What the Carnage of Gallipoli did to the Australian Typewriter Mechanic Malv Vail

Anzac, The Landing 1915, by George Lambert

“Tell me, when we read the story

Will your name be written there?”

-       Malv Vail, Narrabri, New South Wales, October 1916

Yesterday, at the time of an extremely ruthless and cruel war being waged in Europe by a mad, bloodthristy Russian mongrel dog, tens of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders marched to remind us of the absolute senselessness of war. This was on Anzac Day, April 25, marking the day in 1915 when the shores of Gallipoli in Turkey were left saturated by the wasted blood of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps soldiers.

One of the Australians caught up in the fruitless bloodlust of Gallipoli was a Melbourne typewriter mechanic, Malvern William Knight Vail, who was still just 21 when he joined the First Australian Imperial Force on November 28, 1914, three months after the force was formed following Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. Malv was assigned as a private to the 2nd Reinforcement, 7th Infantry Battalion, in January 1915, and left his home city for military training in Egypt early the next month.

Malv survived Gallipoli, but he was never the same man again. His mind would forever after be a mess. Admittedly, by the time he enlisted, he had already embarked on a nomadic life, and not one that was always straight. He’d had a sad upbringing; Malv lost his mother when he was six, and his father soon after abandoned eight children to Malv’s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth. In 1913, while a 20-year-old manager of the Underwood Typewriter Company’s branch office in Townsville, North Queensland, Malv fiddled the till and hocked one of the company’s typewriters. Then, in March 1914, while working for the Underwood manager in Brisbane, A.L. Simmonds, Malv stole another typewriter, worth £35. By April he had reached Sydney, where he was apprehended. He was given a six-months suspended sentence. Before returning home to enlist for military duty at Malvern, the Melbourne suburb after which he was named, Malv was advertising his typewriter repair and overhaul services in Bathurst. The temptation of the demon drink was the cause of his pre-war trouble, so signing up to serve overseas no doubt seemed a good idea at the time.

It didn’t turn out that way. In the thick of things at Gallipoli, Marv suffered shell shock (now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD). Now it needs to be borne in mind that men who suffered from shell shock at Gallipoli, and there were many, were not considered to be among the casualties of war; more often than not, indeed, they were accused of being malingerers. By May 1922, attitudes to shell shock had begun to change, and to become more enlightened. The Melbourne Argus reported, “Among the thousands of cases which have been dealt with by the Repatriation Department, none have presented greater difficulty than those of men who, as a result of the strain of war, have been classified on their return to civil life as neurasthenics [characterised by a persistent and distressing complaint of increased fatigue after mental effort, or persistent and distressing complaints of bodily weakness and exhaustion after minimal effort]. These men might have been shell shocked, gassed, or weakened by trench fever, and they have returned to Australia bundles of nerves, shattered and debilitated. Realising that this class of war derelict was unfitted to be turned on to the labour market to compete with normal healthy workmen, the department [is] determined to give them an opportunity of recovering their strength of body and mind.”

In his talk “The broken years: Thousands of shell-shocked Diggers left to suffer in silence”, given at the University of Sydney in August 2015, respected American historian Jay Winter said, “Mentally unwell soldiers were often regarded as malingerers during World War I and never received help for their injuries. There has been a silence lasting a century about the extent to which the soldiers of World War I suffered psychological injury. In part, this arose out of the stigma attached to mental illness. A contributory factor was the relatively undeveloped diagnostic skills of doctors confronted with a mixture of disorders that many tended to treat as malingering.

“Some doctors didn't believe in shell shock, preferring the term malingering. Under-reporting tended to understate the proportion of the wounded who suffered from psychological or neurological injury, with those in charge preferring to believe soldiers were manipulating the system to save their necks. And some soldiers did do precisely that. For a cluster of reasons, the medical profession created a silent protective box around shell shock … No one would seriously doubt that what happened on the Somme or at Verdun or at Gallipoli at times was matched in ferocity by later battles, in Normandy, Monte Cassino or during the Battle of the Bulge. And yet casualty statistics for World War II and for later conflicts report psychological casualties at levels from five to 20 times higher than those in World War I … Not that shell-shocked men couldn't admit what had happened to them.”

Malv Vail did freely admit to shell shock, at Gallipoli and afterwards. Eventually, after regular visits to the medical tent – he was wounded early in the August Offensive - it was decided Malv was unfit for further fighting. He was also one of 60,000 Australian soldiers who contracted venereal disease in World War I. Malv was returned to duty in Egypt in late November 1915, but was shipped back to Australia from Suez on January 29, 1916, aboard the Suffolk. He arrived home as a lance-corporal, among the “sick and wounded”, in Melbourne on February 21, 1916, and was discharged, medically unfit, on June 11, 1916. Yet Malv wasn’t done with war, not yet, not in his own mind. While quickly resuming his typewriter work in various parts of New South Wales, he joined the Narrabri military camp staff, pretty much as a recruiter, calling up what he dubbed the “Hughesites”. The term identified supporters of Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes (who used a Corona portable typewriter, by the way). Hughes was a strong supporter of compulsory war service, since after the catastrophe of Gallipoli, recruiting more Aussie lambs for the slaughter had become a major problem. But under the Defence Act 1903, the Government could not send conscripts overseas - they could only fight on Australian soil. With the topic of compulsory war service dividing the country, Hughes took the issue to a referendum. The October 28, 1916, referendum was defeated, with 51.6 per cent of 2.3 million voters against conscription and 48.4 per cent in favour of it.

Malv Vail, who became attached to the Defence Department in his spare time, was one of those trying to maintain the numbers of men needed to fight Britain’s war. Yet Malv himself was rejected in his bid to resume active military duty, on the grounds of shell shock. He tried to enlist at the Royal Agricultural Showgrounds in Sydney on December 1, 1916, and was assigned to the Depot Signal Training Company four days later. But on March 7, 1917, he was discharged as medically unfit. His file was marked, “Not due to misconduct.” Meanwhile, Malv carried on his typewriter trade, advertising under the heading “Help a Returned Soldier”. He remained in Narrabri even after the military camp was abandoned and in late October 1916, Malv wrote and recited at the Narrabri School of Arts this moving piece of poetry:

Malv roamed around New South Wales and Queensland, advertising his typewriter services wherever he went. His modus was to first offer to overhaul the typewriters at the local newspaper office in each town and getting a little bit of free publicity in return – usually it lauded his typewriter skills. Between 1917-20 he was in Bathurst, Coonabarabran, Grafton, Inverell, Dubbo, Murwillumbah, Kyogle, Glenn Innes, Lismore (where he even set up a company), Tamworth, Toowoomba, Dalby, Warwick and Bundaberg. In later years he worked in Victoria and South Australia, including Hay, Broken Hill, Mildura, Kadina and Port Pirie. He had married in Casino in 1917 and twin sons were born there. But Malv was soon in trouble with the law again, for desertion and not providing child support. He was also up to his old tricks in 1922, illegally obtaining a Royal typewriter from the Sisters of Mercy in Armidale.

Malv continued his wandering life in the typewriter business throughout the 1930s before returning to Melbourne in 1943. He then tried the Northern Territory, setting up his service in Darwin and Alice Spring from 1949-54. By 1968, aged 75, he was living at the Eventide Home in Sandgate, Brisbane. He died at the Prince Charles Hospital in Chermside, Brisbane, in late May 1978, aged 84, and is buried at the Mount Gravatt Cemetery.