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Memorial to the Gallant New Zealanders
Video
Crowds gather to watch the unveiling of the memorial to the “gallant New Zealanders” at Messines Ridge in Belgium on 1 August 1924.
A panning shot reveals a World War One cemetery and rows of graves (presumably of New Zealand soldiers). Soldiers and war veterans walk up a path between the graves. The King of Belgium, Albert I accompanied by the New Zealand High Commissioner, Sir James Allen and General Sir Andrew Russell and other dignitaries gather on the dais for the unveiling of the memorial which is draped with a New Zealand flag.
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Going ‘over the top’ at Messines by John A. Lee
Audio
On 7th June 1917, New Zealand Labour politician and author John A. Lee was a 25 year old, serving with the 9th (Hawke's Bay) Company of the 1st Battalion, Wellington Infantry Regiment on the Western Front.
Some 50 years after the war, in 1968 he made this recording, still vividly recalling the experience of ‘going over the top’ behind the thundering Allied artillery barrage, which he calls “the greatest curtain of Hell in all history.”
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‘Great soldiers, good fellows’
Audio
The Victoria College Officers’ Training Corps was formed in Wellington in 1910. It was established partly by the need to train a new generation of officers to lead and fight in the New Zealand militia. Charles Treadwell was an original member of the Corps and in this talk he recalls its founding, the different forms that their training took, and the men he served with.