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Three cheers for the Prince!
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A camera positioned opposite Australia House on The Strand in London, captures Australian troops on parade for Anzac Day, 1919. The vast number of Australian troops is some indication of the scale of Australia's contribution to the war effort.
The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) stands on the raised platform, taking the salute. With him are Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig to the right and HRH Prince Albert (later King George VI) further back, next to Lieutenant General Sir William R Birdwood (left). Also featured on the stand are Billy Hughes (Prime Minister of Australia); Andrew Fisher (Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom); Sir Thomas McKenzie (New Zealand High Commissioner to the United Kingdom); Sir Joseph Cook and Senator Pearce (the Australian Minister for Defence).
The parade ends with Australian and New Zealand troops and British citizens pushing forward and mobbing the Prince of Wales with three cheers!
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White Heather Bride
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With the First World War now over, newsreels could focus on happier events.
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Invested at Buckingham Palace
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London – 3 May 1919 – crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace in London for an investiture by his Majesty King George V. Among the nurses and soldiers receiving awards and honours is a smartly dressed New Zealand officer in his lemon squeezer hat.
On the dais are Queen Mary and members of the royal household. In front stand Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig and his Generals – Plumer and Sir William Birdwood. Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, stands proudly in morning suit and top hat.
After the ceremony, the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) Depot Band march past, followed by the New Zealand Parade Commander. Behind them are the New Zealand Field Artillery – note the infantry with their rifles and bayonets. Next, the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) march past. Mounted officers of the AIF and the Australian Light Horse trot by, and the crowd cheers and waves, then the AIF band march past – they are marching easy – and are followed by the Australian infantry.
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A Hero’s Painful Memories
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Bernard “Tiny” Freyberg VC, CMG, DSO ended World War One a highly decorated hero – celebrated in Britain as well as his homeland of New Zealand. He had served with the British forces: his Distinguished Service Order (DSO) was won at Gallipoli, his Victoria Cross (VC) on the Somme and, at the age of 27, he was made the youngest Brigadier-General in the British Army. He would go on to command the 2nd New Zealand Division in World War Two and become Governor-General of New Zealand.
Born in London, he grew up in New Zealand after his family emigrated and he attended Wellington College, in the capital city.
In 1921, still suffering from the many wounds he received during the war, he returned to New Zealand for several weeks to recuperate. He turned down all requests for public appearances and a civic reception, but he did take time to visit his old school and address an assembly of the boys.
One of those schoolboys, Max Riske, vividly recalled the event some 60 years later in a radio interview. As Max explains, the boys were expecting a stirring speech from a glorious war hero – but got something quite different from the man who had lost two brothers and many friends in the war.
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Just enough speechifying
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In 1912, Sir Thomas Mackenzie, former Prime Minister, was appointed as the New Zealand High Commissioner to London; a post he held until 1920. Mackenzie was particularly concerned about the treatment of New Zealand soldiers and made several visits to see the troops during the war.
In this clip, Mackenzie, with his back to the camera, talks to New Zealanders outside the 2nd New Zealand Field Ambulance station.
During his visit, Mackenzie also joined the 2nd Otago church parade, inspected the New Zealand Engineers and made an address to the 3rd Otago Battalion. At the end of Mackenzie’s visit Major General Sir Andrew Russell noted in his diary: "The whole visit has been successful, fine weather – just enough speechifying but not too much”.
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Amusing sports events
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Scenes from the “Strawberry Fete” held at Torquay in Devon in the United Kingdom on Alexandra Day, Wednesday 27 June 1917. Promoted by the Four Allied Trades: Dairymen, Fruiterers, Grocers and Bakers, the fete was both a fundraiser and a morale booster.
Pictured here are New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) personnel, nurses and locals participating in games and novelty races, including blindfolded races, crawling races, wheelbarrow races and apple-eating competitions. Soldiers, too injured to participate, look on.
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Entertaining the troops, “The Kiwis” concert party
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The campaigns of the Western Front saw men serving in frontline combat positions in the trenches usually for a few days to a week at a time. In between, units were rotated back to ‘reserve’ positions several kilometres away from the Front, where boredom was yet another enemy to contend with.
In an attempt to keep the troops entertained, concert parties were formed by the men, with names such as “The Pierrots”, “The Tuis” and “The Kiwis.”
Bill McKeon, who served in the Wellington Infantry and had been in a concert party himself, had fond memories of “The Kiwis” and the high-quality shows they put on at Nieppe, near Armentieres in 1917, which he recalled in a radio interview with Neville Webber.
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Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty
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This song, in which a series of soldiers yearn to return to ‘Blighty’, or Britain, was hugely popular in 1917.
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Anzac football in London
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During their war service, Australian troops organised Australian Rules football matches across Europe. The highest profile matches were played in the United Kingdom but one-off matches were also played in other countries, including Belgium and France in 1919.
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Lest We Forget
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Thousands of Melburnians turn out in the pouring rain in 1925, to honour the fallen of the First World War.
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Early newsreels: A 1915 Pathé Animated Gazette
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People went to cinemas during the war to be entertained, but moving-pictures also played an important role in providing cinema-goers with news and information from abroad. Early newsreels, or topical films, were an important part of the typical cinema programme of the time.
This film is an example of a full-length Pathé Animated Gazette newsreel that was shown during the war. It demonstrates the contents of these types of films and how they mixed serious topics with more light-hearted footage: scenes of the Algerian Native Cavalry in Flanders, a brief glimpse of King George V and Queen Mary making their way through packed London Streets to a service at St Paul’s Cathedral, the opening of a New Zealand military hospital, and Zouaves (Algerian French Infantry).
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First English hospital for wounded Kiwis
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The New Zealand Military Hospital at Walton-on-Thames was the first English hospital to be established for Kiwi soldiers during the First World War. It was officially opened on Saturday 31 July 1915, in a ceremony attended by “one of the largest gatherings of New Zealanders that has ever assembled" in the UK. (Evening Post, 24 September 1915, p.4)
This film clip shows NZ High Commissioner Thomas Mackenzie and William Lord Plunket at the hospital’s official opening ceremony on 31 July 1915. Lord Plunket was a former Governor of New Zealand and the chair of the NZ War Contingent Association, formed on London at the outbreak of the war to support wounded NZ troops. The Association helped to select the hospital premises, and its members later visited convalescing patients.
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Billy Hughes visits the AIF’s home away from home
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The First World War led to a major influx of Australians into Britain. From summer 1916 to the end of the war there were never fewer than 50,000 Australian troops present. In 1915 Horseferry Road in Westminster, London, became a home away from home for the Anzacs. The AIF Administrative Headquarters, the Australian War Records Section and the War Chest Club were located there (the Club was established to promote the welfare of all soldiers). Horseferry Road became a historically significant Australian location: it was where the Anzacs could create a community for themselves, and was filled with men wearing slouch caps and speaking with familiar accents.
In this film the Australian Prime Minister, William ‘Billy’ Hughes, doffs his top hat to the camera before inspecting soldiers at the AIF Headquarters. These visits were effective in raising troop morale, letting them know that, though far from their own country, they remained in the thoughts of those back home.
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Marking the first Anzac Day in London
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In April 1916, a year after the Anzac landings at Gallipoli, the first anniversary of the battle was observed in Australia, New Zealand and Britain. A grand memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey in London, attended by King George V and Queen Mary. Hundreds of New Zealand and Australian military personnel marched through the streets to the Abbey to attend the service.
Among them was Sydney-born Dr Agnes Bennett, who had been working in Egyptian hospitals treating the wounded from Gallipoli. Some 40 years later she recalled the experience in this excerpt from a radio ‘talk.’
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‘It's a Long Way to Tipperary’
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In this animated film, a British soldier dodges bullets and explosions. He grits his teeth as he thinks, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. If you want to sing along, as cinema audiences did when it was presented, the lyrics are right there on the screen.
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"Shine, Sir?" Kiwi Boot Polish advertisment
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In this groundbreaking early cinema ad, Boot Room staff at London’s Imperial Hotel depart to join the Army, leaving the hotel short-staffed. Two boys offer to tackle the guests’ footwear. Thanks to the Kiwi Polish bought for them by a kind Australian soldier, they polish and buff their way into employment.
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Ex-pat Kiwis march in the London Lord Mayor’s Show
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In November 1914 the annual London Lord Mayor’s Show took on a very military flavour, with thousands of troops from Britain and her allies marching through the streets. They included a group of 150 New Zealanders, part of a contingent of 200 who were living in Britain when war was declared.
As this tiny fragment of film from 1914 shows, the New Zealanders were still wearing the ‘slouch’ hat with the upturned brim which New Zealanders had worn in the South African War. Later in the war this would be replaced by the peaked ‘lemon squeezer’.
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Nurses remember the sinking of the Marquette
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Three New Zealand nurses - Elizabeth Young, Mary Gould and Jeanne Peek (née Sinclair) - recount their experiences of the sinking of the troopship S.S. Marquette on 23 October 1915. The nurses were part of the New Zealand No. 1 Stationary Hospital unit, which was sailing on the troop transport from Alexandria, Egypt, to Salonika (Thessaloniki) in Greece, when their ship was struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat.
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Wounded at Chunuk Bair
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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.
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“All my mates ever got were wooden crosses”
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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.”
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No bayonet needed / E hara te pēneti i mau
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Captain Pirimi Tahiwi of Te Hokowhitu a Tū, the Māori Battalion, describes how he and Captain Roger Dansey led a charge on Sari Bair, Gallipoli in 1915. Te Rauparaha’s famous war cry “Ka Mate, Ka Mate” rang out as they cleared the Turkish trenches. Tahiwi says there was no need to use the bayonet as the Turkish troops fled for their lives.He was wounded in the neck and evacuated to England to convalesce. After an outstanding military career he attended the 50th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings as the sole surviving officer to serve in Te Hokowhitu a Tū, the Māori Pioneer Battalion. Tahiwi laid a mere pounamu, a symbol of both peace and war, on the memorial at Chunuk Bair.
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Heroes of Gallipoli
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Heroes of Gallipoli contains the only known filmed scenes of the Allied involvement in the Gallipoli Campaign. It is an edited version of an earlier film, With the Dardanelles Expedition. This is amateur film, shot under the most trying conditions, yet it provides unique footage of Gallipoli and some of the most vivid frontline images of the First World War.
Heroes of Gallipoli was deliberately edited to tell a story of Australian military achievement. However, the film footage also tells a story of British and New Zealand action that the intertitles never mention.
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Australian artillery on the Salonika Front
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The camera operator is unusually close to the artillery action in this British-made newsreel. It shows an Australian gun crew operating their weapon gun beneath a canvas shelter in the Greek port town of Salonika (now Thessaloniki). Opposing them are Bulgarian forces who, together with Germans, had forced the Serbian Army from the port. This Australian artillery crew seems comparatively relaxed in comparison to the usual grim scenes of battlefront action from this period.
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Departure of Reinforcements to the Front
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Troops (seen from dock) wave from ship prior to departure. Numerous civilians hold streamers connected with occupants of ship, while other civilians wave handkerchiefs as the ship leaves the wharf. The HMAT A20 Hororata weighed 9,400 tons with an average cruise speed of 14 knots or 25.92 kmph. It was owned by the New Zealand Shipping Co Ltd, London, and leased by the Commonwealth until 11 September 1917.
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A troopship departs for Albany, 1914
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When Australia entered the First World War in support of Britain, ships were urgently needed to transport troops to the distant battlefields. The hastily refitted ships also had to carry the troops’ horses and military stores, plus wool, metals, meat, flour and other foodstuffs, mainly for the armies of Britain and France. This film shows the loading and departure of troops and horses aboard HMAT (His Majesty’s Australian Transport) A20 Hororata from Port Melbourne, Victoria on 18 October 1914. Troops move up the gangplanks of the transport ship while horses are taken up another gangplank. A tug then tows the Hororata out of port and it joins other ships in the convoy to head out to sea.
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The Lynch Family Bellringers
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The Lynch Family, Harry Lynch and his four sons, toured Australia’s regional areas for several decades with their hand bell-ringing show. Gradually singers, dancers and comedians, including visiting European performers, were incorporated into the show. This poster advertises a 1914 tour featuring the novel attractions of the Glassophone and Aluminum Organ Chimes.