent much of the Second World War in prison, and he was expelled from the Methodist Church in 1942. He did a variety of jobs before being readmitted to teh church in 1954, being posted to Otaki where he revitalised the local parish. He died in January 1974, aged 81.

Genre: History / Australia & New Zealand (fancy, right?)