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  • An ANZAC visit to Versailles

    Video

    Produced in 1918 – 1919 the film The Land We Live In was a two-hour long extravaganza. Sadly only 21 minutes of the original film survive. Aimed at an education market, the film focused on the main centres and principal towns in Aoteroa New Zealand, promoting scenic views and industry in each province.

    Curiously, sandwiched between images of scenic wonder and industry is this sequence showing New Zealand soldiers sightseeing at the Palace of Versailles, near Paris, in 1919, during the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles.

    The images were most likely taken by New Zealander Charlie Barton. At that time Barton was New Zealand’s only native-born official war cameraman – unfortunately this is one of the few of his films that survive.

  • New Zealand Nurses at Amiens

    Audio

    Ida Willis’ service as a nurse during WWI saw her involved in virtually all the theatres of war in which New Zealand forces served. In these excerpts from two radio interviews recorded in the 1960s, she recalls the long hours involved in treating wounded men in northern France, especially when a battle was underway.

  • Leaving Gallipoli

    Audio

    From 18 to 20 December 1915, the Allies retreated from the Gallipoli peninsula. In the days beforehand, rumours of their impending departure produced mixed feelings in the men. After months of the hardships of war, they were reluctant to leave the resting place of their fallen pals. Had it all been in vain? In this compilation, three veterans remember the evacuation of Gallipoli.

  • “We left a lot of booby traps behind…”

    Audio

    From 18 to 20 December 1915, the Allies retreated from the Gallipoli peninsula. The evacuations were carried out quietly, overnight, so the Turkish troops would not suspect that their foes were leaving. Here, two veterans recall stealthily sneaking away in the dead of night, leaving booby traps behind. The first speaker is Sergeant Walter Cobb, a machine gunner with the Wellington Mounted Rifles. The second is Captain Ray Curtis of the machine gun section of the Canterbury Infantry Battalion.

  • The walking wounded return home

    Video

    New Zealand soldiers board a ship. It may be a hospital ship returning them to New Zealand, as some of the men are visibly wounded, using crutches and walking sticks. A civilian woman can be seen in the opening frames, indicating that this scene may have been shot in England.

  • Trentham Military Training Camp

    Video

    This film shows a panoramic view of Trentham Military Training Camp, north of Wellington. In the foreground, groups of men can be seen practising drills. Behind them is the camp; a few permanent structures surrounded by rows of characteristic cone-shaped tents. Trentham was where many soldiers of the Main Body completed their brief training.

  • Wounded at Chunuk Bair

    Audio

    The battle for Chunuk Bair was one of the bloodiest of the Gallipoli campaign for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Robert (“Bob”) Alexander Needs of the Otago Infantry Battalion, describes his experiences of the battle up Rhododendron Ridge, and the chaotic aftermath for the wounded.

  • “All my mates ever got were wooden crosses”

    Video

    Corporal Cyril Bassett was the only New Zealander to be awarded a Victoria Cross for the Gallipoli campaign. In this 1916 film clip he is congratulated by fellow Kiwi soldiers shortly after being presented with his medal. His modesty can be seen in his bearing – while smiling and shaking hands jovially, he still appears reserved. Throughout his life, Bassett had mixed feelings about his VC. “All my mates ever got,” he said, “were wooden crosses.”

  • War Fever

    Audio

    At the outbreak of the war, a commonly expressed concern was the need to enlist quickly in case the fighting ended before New Zealand forces could take part in what was widely imagined to be a great adventure. On August 8 1914, just four days after war was declared, the Evening Post newspaper reported that nearly 600 men in Wellington City had already volunteered for war service. George Davies was a schoolboy growing up in the working class Wellington suburb of Newtown. He recalls the enthusiasm to enlist among the men he knew.

  • Schoolgirl life and love during the war

    Audio

    There was a sharp divide between rich and poor in New Zealand at the time of the First World War. Marjorie Lees, the daughter of an upper-class Wellington family, was attending boarding school in 1914. Young women of her social status faced a restricted life, with very few options apart from marriage once they left school. But like young people from all walks of life, she was soon to experience the heartbreak of war.

  • Poor old soldiers, both two-legged and four-legged

    Audio

    Horses were among the unsung heroes of the NZEF during World War One. Ten thousand horses were sent overseas over the course of the war. They were used by mounted troops and officers, and for transporting equipment and artillery. The life of a horse in the army was a tough one. They endured brutal conditions travelling to the front and at the battlefield, and only a handful returned back to New Zealand, as Percy Lowndes recalled in 1969.

  • Auckland Cup, 1912

    Video

    In 1912 Ellerslie was still a young suburb of Auckland, with a population of only around a thousand. It was also the home of the racecourse, and people streamed in from all over the city to watch the Auckland Cup, then New Zealand’s richest horse race. This film shows the Australian horse Bobrikoff taking the 1912 Cup.

    With few private cars, and public transport still in its infancy, most of these punters would have arrived by train. Horse-racing was for many years one of the most popular forms of entertainment in New Zealand. The First World War did not interrupt the running of the Auckland Cup, although there would have been significantly fewer men at race meetings during 1914-1918.

  • Mrs Barnard’s gingernuts

    Audio

    Six of Helena Barnard’s eight sons went away to fight, and she sent them care packages that included the gingernut biscuits she used to bake for them to take on tramping trips. The gingernuts were a welcome change from the notorious Gallipoli diet of tinned bully beef and ship’s biscuits. They lasted well and quickly became favourites with the boys at the front. Many wrote to Mrs Barnard asking her to provide their own mums with her recipe. Her gingernuts became famous and are quite possibly the original ANZAC biscuit. This interview was recorded around the time of Helena Barnard’s 100th birthday.

  • Treating Gallipoli’s wounded – Dr Agnes Bennett

    Audio

    The Australian-born and New Zealand-based doctor Agnes Bennett refused to let routine sexism keep her out of the war. She offered her services to the New Zealand Army as soon as war broke out but was turned down because she was a woman. Undeterred, she paid her own passage to Europe, intending to join the French Red Cross. In May 1915 she was sailing through the Red Sea when word reached the ship of the casualties arriving in Egypt from the Gallipoli campaign. She disembarked at the next opportunity and began working in the over-stretched military hospitals of Cairo, with the status and pay of an army captain. Dr Bennett recalls her wartime experiences in this recording, made in 1959.

  • Verdun Buns – a Red Cross cookbook

    Audio

    Ena Ryan was born in the prosperous Wellington suburb of Kelburn in 1908. In this 1985 interview she leafs through a cookbook produced during the war as a fundraiser for the Red Cross.  The recipes and advertisements reveal the social upheaval the war brought to communities back home, from florists advertising speedy service for last-minute weddings (before men departed overseas) to recipes for cooking for invalids. Some recipes were contributed by the public, and Ena is appalled that one woman named her recipe ‘Verdun buns’, after the horrifingly destructive 1916 Battle of Verdun.

  • Farewelling troops in Wellington

    Video

    This rare film records a civic ceremony for New Zealand troops departing for the front. It shows the official farewell to the Wellington Section of the NZ Expeditionary Force on 24 September 1914. The troops are inspected by a group of dignitaries, including Prime Minister William Massey, Lord Liverpool the Governor-General and Major General Sir Alexander Godley. They then march four abreast down Adelaide Road and along Lambton Quay, Wellington’s main shopping street. The men of the NZEF are then seen crammed on board the deck and high up on the rigging of a troopship. Most have happy faces as they await what they expected would be a grand adventure. Contrast this with the more subdued figures of the 6th Reinforcement who appear at the end of the film. They are seen departing for the front in August 1915, when the horrors of the Gallipoli Campaign had become widely known.