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Frederick George Rundle
Sometimes you can look at something a hundred times and not really see it, and then one day a detail leaps out, and suddenly you’re struck by the intrigue of it all. This is what happened while I was walking through the village of St Mabyn during the UK lockdown, and for some reason on that particular day, a name on the war memorial stood out to me:
‘PRIVATE G. RUNDLE, NEW ZEALAND RIFLES’
Now, St Mabyn is a small village in North Cornwall. It’s very rural, and not known for being multicultural. In fact, it’s not really known for much at all. More to the point, it is almost as far away as it is possible to be from New Zealand. (In fact, if you were to dig a hole from St Mabyn, straight through the earth, you would poke your head out into the ocean, somewhat seaward from a town called Papatowai on New Zealand’s South Island.)
After spotting that a New Zealand soldier was commemorated on this unassuming village memorial, I did some digging (not literally!), and found that Private G. Rundle was in fact buried in the village cemetery, not far from the memorial itself. His name was Frederick George Rundle, and his grave states that he was a Private in the Wellington Regiment, who died aged 26, in 1917. So, what was a New Zealand soldier doing so far from home? Why are his details different on the war memorial and his grave, which lies metres from the memorial? There were already so many questions, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to answer any of them.
Fortunately, thanks to Auckland Museum’s excellent online cenotaph, I was able to access Private Rundle’s military records, and was blown away with the scale of them – there was document after document, and all free to access. If you’ve ever tried to research a WW1 soldier in the UK, you’ll know that many of the first world war military records were destroyed during the Blitz, and in-depth details of individual soldiers are few and far between. But the documents for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force seem to be both available and extremely detailed. It seems that Frederick George had been a blacksmith employed by ‘Lankshear of Colyton’ before joining up, and that he lived in Grassmere in Fielding, on New Zealand’s North Island.
I was able to find out that his Sister, Mildred, also lived at Grassmere, whereas his father, John Rundle, who was listed as his next of kin, lived in a house called Longstone, next to a small hamlet of the same name just outside of St Mabyn – suddenly, there was the Cornish connection! I took a look at the UK census records which showed that in 1891 John Rundle was also a blacksmith, living with his wife Christiana and their two children, Mildred and Frederick. So, there he was - Frederick George was a local boy, who grew up in Cornwall, and emigrated to New Zealand as a young man.
Next, I set out to find when Mildred and Frederick had travelled to New Zealand. Passenger lists showed that Mildred had travelled from Plymouth to Wellington in 1911, and that Frederick had followed two years later, in 1913. Perhaps they had relatives out there, or perhaps Mildred had gone as part of an assisted emigration scheme, such as the British Women's Emigration Association, which was one of many organisations set up during the Victorian era to help young women ‘of good character’ to find employment (and a husband!) in the Colonies. Their new home, Grassmere, appears to be a large estate on the river on the Colyton border. From newspaper articles of the time found on the Papers Past website, Grassmere seems like an idyllic country estate, where garden parties and fetes were held in the splendour of the gardens, which reportedly included an underground fernery, accessed through a short tunnel. Perhaps Mildred was in service for the family, while her brother was smithing in the next settlement over. Perhaps she had fitted in well in her placement at Grassmere and had paved the way for her brother to follow when a smith was required on a nearby farm. I can only imagine the excitement they each must have felt at the prospect of leaving their small Cornish village to seek adventure and opportunity on the other side of the world.
St Mabyn, 2020
However, about a year after Frederick embarked for New Zealand, the First World War broke out. Frederick’s military records show that he had made a previous attempt to join the forces, most likely in Britain. Perhaps his motivation for wishing to join up was not entirely due to a sense of patriotic duty, but rather a desire to see the world, to get away from a life which a young man such as Frederick may have considered to be unexciting and dull against the irresistible promise of adventure and comradeship. The first time he had tried to join the military he was refused on the grounds of a speech impediment due to a cleft palate, but his attempt to enlist in the NZEF (New Zealand Expeditionary Force) at Trentham in January 1915 was a success. I haven’t been able to find a photograph of Frederick George, but his medical form tells us that on enlistment he was 24 years and 2 months old, he was 5ft 6 ½” tall, with dark blue eyes and brown hair, a fresh complexion and no distinguishing marks. After being found fit for service, he began his training in Egypt. Although he may not have realised it, what a turning point this was to be in his life.
Shortly after his training, he joined 'B' Company, 4th reinforcements, in the 1st Battalion, Wellington Regiment, and was sent to the Dardanelles – better known as Gallipoli. What a baptism of fire for a young blacksmith from Cornwall! We can only imagine what a terrible experience it was for him. Plenty has been written about the Gallipoli campaign, but for a more detailed account about another New Zealander who fought at Gallipoli, I can recommend this article from History Geek NZ.
What happened next is a bit vague unfortunately, but it seems that Frederick was wounded on the 9th June 1915, and a month later, on the 11th July, he was at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, where he was admitted to the 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station with ‘Nervous Exhaustion’ – which today we’d recognise as PTSD or Shell Shock.
Conditions at Anzac Cove are well known to have been gruelling and unsanitary. Disease was rife, and to make matters worse for Frederick, on the 18th July, he disembarked at Malta and was immediately hospitalised with Enteric (Typhoid) fever. He was admitted to the military hospital at Mtarfa with ‘Enteric fever with lesions’ – a sign that his Typhoid had gone untreated for many weeks. It wasn’t until September that he was brought back to the UK and taken to the 1st London General Hospital at St Gabriel’s College, Camberwell. New Zealand newspaper reports in September of that year state that Frederick was both ‘ill and wounded’. Interestingly, his Army medical records state that he had been inoculated against Typhoid after he enlisted.
Nurses and patients on a ward at Grey Towers Convalescent Hospital, 1918.
Photo from Wikipedia.
On the 11th January 1916, exactly one year after his enlistment, Frederick was moved to Grey Towers Convalescent Hospital – a Victorian Gothic mansion, purchased by the Army Council and adapted as a military hospital for New Zealand troops. In May of that year he was moved to Addington Park War Hospital at Croydon, Surrey, which specialised in infectious diseases, such as Typhoid. The average period of treatment lasted six to eight weeks. In July Frederick was taken back to Grey Towers, and by August 1916 he was deemed well enough to be moved to the depot at Codford to recuperate before joining the reserve group at the infantry training units at Sling Camp, in Bulford, Wiltshire, where reinforcements and recovering casualties like Fred were retrained. (Interestingly, Sling Camp is also the home of the Bulford Kiwi.)
Frederick had already been through so much: wounded at Gallipoli, Typhoid Fever, and mental trauma, all within mere weeks of each other. Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come.
In October of 1916 he re-joined his battalion, who by now were on the Western Front. The Somme is synonymous with mud, blood and slaughter, and while the first ‘big push’ came in July, the campaign continued until November. One nightmarish month after arriving in France, Frederick was wounded in action, suffering multiple gunshot wounds and a fractured skull. The records tell us he was wounded on the 11th November and taken by New Zealand Field Ambulance to the 1st Casualty clearing station, before being taken to No. 7 General Hospital (known as Malassises Hospital), a base hospital in St Omer, two days later. Frederick was admitted to the 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station on the 21st November, and once again, the newspapers reported Frederick’s condition – this time the Otago Daily Times stated that he was ‘Dangerously ill’.
Notice in the Otago Daily Times in November 1916, reporting that Frederick George Rundle was dangerously ill. Image from Papers Past.
Frederick was dangerously ill for some time, and was taken to King George hospital in London on the 15th January 1917. King George Hospital was reportedly the largest hospital in the UK at the time, but had actually started out as a stationery warehouse which was commandeered for the war effort in 1914. As a stationery warehouse, the specially built tunnels transported stock and supplies from Waterloo Station. As a hospital, these same tunnels transported badly wounded and mutilated men out of sight of the general public.
On the 25th January 1917, ten days after his admittance to King George Hospital, Frederick died of his wounds. Just a few days later he was buried in St Mabyn, the village where he was born and raised. It’s hard to believe that so much had happened to him during the few years since he was last there.
His records mention that Frederick wore 6 wound stripes, meaning he had been wounded six times during his service, and 2 blue service chevrons, which are awarded for each 12 months of overseas service. He was posthumously awarded the 14/15 star, British war medal, Victory Medal (known as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred), which were sent to his sister at Grassmere in 1923. It’s unclear how long Mildred stayed in New Zealand after her brother’s death, the only sign of her is an article in the Fielding Star, a New Zealand newspaper, in March 1918, reporting that Miss Rundle and a Miss Lankshear had won the young ladies’ race at a fun day at Colyton School. I like this glimpse into her life as a young woman, trying to put on a smile and carry on, although like so many others, she must have been grieving terribly. Although I have attempted to find out more about Mildred’s life, it doesn’t seem as if she ever married, and the trail goes cold until her death in 1964. She is buried in the cemetery at St Mabyn, along with Frederick and their parents. I’ve been unable to find any living relatives so I’m grateful that I was able to tell their story, and I hope that if there is anyone out there looking for details about Fred or Mildred, this will be helpful to them.
Frederick appears as Private G. Rundle on the village memorial in St Mabyn, and is also remembered at the New Zealand memorial in Hyde Park Corner, in London.
St Mabyn War Memorial, 2020
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to answer the question as to why Frederick’s details differ on the war memorial and his gravestone. The village memorial which first caught my eye states: ‘PRIVATE G. RUNDLE, NEW ZEALAND RIFLES’. Why G for George and not F for Frederick? There is a Cornish custom of using a middle name as a chosen name, but I can’t find any evidence of this being the case here – in fact, Frederick had given his name on the passenger list to New Zealand as ‘Fred Rundle’. And although the words ‘New Zealand’ on the memorial did catch my eye, I’ve found nothing to suggest he ever served in the New Zealand Rifles – he is listed as belonging to the Wellington Infantry Regiment or the 1st Battalion Wellington Regiment (which is stated on his gravestone just metres away). I believe that the memorial at St Mabyn was erected sometime in the 1920’s, and Frederick’s parents, John and Christiana, were living nearby at the time, so I would imagine that if there were any mistakes, John and Christiana would have realised and corrected them at the time. If anyone has any information which might shed light on this, or any other information about this story, please get in touch, I'd love to hear from you.
If you enjoyed this, you might like to read the story of Ted and Geoff Hodge, here.