George Wallace Bollinger, Anzac soldier

George Wallace Bollinger (1890–1917): soldier

The diary that Bollinger kept from the time he left Wellington on 16 October 1914 documents superbly the experiences and shifting attitudes of a New Zealand soldier during the Gallipoli campaign. At first there is unqualified enthusiasm for battle, expressed in his desire for a 'brush-up' with the 'niggers' of Cairo and his excitement at departing for the Dardanelles. But when he lands on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the early morning of 26 April 1915 and faces the smells and the flies and the constant presence of death on a Turkish hillside, Bollinger's attitude changes. He is openly joyful to be relieved from the trenches at Cape Helles in early May, and he comments that the heroic images of war in the New Zealand newspapers serve to conceal the ghastly reality. When he returns to the peninsula in mid-August, after a month recovering from gastritis in Egypt, he is 'very quiet', and by the time he is evacuated to Moúdhros Bay on 15 September, he has become bitter about mismanagement and the betrayal of his mates' self-sacrifice.

Back in New Zealand the following year, Bollinger, whose father was Bavarian, was investigated by the Defence Department following complaints from anti-German campaigners.