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  • Presenting Flags

    Video

    A large crowd of hospital staff and interested public gather outside the Town Hall in Lymington in Hampshire, England on 5 March 1919 to watch the principal matron present the New Zealand flag to the Mayor.

    After the flag presentation the scene shifts to the graveyard at nearby St Nicholas’s Church, Brockenhurst – where 93 New Zealanders who died in the The No. 1 New Zealand General Hospital are buried. The No. 1 New Zealand General Hospital at Brockenhurst opened in June 1916 after being moved there from Abasseyeh in Egypt. By 1919, when it closed, 21,000 patients had been treated in the hospital. 

    The final scenes show Lieutenant-Colonel Percival Fenwick and his staff walking among the graves as the camera pans across the graves and the church.

  • Goodbye to Blighty

    Video

    The evocative title for Pathé Gazette No. 535 says it all – Liverpool Good-bye to ‘Blighty’ – (New Zealand Soldiers Leave England with their Wives).

    This short, 23-second clip, shows a passenger ship lined with New Zealand soldiers and their wives, waving goodbye. Quay-side friends and family members wave farewell – among those on shore are several New Zealanders identifiable in their lemon squeezer hats.

    For New Zealand servicemen who had married ‘war brides’ – predominantly women from Britain and Europe – where possible the Defence Department arranged for the passage of both wives and children so that they could go to their new home on the demobilisation ships with their Kiwi husbands.

  • In Memory of the Unreturning Brave

    Video

    Otago Boys’ High School celebrated its Diamond Jubilee in August 1923 – the 75th anniversary was a huge celebration over several days. Activities included rugby matches, a parade, a ball and, most importantly, the dedication of the memorial gates commemorating ex-pupils who fought and died in World War One.

    The Otago Daily Times reported that the “school gave freely of her best sons in that great conflict, and of these nearly 200 are numbered with ‘the unreturning brave’. It was fitting, therefore, that first of all the functions at this Diamond Jubilee should be the dedication of the beautiful memorial archway, which records in letters of brass the glorious roll call of those who thus gave their all”.

    Watch as the Mayor, Mr HL Tapley and officials lead a parade of guests through the archway and into the college grounds, cadets then form a guard of honour and the flag blows patriotically! A parade of cadets march into the school.

  • World Champs

    Video

    It’s 11 June 1921. In Blenheim, New Zealand the anticipation mounts! Will Dick Arnst defend his world title against challenger Pat Hannan – a champion sculler for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF)?

    The race was big news and had been widely reported in local papers. In response a huge crowd gathered on the banks of the Wairau River, near Blenheim to witness Hannan’s challenge. Arnst had first won the world championship in 1908, then he lost it to Ernest Barry in 1912 and retired from sculling in 1915. But he was back on the scene in 1920. The world title reverted to Arnst by forfeit in 1921 and Hannan was the first to challenge. The papers picked a close race. The excitement was building.

    Sadly, though, views of much of the action in this film clip of the race have been obliterated by nitrate decomposition. However, a surprising twist at the end of the film is clear – and well worth the wait!

  • Supporting the men of Te Hokowhitu-a-Tū

    Audio

    Māori leader Sir Apirana Ngata fundraised for the men of the Māori Pioneer Battalion during the war, by establishing concert parties which toured the country performing and popularising waiata such as E pari rā and Pōkarekare āna which have remained enduring favourites today. 

    The money raised from these concerts was used to set up a trust for the men of Te Hokowhitu-a-Tū (the Māori name for the Pioneer Battalion.) In this radio interview, Remi Morrison of Te Arawa, a member of the committee which administered the Māori Soldier’s Trust, explains how they purchased Hereheretau sheep and cattle station, to generate an ongoing income for supporting the returned veterans and their families.

  • The Blue Boys

    Audio

    The impact of wounds, gas, disease and post-traumatic stress or shellshock, meant many returned war veterans would spend a long time in hospital for years after the war – sometimes well into the 1920s. 

    In the era before antibiotics, people could spend many months recovering from injuries and illness. Dedicated veterans’ hospitals were set up throughout Australia and New Zealand during the war.

    In a 1957 radio interview, two New Zealanders, Frank Broad and Alan Kernohan – who were in the King George V Hospital in Rotorua – remembered the restrictions placed on the recovering soldiers. 

    Throughout the British Empire, men who were able to get out of bed, were known as “Blue Boys” because of their “hospital blues” – a uniform worn by the convalescing soldiers. This marked them out and was supposed to prevent the invalids sneaking off to local hotels for a drink, as civilians were prohibited from supplying alcohol to the men in blue… but there were ways around this, as the men recall.

  • The Kiwis’ Last Action – Liberating Le Quesnoy

    Audio

    On 4 November 1918 the New Zealand Rifle Brigade was camped outside the walled medieval French town of Le Quesnoy, which was occupied by the Germans and had been for several years. The town had a moat and very high walls which were hundreds of years old. New Zealand artillery couldn’t be used to bomb the Germans into submission, because about 5,000 French civilians were still living in the occupied town.

    The Germans refused to surrender and a party from the 4th Battalion was detailed to try and work out how to scale the 13-metre-high inner brick wall.

    Intelligence Officer, Second Lieutenant Leslie Averill – a medical student from Christchurch – used a long, fairly rickety ladder and led a small party of men up the wall. He courageously chased off two German guards with his revolver, which allowed more New Zealanders to then follow him and take the town – without a single civilian casualty.

    In 1958, Leslie Averill recorded a talk for radio, describing how he got into the town. (Notice that in this excerpt, in a classic piece of Kiwi understatement, he manages to completely avoid saying that he was the first man up the wall.)

  • No Beer for Soldiers after 6pm

    Audio

    Returning New Zealand soldiers found changes had been made to their homeland while they were away fighting. As a war measure, the early closing of hotels had been introduced in 1917, with all pubs forced to close at 6pm. 

    In a radio documentary recorded in 1977, entitled A Land Fit for Heroes, several men recalled the effect of these measures on New Zealand society and the anger they inspired in returning soldiers.

  • Entertaining the troops, “The Kiwis” concert party

    Audio

    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.

  • 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.

  • The nimble “Scout Experimental”

    Audio

    Legendary New Zealand fighter pilot Keith “Grid” Caldwell, engaged in more fights, for his time in the air, than any other pilot in WW I. He also commanded one of the most successful fighter units, No 74 ‘Tiger’ Squadron. In this interview excerpt he describes the capabilities of the British fighter biplane, the “Scout Experimental” or formally, Royal Aircraft Factory S.E. 5.

  • Fighter Aviation Takes Off

    Audio

    In 1916, 2nd Lieutenant Keith Caldwell joined No.75 Squadron of the newly-formed Royal Flying Corps. The squadron went on to have an impressive history as part of the RAF and RNZAF, despite deficiencies in early aircraft design. In this brief interview, Caldwell describes flying BE2 and Sopwith Camel fighter planes. Captain ‘Tiny’ White, another New Zealander in No.75 Squadron recalls the lack of flight instruction available and the sportsman-like ethic between opposing front line forces at the beginning of the war.

  • Early newsreels: A 1915 Pathé Animated Gazette

    Video

    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).

  • “Every one of those lads was lying dead”

    Audio

    Dunedin-born Charles Duke was working in Australia as a journalist when World War I broke out. He signed up with the Australian Imperial Force, sailing with the 4th Battalion. By early August 1915 he had twice been wounded and evacuated from Gallipoli. Yet he returned to his unit and found himself caught up in the bloody offensive which came to be known the Battle of Lone Pine.

    Duke wrote a detailed account of his war, and in this 1969 radio programme he gives a vivid description of hand-to-hand fighting in the trenches at Lone Pine.

  • A rickshaw ride in Durban

    Image

    Two Australian soldiers riding in a rickshaw pulled by a local man in Durban, South Africa, is taken from a B&W glass slide. Durban was an important port during WWI as troopships from Australia and New Zealand sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. From 1916 this was a safer route than the Suez Canal as there was a risk of a submarine attack in the Mediterranean. Soldiers disembarked in Durban and the troopships resupplied the journey took up to eight weeks to and from Australia.