Special Collections

First World War Centenary 2014 — 2018

Menu » Leslie Darrow
Home » Collegians at War » Their Stories » Leslie Darrow
 
Leslie Darrow portrait, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 31-D357.

Sergeant Leslie Rotorua Darrow.
Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 31-D357.

Leslie Darrow

Leslie Rotorua Darrow was one of a small number of Collegians who served as a member of Headquarters staff during the war.1 Headquarters staff were responsible for carrying out administrative tasks such as compiling lists of casualties, sending and receiving orders and filling out field returns. Having proven himself to be a proficient soldier during his time in the Territorial Forces, Darrow was promoted to the role of Orderly Sergeant in the Auckland Infantry Battalion Headquarters. Six months after his promotion he was transferred to the New Zealand Infantry Brigade (NZIB) Headquarters.2

Born on 23 July 1893 in Tararu, Thames, Leslie Rotorua Darrow was the youngest of eight children of James and Clara Darrow.3 Darrow’s father James was a settler from Northern Ireland and a well-known businessman who had success in both the mining and timber industries. Darrow’s mother Clara (nee Taylor) came from a family of English settlers to which former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange can also trace his ancestry.4

Darrow suffered tragedy at a young age when his parents died within a year of one another between 1903 and 1904. Aged 11 at the time, he was placed in the care of one of his elder brothers, Harry Alexander Darrow, a school master at Avondale School.5 After receiving a scholarship, Darrow began his education at Auckland Grammar School in 1907 and was described as a popular pupil with a large circle of friends.6

AUC law timetable 1913

The law lectures on offer in 1913 during Darrow’s third year at AUC.
Auckland University College Calendar for 1913. NZGC 378.95 A89cal. Special Collections, University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services.

Promising start

After leaving Auckland Grammar School in 1910, Darrow matriculated the same year and went on to study Law at Auckland University College (AUC) between 1911 and 1914. He attended lectures part time while working as a law clerk, first with Messrs Alison and Alison and then with solicitor, G.W. Basley. Darrow was a prominent member of the AUC hockey team and was described as someone of a ‘frank, open and genial disposition’.7

At the outbreak of war, Darrow was in his fourth year of his undergraduate degree when he promptly enlisted for service. His military records show that he enlisted on 11 August 1914 as a Private in the Auckland Infantry Battalion (AIB). Described as a competent, efficient and enthusiastic soldier, Darrow had proven himself during his time with the Territorial Forces as a member of the 3rd (Auckland) Regiment.8 He was quickly promoted to the position of Orderly Sergeant in the AIB Headquarters.9

Darrow landed in Egypt in December 1914 aboard HMNZT Waimana or Star of India to commence training with the rest of the Main Expeditionary Force.10 In January 1915 he was transferred as Orderly Sergeant to the NZIB Headquarters, under the command of Major A.C. Temperley.11

Headquarters dugout interior

A Battalion Headquarters dugout at Gallipoli, Turkey 1915.
Australian War Memorial. P02282.037.

`I have had exceptionally good luck so far, and only trust it will stick to me’.

Darrow writing home in a letter published in the King Country Chronicle in July 1915.

‘In the thick of the fighting’

In an excerpt from a letter Darrow wrote to his family in July 1915, he vividly described the commencement of his ‘real active service’ at Gallipoli.

In particular he told of his landing with the NZIB Headquarters staff in the afternoon of 25 April 1915. He wrote, ‘We then moved up the hill to where our battalions were holding the position and a few minutes after our arrival on top a perfect hail of shrapnel rained all round us for almost fifteen minutes. The only casualty to our little lot was one sergeant badly wounded. It was almost the worst quarter of an hour I ever put in, and wished myself anywhere than where I was’.12

Brigade Headquarters staff were often placed in the thick of the fighting and Darrow wrote of the constant danger they faced during their time in the trenches, `Although we were all continually dodging about, only one of our men was hit. It is a marvel not more were caught. I have had exceptionally good luck so far, and only trust it will stick to me’. Among the descriptions of life at the front, Darrow also wrote of the deaths of his friends and fellow Collegians, Walter Grierson and Robert Frater.13

The letter was written while Darrow was in reserve, however it was not long before he returned to the front line to take part in the Sari Bair offensive.

A view of Headquarters dugouts of the New Zealand and Australian Division, Gallipoli, 1915.
Accession No. 1991.587, Kippenberger Military Archive, National Army Museum Te Mata Toa, Waiouru.

Chunuk Bair

By August 1915, months of fighting had worn the Allies down and they had begun looking at alternative strategies to help break the deadlock. It was the ANZAC commander, Lieutenant-General Birdwood, who was to create a plan for breaking through and seizing the heights at Sari Bair range. This task was to fall mainly to the ANZAC troops, along with the British 13th Division, 29th Indian Brigade and part of the 10th (Irish) Division.14

The ANZACs and other allied troops advanced on Chunuk Bair on 8 August 1915. After initial success in gaining ground, the Turkish forces regrouped and the Allies were forced to withdraw.15 It was on the 10th of August, just 18 days after his 22nd birthday, that Darrow was killed.16 In his obituary, published in the August 1916 edition of The Kiwi, it was reported that he was killed instantaneously by a shrapnel pellet.17 He was the only member of the NZIB Headquarters killed during the Sari Bair offensive.18 However, he was not the only Collegian to die that month; another seven were killed in action or died from wounds: Henry Barnard, Athelstan Roy Burton, James Charles Dromgool, James Lidderdale Houston, Wilfred Kennedy, Alleyne Gordon Webber and Cecil Grayton Whitaker.

Darrow was remembered in a number of obituaries and his name was inscribed on the Chunuk Bair (New Zealand) Memorial in Turkey.19 The most touching memorial, however, may be the plaque for Darrow placed alongside his parents’ obelisk at the Tararu Cemetary, Thames, described in The Kiwi obituary as ‘a little stone of marble which will testify to all generations of the life he laid down for his friends’.20

Leah Johnston, Special Collections

« Previous story

Next story »

  1. Other Collegians so far known to have served as Headquarters staff were William Esmonde Lennox Napier, Arthur Wilbert Short, Norman Berridge Spencer and Alan Campbell Whitelaw.
  2. `Darrow, Leslie Rotorua – WW1 12/920 – Army, R20995280’, Archives New Zealand, Wellington.
  3. Births, deaths and marriages online, Department of Internal Affairs.
  4. M. Burton, Working with David: Inside the Lange Cabinet, Auckland, 2008, pp.16-19.
  5. The Kiwi: Official Organ of the Auckland University College, 11, 1916, p.21.
  6. Auckland Grammar School Chronicle, v.3, n.2, 1915, pp.10-11.
  7. The Kiwi, p.21.
  8. Auckland Star, 3 September 1915, p.3, accessed via Papers Past.
  9. ‘Darrow, Leslie Rotorua – WW1 12/920 – Army’, R20995280, Archives New Zealand, Wellington.
  10. ‘Leslie Rotorua Darrow’, Cenotaph Database, Auckland War Memorial Museum, accessed 21 July 2015.
  11. Auckland Grammar School Chronicle, p.11.
  12. King Country Chronicle, 24 July 1915, p.5, accessed via Papers Past.
  13. ibid.
  14. ‘The Sari Bair offensive’, available online at NZHistory, updated 19 September 2014, accessed 31 July 2015.
  15. ibid.
  16. ‘Darrow, Leslie Rotorua – WW1 12/920 – Army’, R20995280, Archives New Zealand, Wellington.
  17. The Kiwi, p.21.
  18. ‘Headquarters 1 New Zealand Infantry Brigade – War Diary, 2-32 August 1915’, AWM4-35/17/7, Australian War Memorial.
  19. ‘Leslie Rotorua Darrow’, Cenotaph Database, Auckland War Memorial Museum, accessed 21 July 2015.
  20. The Kiwi, p.21.