Lieutenant Colonel William George Malone (24 January 1859 – 8 August 1915) was an officer in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force who served in the First World War.

He commanded the Wellington Infantry Battalion during the Gallipoli Campaign, and was killed in action by friendly fire during the Battle of Chunuk Bair.

Following the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered for service with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and was appointed commander of the Wellington Infantry Battalion.

[3] Malone left the Armed Constabulary after two years service and became involved in surfboats which unloaded cargo at Ōpunake.

With his brother, who had left the Armed Constabulary in November 1880, he eventually bought a large block of bush country near Stratford and took up farming.

In 1903, the same year that he and his family moved to New Plymouth, he formed a partnership dealing mostly with land transactions with James McVeagh and William Anderson.

In 1900, he helped raise the Stratford Rifle Volunteers, one of many units formed in the enthusiasm for the military during the Second Boer War, with himself as its captain.

[15] The battalion embarked from Wellington in October 1914 for Egypt,[16] and upon arrival, was primarily engaged in training before it was deployed along the Suez Canal late in January 1915 to support Indian troops stationed to guard against a rumoured Turkish attack.

By nightfall, Malone had established a new defensive line along the ridge although he was frustrated by the poor decisions by the commander of 2nd Battalion, Colonel George Braund.

[19] In early May, the ANZAC positions had sufficiently stabilised such that the New Zealand Infantry Brigade was transferred to Cape Helles for operations there.

On 1 June, the Wellington Battalion moved into the front lines, taking over Courtney's Post, previously held by the Australian 4th Brigade.

As well as rectifying the position's neglected field works, he established a squad of snipers and this proved instrumental in gaining ascendency over the Turks in no-man's land.

He implemented measures to dominate the no-man's land between the opposing forces at Quinn's, ordering construction of machine gun posts and loops to try and increase his men's ability to direct firepower onto the enemy.

[28] On 7 August, the New Zealand Infantry Brigade commenced its assault on Chunuk Bair, the crest of the range, along what was known as Rhododendron Ridge.

[30] However, in 2018, New Zealand military historian Ian McGibbon challenged the "myth" that Malone refused a direct order to make a daytime attack.

He states that Malone and Johnston both disagreed with the order from Godley, the divisional commander, for the Auckland Battalion to attack in daylight.

McGibbon said that the claim that Malone refused his superior officer's orders was based solely on the 1981 recollections of Charlie Clark, then aged 93.

At dawn, when the Wellington Battalion first arrived at Rhododendron Ridge, Temperley wanted Malone to take his men up the slope to Chunuk Bair.

[30] He set about securing the crest of Chunuk Bair, but it proved difficult to deepen the relatively shallow Turkish trenches that had been captured by his men, and the work was made even more difficult as the sun rose, allowing the Turks on neighbouring Hill Q to focus their gunfire on the positions occupied by the Wellingtons.

[33] The Turkish gunfire caused heavy casualties amongst the infantry holding Chunuk Bair, but crucially also prevented substantive reinforcements from reaching the crest in daylight.

[30] In the early evening, at around 5 pm, Malone was killed in his headquarters trench by friendly fire, either from supporting artillery or possibly naval gunfire.

Although initially well provided with income from his farming estate, the depression of the 1920s impacted on the earnings of the farmland and Ida struggled financially.

[36] His four oldest sons all served in the NZEF, and one, Maurice, was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign.

[37] Another son, Edmond, received the Military Cross while serving with the Wellington Regiment on the Western Front; he died on 6 April 1918, a few days after being wounded.

Temperley, a British Army officer like Johnston, was one of the foremost critics of Malone's defensive arrangements and may have unduly influenced the subsequent official reports on the battle.

[40] In particular, Johnston's delay in getting reinforcements to Chunuk Bair once it was captured likely led to the failure to hold the gains made by Malone's battalion.

[42] The soldiers of the Wellington Regiment held their former commander in high regard and paid for the construction of the Malone Memorial Gates, at the entrance to King Edward Park in Stratford.

[46] A fictionalised colonel based on Malone was a major character in a 1982 play written by Maurice Shadbolt, Once on Chunuk Bair, which told the story of the Wellington Battalion's battle of 8 August.