Search results
-
Hospital Blues
Video
This brief clip shows soldiers feeding hens and gathering eggs in an unidentified New Zealand hospital in 1918 in the United Kingdom. Their lemon squeezer hats identify them as New Zealanders and their uniforms further identify them as hospital patients. Known as the “hospital blues” (also as convalescent blues, or hospital undress) the single-breasted suit and trousers uniform was made out of flannel material of an Oxford-Blue colour, with a white shirt and red tie.
The hospital blues served a number of functions and were important within the hospital environment. In the first instance, they were a replacement for dirty and often infested uniforms and therefore helped to improve hygiene and cleanliness. They were also a way to distinguish the patients from doctors, nurses and visitors and enabled the administration to maintain discipline and rank. The hospital blues also worked as a form of social control, as publicans were not allowed to sell liquor to men in the blues.
-
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.
-
The Australian Red Cross in action
Video
Nurses from the Australian Red Cross serve tea and refreshments to returned soldiers, including those injured and in convalescence.
-
Occupational Therapy
Video
Returned Australian soldiers in convalescence are shown to be in good spirits as they hand-craft objects from wooden materials.
-
Invested at Buckingham Palace
Video
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.
-
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.
-
Back to Blighty
Video
An ambulance arrives at a New Zealand General Hospital and medical orderlies unload wounded soldiers. Around them are wounded men in various states of recovery – note the number of walking sticks and amputees. All of the patients are dressed in “hospital blues” – a uniform worn by all hospital soldiers in the United Kingdom. Under the Defence of the Realm Act it was forbidden for Public Houses to sell liquor to a soldier in hospital blues.
Can you help us identify the hospital? We know it is a New Zealand General Hospital, so it is either Brockenhurst or Walton-on-Thames. Please contact us if can you help us.
-
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.
-
A Case of shell shock
Audio
George Lee recounts a story of a Sergeant who after being caught in a salvo on patrol came back “absolutely useless” and unable to function. He talks about the men who, after realising his condition, concealed it from the commander – because even at that late stage of the war there was little sympathy for those suffering from shell shock.
-
With the Aid of the Red Cross
Video
Veterans returning in wheelchairs and with missing limbs gave Australians at home their first sight of the true cost of modern warfare.
-
Anzac Hospitals at Home
Video
Returned servicemen engage in handicrafts, music-making and a degree of flirting with nurses while convalescing in an Anzac hospital.
-
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).
-
First English hospital for wounded Kiwis
Video
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.
-
Regarding the epidemic of marriages
Video
A report issued in March 1916 observed that wounded and convalescing Anzac troops were falling in love with their nurses, and marrying them. Officials were concerned that these marriages, made in haste during exceptional circumstances, might not be wise. The situation became further complicated as servicemen applied for grants to bring their new brides back to Australia.
-
The wounded return home to Australia
Video
More than 150 sick and wounded men return to Australia on the S.S Karoola which was fitted as a hospital ship in England. Soldiers suffering severe injuries are transported from the ship to waiting vehicles. They disembark on stretchers and, rather unconventionally, by piggy-back.
When sick and wounded soldiers left the battlefield they were out of immediate danger, but were not entirely safe until they reached their final destination. It was not uncommon for hospital ships to be attacked, whether because of mistaken identity or intentionally. The Australian hospital ship HMAT Warilda was sunk on 3 August 1918 with the loss of 123 lives. The greatest disaster of this kind was in February 1916 when a German U-boat torpedoed the Canadian hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle, with the loss of 234 lives. After the war the U-boat’s captain and two of his lieutenants were charged with war crimes.
-
Caring for our Wounded
Video
Over 3,000 Australian nurses volunteered during the First World War, working in hospitals, including hospital ships and trains, and in field stations closer to the front line. This film shows scenes of Allied forces medical staff and stations taken throughout the Western Front, 1916-1918: “No words can describe the awfulness of the wounds. Bullets are nothing. It is the shrapnel that tears through the flesh and cuts off limbs”
-
"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.
-
Nurse Cavell imprisoned before her execution
Image
The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell is a 1916 Australian silent film about the execution of Nurse Edith Cavell during World War I, directed by Jack Gavin and Charles Post Mason. Told in four parts, the film was one of the most popular Australian silent movies ever made. The film is lost with no copies known to have survived.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Marking the first Anzac Day in London
Audio
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.’
-
"The toughest part of the war was lack of sleep"
Audio
Coupled with the lack of shelter or water and a very poor diet, Australian and New Zealand soldiers on Gallipoli found the lack of sleep almost impossible to get used to. The cramped conditions, noise, heat and flies made a good night’s rest a rare luxury. Men often fell asleep where they were sitting – or standing, as New Zealand veteran Jerry Duffel recalls in this radio interview recorded in the 1960s.
-
Maggots and brandy – evacuating wounded men
Audio
Facilities for evacuating and treating men wounded on Gallipoli were woefully inadequate. The British military command had not anticipated such large numbers of casualties, who often waited for days unattended on the narrow beach before they could be transported by ship to a hospital. Alexander McLachlan, a Scots officer on board the transport ship Saturnia, recalls in this 1969 interview how he and his colleagues were unable to cope with the vast numbers of sick and wounded.
-
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.
-
Māori and Pacific Islanders march to war
Video
On Saturday 5 February 1916, the 3rd Māori Contingent of Reinforcements and others made their way from Parliament along Lambton Quay to their departure point at Wellington’s waterfront. Members of the Māori Contingent are easily identified by their uniform of pith helmet, shorts, putties (a long strip of cloth around the lower leg) and lack of ammunition pouches, which distinguished them from the ‘lemon squeezer’ hat and full uniform of the other troops. The idea of engaging in a battle in foreign lands so far from home must have raised excitement as well as doubt as the Māori Contingent headed for the challenge and conflict of World War One.
Troops from several South Pacific countries formed part of the 3rd Maori Contingent. Among them was Sergeant-Major Uea of Lalofetau, Niue. He had helped to encourage support for the war effort and was the oldest of the Niuean volunteers who sailed that day.
-
New Zealand soldiers recover from battle wounds
Video
After being wounded in battle, many Anzac soldiers were shipped to England to recover. Once their injuries healed, they were sent to convalescent camps around the country to restore them to fighting fitness. This short film shows New Zealanders at a convalescent camp taking part in training exercises to improve their fitness. As the film shows, training was not all hard work, and they certainly had some fun at the camps.
-
Nurses remember the sinking of the Marquette
Audio
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.
-
Who was to blame for the sinking of the Marquette?
Audio
Thirty-two New Zealand medical staff, including ten nurses, were killed when the troop transport ship SS Marquette was sunk by a torpedo from a German U-boat on 23 October 1915. The Marquette was en route from Alexandria to Salonika, carrying troops of the British 29th Division Ammunition Column, Royal Field Artillery, along with their equipment and animals. The medical personnel, equipment and stores of the New Zealand No. 1 Stationary Hospital were also on board. Questions were later asked about why a hospital unit was travelling with an ammunition column, which made the ship a legitimate military target.
In this 1965 recording two survivors, Herbert Hyde and Alexander Prentice of the New Zealand Medical Corps, recall the shipwreck and their impressions of why the disaster happened.
-
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.
-
The last month I was there, I never wore trousers
Audio
The Anzac troops on Gallipoli faced many discomforts in addition to the Turkish soldiers shooting at them from over the hill. They lacked food and drinking water, suffered from sicknesses like dysentery and typhoid, and were surrounded by bodies decomposing in the heat. Life on the peninsula was all about survival, and it changed the men’s priorities. Here two New Zealand veterans talk about the highs and lows, including eating a dead sheep they found, squabbling over fresh bread and being evacuated due to dysentery.
-
The Daisy Patch
Audio
Joseph Gasparich was a gumdigger and school teacher before he joined the Auckland Infantry Battalion. In May 1915 he was serving with the combined Australian and New Zealand forces at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli. General Sir Ian Hamilton decided to try and break through to the south of the Gallipoli peninsula, and New Zealand and Australian infantrymen were sent to Cape Helles by ferry. On 8 May the New Zealanders launched a series of attacks across an open field of poppies and daisies. In 1968 Joe Gasparich recorded his memories of the unsuccessful attacks in the Daisy Patch. “It was absolute murder – or suicide, whichever way you like to look at it.”
-
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.
-
Fundraising for the war effort, Sydney
Video
Various wartime fundraising and recruitment activities are seen in this film from about 1916, shot from outside the General Post Office in Martin Place, Sydney, after rain. In pavilion-style tent stalls, Red Cross workers sell ribbons, flowers and other produce. The top-hatted Governor of NSW, Sir Gerald Strickland, walks among the crowds. Many AIF troops are shown in this clip, their humour in evidence in a shot of a young male civilian being ‘accosted’ and compelled to enlist, while others pretend to take his measurements for a uniform.
-
Household pets join the forces
Audio
Ena Ryan of Wellington was a young girl when war was declared in August 1914, but she vividly recalled the excitement of those days. In this 1985 interview she describes watching the Main Body marching through the streets of Wellington to the departing ships. She noticed that one of the men had a kitten buttoned into his tunic. Once they arrived at the battlefront the men adopted other pets, including dogs, donkeys and goats found in and around battlefields. These animals helped to keep up the mens’ spirits, and some became official mascots.