A Wylde life

How a West Coast mechanic who lost a leg at Gallipoli ended up living in luxury on the banks of the Thames, rubbing shoulders with artists, composers and poets.

- CHRIS ADAM

The Gallipoli campaign affected the subsequent lives of all who survived their time on the peninsula to one degree or another. Few members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, however, could have experienced wartime reversals of fortune as dramatic and strange as those that befell Private Leslie Wylde, of the small West Coast town of Runanga.

When he enlisted in August 1914, a month shy of his 21st birthday, Wylde noted his occupation as motor mechanic, but when he returned to New Zealand briefly in March 1919, his occupation was "gentleman". In four short years, he saw active service, lost a leg and, in convalescence, was reborn as an officer from the colonies with a far more storied background.

Wylde's earlier life was typical of a young Coaster: the family lived in various mining communities - his father was a mining and dredging engineer. There was school, cadets, amateur musical performances (he formed a small minstrel group), cycling and motor-cycle racing, Territorials, then work as a motor and cycle mechanic in the shop he ran with his father in Greymouth.

Signed up, Wylde landed in Gallipoli with the West Coast and Nelson contingents of the Canterbury Infantry Battalion late on the afternoon of April 25, 1915. He went into action that evening. He fought on the peninsula for the next three months until the August offensive, when, on the afternoon of August 7, gunshot or shrapnel tore into his back, chest and knee.

By the time he was admitted to hospital in Alexandria almost 10 days later, the wound had become infected, eventually leading to amputation of his right leg just above the knee. He was shipped out to England and the leg was reduced again - one of seven operations Wylde endured.

In 1916, he was convalescing and getting used to a prosthetic limb at the recovery hospital set up at Cliveden, the then-Astor estate in Buckinghamshire. It was here that Frankie Schuster came into his life.