Have a question?

Contact Us FAQ

Search results

  • Victoria Cross Corner

    Video

    Sunday 29 January 1956, when the Victoria Cross Memorial was unveiled, was a memorable day in Dunedin, New Zealand – everyone was there, dressed in their best.

    The unveiling of the memorial, outside the main entrance to the Dunedin RSA on the corner of Burlington Street and Moray Place, was a grand occasion attended by the Governor-General of New Zealand Sir Willoughby Norrie and Lady Norrie.

    A plaque lists the names of the 22 recipients of the Victoria Cross, nine of whom were in attendance that day, and one of them – the Reverend Keith Elliott – dedicated the memorial. Reflecting the language of the time, the plaque pays tribute to soldiers of “the Maori War 1864, South African War 1899 – 1902, The Great War 1914 – 1918 and The World War 1939 – 1945”.

  • Flying over Gallipoli with the RNAS

    Audio

    Most New Zealanders who flew as pilots in World War I went to Britain and joined the Royal Flying Corps. However, Phillip Kenning Fowler from Feilding, took a different path.  Making his own way to England in 1916, he joined the Royal Navy and trained to become a pilot in the Royal Naval Air Service.  This air-borne division operated under the Admiralty from 1914 to April 1918 when it merged with the R.F.C. and formed the Royal Air Force, or R.A.F.

    Fowler was based initially in the Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean. Later in the war, he was one of the pilots tasked with trying to bring down German Zeppelin airships over the English Channel, before they could bomb British cities.

    In this radio interview recorded in the 1960s, he recalls burning crops destined for Germany and early aerial bombing techniques. which amounted to simply dropping explosives over the side of the plane.

  • 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.

  • Flying the “Fighting Experimental Machine”

    Audio

    Royal Flying Corps Flight Commander Reg Kingsford of Nelson, New Zealand describes the third aircraft he learnt to fly during World War I, as the “Fighting Experimental machine.” Officially, it was the Royal Air Factory F.E.2b, the Farman Experimental 2 biplane (two-seater), in which he took a fellow Kiwi for a joyride.

  • Māori and Pākehā on the Western Front

    Audio

    George Puhi Nicholas served in World War I with the Māori Pioneer Battalion in northern France and Bob Robertson, a Pākehā, with the 6th Hauraki Regiment. In a joint radio interview recorded in 1985 they compare notes on their memories of the trenches, the bad food, the lice and the mates they lost.

  • Newcomer to the trenches

    Audio

    New Zealander George Lee was born in Canada and served in World War I with the British Army. He was shipped to the trenches near Antwerp in April 1918. In this excerpt from an hour-long radio programme about his war experiences, he gives a vivid account of his first experience of being under fire. He contrasts his own visceral reaction of terror with that of a hardened comrade who had already been in the trenches for four years, and for whom such events had become commonplace.

  • A louse named Charlie

    Audio

    Many aspects of trench life were unpleasant – the mud and squalor, the monotony and drudgery, the abysmal diet, malnutrition and dysentery, the constant threat of death from enemy fire, and to top it off the discomfort – lice. The troops were crawling with them, almost to a man. In this excerpt from a 1981 radio documentary, George Lee recalls advice he got from a ‘lousy’ trench mate named Jack Saunders.

  • The Rose of No Man’s Land

    Audio

    A sentimental song composed as a tribute to Red Cross battlefield nurses.

  • Sydney Marches to Remember

    Video

    With their white, starched uniforms and red crosses on their foreheads, 2000 members of the Junior Red Cross make a startling presence at the eleventh anniversary of Anzac Day in Sydney.

  • Hinemoa

    Image

    'The first big dramatic work filmed and acted in the land of the Moa,' was Hinemoa (1914), New Zealand's first feature.

    With a budget of £50, George Tarr directed Hinemoa over eight hectic days in Rotorua. Hera Tawhai and her husband Rua starred along with the Reverend Bennett's Maori Choir Party. With the film almost complete but the budget gone, George Tarr headed to Auckland to show it to his investors and distributor Mr Hayward. They loved it. Hayward wanted to show it immediately on 'the same terms as I'm paying now for Antony and Cleopatra.'

    Hinemoa premiered at the Lyric Theatre, Auckland on 17 August 1914, during the first weeks of World War I. With only one print producer George Tarr travelled the film around the country for 5 months – doing good business.

  • Steeds and shellfire on the Western Front

    Audio

    The horses that were sent to the Western Front during the First World War faced many of the same difficulties as the soldiers that they served. Horses were used to transport officers, heavy artillery and other equipment to the front lines. The artillery conveyed by these horses was an essential element of the military strategies that developed on the battlefront. The Battle of the Somme in 1916 in particular saw the first widespread use of the ‘creeping barrage’, a strategy designed to provide cover for an advancing line of infantry.

    Leonard Leary was a law student in Wellington who first served in Samoa after joining up in 1914 and then joined the British Royal Artillery and fought at the Battle of the Somme. In this 'Spectrum' radio documentary from 1982 he recalls both the trials of controlling horses amid the confusion of a battlefield and the use of the creeping barrage at the Somme.

  • A dead teenager and life on the Somme

    Audio

    Like many young men, New Zealander Jim Warner lied about his age to enlist in World War I and found himself going into action on the Somme with the Auckland Infantry at the age of 18. 

    In this excerpt from a lengthy interview he recorded with Radio New Zealand reporter Andrew McRae in 1982, he recalls the conditions, the death of his 16-year-old friend and the shattered landscape of northern France which had been shelled heavily by the time the New Zealanders arrived in September 1916.

  • First day on the Somme for Kiwis and tanks

    Audio

    On the 15th of September 1916, the New Zealand Division saw their first major action on the Western Front.  In the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, they joined British forces as part of the continued effort to attack German-held territory around the river Somme in northern France.

    A new element was also introduced on September 15 with the arrival of tanks in battle for the first time.  British military leaders hoped that these new armoured machines, initially known as land-ships, would be able to straddle enemy trenches, break through barbed wire entanglements and end the stalemate of trench warfare.

    But Lindsay Inglis, a New Zealand officer involved in action that day, recalls the tanks he saw were less-than-impressive.

  • 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).

  • Nurse Cavell deep in prayer

    Image

    Nurse Cavell is a 1916 Australian feature-length film directed by W. J. Lincoln about the execution of Edith Cavell during World War I. It was also known as Edith Cavell. Subtitled as ‘Britain’s Joan of Arc’, it is considered a Lost Film.

  • Britain’s Joan of Arc bravely meets her fate

    Image

    Nurse Cavell is a 1916 Australian feature-length film directed by W. J. Lincoln about the execution of Edith Cavell during World War I. It was also known as Edith Cavell. Subtitled as ‘Britain’s Joan of Arc’, it is considered a Lost Film.

  • "I gave my life willingly for my country”

    Image

    The Matyrdom of Nurse Cavell is a 1916 Australian feature-length film directed by Jack Gavin and Charles Post Mason about the execution of Edith Cavell during World War I. The Matyrdom of Nurse Cavell was viewed as a rival to Nurse Cavell, also produced in 1916, and there was legal action by Jack Gavin’s backers. It is considered a Lost Film.

  • He waiata mā te hoia kāinga ngākau koingō

    Audio

    I Runga o ngā Puke (From the Top of the Hills) is a waiata Māori written by Paraire Tomoana. He composed it at the request of a cousin, Ngahiwi Petiha, who wrote to Paraire while recuperating from a gunshot wound in an English hospital. 

    Paraire’s son, Taanga Tomoana, explains the story behind the lyrics and sings the waiata himself, in this radio interview in 1970.

  • A matter of principle

    Audio

    Duncan McCormack was a working-class socialist. At the outbreak of World War I, he determined that he would not participate in what he later called a “fight to redistribute the spoils of colonialism.” When conscription was introduced, he ignored his call-up papers and was eventually arrested by the military police. Here he describes the cycle of military camp, court martial, prison and hard labour which conscientious objectors were subjected to for the remaining duration of the war and beyond. As his second prison sentence was for two years, he was kept in prison even after the war ended.

  • Pacifism on the home front

    Audio

    In this excerpt, Millicent Baxter recalls her conversion to pacifism during World War I as a result of reading a letter written by her future husband, the pacifist objector Archibald Baxter. Millicent had not then met Archibald, but the letter to his parents, published in the newspaper Truth, moved her to investigate his pacifist viewpoint. In the face of popular patriotism, she adopted those views for herself.

  • Starting the New Zealand RSA

    Audio

    Many men who had been invalided back to New Zealand after the Gallipoli campaign found adjusting to civilian life difficult. Those without family support found themselves with little income and in some cases were virtually homeless once they were discharged from the Army. It was not long before a group formed to improve the lot of returned serviceman. In this recording from 1966, radio broadcaster Neville Webber interviews two World War I veterans, Gilbert Lawrence and Ernie Golding, who helped form the Returned Soldiers’ Association (RSA) in Wellington in early 1916.

  • Singing about Niuean soldiers who volunteered

    Audio

    The song ‘Lologo tau kautau Niue ne oatu he Felakutau Fakamua he Lalolagi’ was sung by the men from the Pacific island of Niue who volunteered to join New Zealand’s Māori Contingent in 1916. They served in France alongside Maori troops in the newly formed Pioneer Battalion, and suffered greatly from conditions colder than they had ever imagined.

  • “The horrible smell of burnt flesh”

    Audio

    Wellington-born William Fell was a 19-year-old midshipman on board the Royal Navy battleship HMS Warspite in 1916. He took part in the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the First World War. The Warspite was hit several times and 14 of her crew were killed.

    In a 1961 radio programme, ‘First War Sailor’, Captain Fell (as he later became) vividly recounts his experience. He was a 'snotty', as the teenaged junior midshipmen were called in Navy slang, and his position at the transmitting station meant he was locked in the bowels of the ship as the battle raged above.

  • Surgeon-General Charles Ryan, ANZAC Cove, 1915

    Image

    Surgeon-General Charles S. Ryan is shown in a casual pose outside the aide-de-camp’s dugout at Anzac Cove, May 1915.

  • ‘It's a Long Way to Tipperary’

    Video

    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.

  • ‘Only One of the Toys’

    Audio

    The dismal lyrics of ‘Only One of the Toys’ suggest that the soldier in question is merely a toy with no authority. He eventually dies on the battlefield, fulfilling the destiny he predicted to his son before leaving for war. Despite its gloomy subject, this 1914 song was surprisingly popular in its day.

  • “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.

  • Good to Go / E pai ana, Ka haere

    Video

    The Second Māori Contingent is shown parading at Narrow Neck Training Camp in Auckland before leaving for the front on the SS Waitemata on 19 September 1915. According to the waiata “Te Ope Tuatahi”, composed by Apirana Ngata, the recruits of the Second Contingent were drawn mainly from the East Coast tribes of Ngāti Mahaki, Ngāti Hauiti and descendants of Porourangi. Among them was Second Lieutenant Hēnare Mōkena Kōhere of Ngāti Porou. Kōhere died of wounds on 16 September 1916 following the Battle of the Somme. He is mentioned in the sixth verse of “Te Ope Tuatahi” with the phrase: I haere ai Hēnare, I patu ki te pakanga, Ki Para-nihi ra ia. ("Farewell, O Hēnare,Me tō wiwi, and your 'clump of rushes' who fell while fighting in France". The ‘clump of rushes’ is thought to refer to the men under Kohere’s command who died alongside him.)

  • Teenage soldiers and a boat full of blood

    Audio

    Seventeen-year-old Daniel Patrick (Pat) Lloyd of Christchurch was among the New Zealanders who landed at Gallipoli on April 25 1915. He witnessed the carnage when the boatloads of men came under heavy machine-gun fire as they came ashore. Pat survived and went on to serve in France where he won a Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘gallantry in the field’. Fifty years later he took part in an anniversary ‘pilgrimage’ by New Zealand veterans, who returned to Gallipoli to retrace their footsteps and visit graves and memorials to fallen comrades.

  • 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.

  • A troopship departs for Albany, 1914

    Video

    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.