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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.
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Civilian clothing for returned soldiers
Video
Towards the end of the war the Australian Red Cross focused on helping integrate returned service personnel into work and society. This clip shows women at the Red Cross making and sorting clothes for returned soldiers.
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Occupational Therapy
Video
Returned Australian soldiers in convalescence are shown to be in good spirits as they hand-craft objects from wooden materials.
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Peace Loan Procession
Video
At the end of the First World War, Australia was in desperate need of funds. To combat this, federal Parliament announced the first Peace Loan campaign on 30 July 1919.
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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.
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The Diggers’ March in Sydney
Audio
In April 1938, several thousand New Zealand “diggers” sailed from Wellington for Sydney, where they reunited with their Australian “cobbers” of 1914 – 1918 in a grand Anzac Day procession through the city.
The huge march from the Cenotaph to the Domain, where a commemoration service was held, was part of Australia’s 150th anniversary celebrations and some 50,000 returned servicemen took part – with an estimated half a million people lining the Sydney streets.
In this live radio broadcast from the Wellington waterfront, Station 2ZB announcers – who were veterans themselves – capture the cheering, bands and excitement on the docks. New Zealand Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage farewells the old soldiers as they board former World War One troopships – ‘the Monowai’ and ‘the Maunganui’ – for the trip across the Tasman.
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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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Ask Your Tailor for Anzac Tweed
Video
The factory weaving Anzac Tweed was on the brink of closure when it was taken over by the Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League. It then employed only returned servicemen and their families.
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The Choice is Yours
Video
A government film gives hope of rehabilitation to the returning war veteran.
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Learning to farm
Video
After surviving the bloody battles on the Western Front and elsewhere, able-bodied returning soldiers were offered opportunities to become farmers.
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Boxing and recruiting
Video
In the early stages of the war sport was seen as a fertile site for recruitment, and this film shows 17,000 spectators crammed into the Sydney Stadium to witness Les Darcy defend his world middleweight title against American Eddie McGoorty in 1915. An intense affair, Police ended the fight in the 15th round after McGoorty was knocked down for the fourth time. Beforehand the Premier of NSW, William Holman, and the opposition leader, Charles Wade, were scheduled to give a recruitment speech.
However, as it became obvious that the war would not be over quickly, and as casualties from Gallipoli mounted, sport was condemned as a distraction from fighting and the home front war effort.
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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.