The New Zealand soldiers who left these shores to fight in the First World War represented one of the greatest collective endeavours in the nation’s history. Over 100,000 men and women would embark for overseas service and almost 60,000 of them became casualties. For a small nation like New Zealand this was a tragedy on an unimagined scale. Using their personal testimony, this book reveals what these men experienced – the truth of their lives in battle, at rest, at their best and their worst. Through a comprehensive and sympathetic scrutiny of New Zealand soldiers’ correspondence, diaries and memoirs, a compelling picture of the New Zealand soldier’s war from general to private is revealed. This is not a campaign history of dry facts and detail. Rather, it examines minutely the everyday experience of trench life in all its shapes and forms. Diverse topics such as barbed wire, the use of the bayonet, gas attacks, rats, horses, food, communal singing, infectious diseases and much more feature in this riveting account of the New Zealand soldier in the First World War. It is the story of ordinary men thrust into the most extraordinary circumstances imaginable. Written in an accessible style aimed at the interested general reader, the book is the product of a substantial amount of research. The text is complemented by a range of maps, illustrations, graphs and diagrams.

In the first major national history of Aotearoa New Zealand to be published for 20 years, Professor Michael Belgrave advances the notion that New Zealand's two peoples — tangata whenua and subsequent migrants — have together built an open, liberal society based on a series of social contracts. Frayed though they may sometimes be, these contracts have created a country that is distinct. This engaging new look at our history examines how.

The First World War is widely conceived as a pointless conflict that destroyed a generation. Petty squabbles between emperors pushed na&ïve young men into a nightmare of mud and blood that killed millions and left scarred and embittered survivors. However, the ongoing reinterpretation of the First World War reveals that matters were rather more nuanced and complex. Hardship and death were all too common, but there were positive experiences, too. Vast numbers of people, for example, travelled to new parts of the world and encountered new cultures, inspiring a sense of wonder and respect. Military tactics were improved, and great military commanders of the inter-war and Second World War periods came to prominence during the First World War. The conflict also had a formative influence on politicians, writers, artists, union leaders, businessmen and some ethnic minorities, who used their participation to press for equal rights and full citizenship. This book's 16 chapters, written by a range of leading New Zealand and international historians, explains how.

In New Zealand’s France, Dr Alistair Watts investigates the origins of the New Zealand nation state from a fresh perspective — one that moves beyond the traditional bicultural view prevalent in the current New Zealand historiography. That New Zealand became British in the 1840s owes much, Dr Watts contends, to that other great colonial power of the time, France. The rich history of British antagonism towards the French was transported to New Zealand in the 1830s and 1840s as part of the British colonists’ cultural baggage, to be used in creating an old identity in a new land. Even as the British colonists sought a new beginning, this defining anti-French characteristic caused them to override the existing Māori culture with their own constructs of time and place. Leaving their signature names in the cities of Wellington and Nelson and naming their streets after Waterloo and Collingwood, the British colonisers attempted to establish a local antithesis of France through a bucolic Little Britain in the South Pacific. It was this legacy, as much as the assumed bicultural origins of modern New Zealand, that produced a Pacific country that still relies on the symbolism of the Union Jack embedded in the national flag and the totemic constitutional presence of the British Crown to maintain its national identity. This is the story of how this came about.

This book explores the ramifications of 1917, arguing that it was a cataclysmic year in world history. In this volume, thirteen scholars reflect on the myriad legacies of the year 1917 as a year of war, revolution, upheaval and change. Crisscrossing the globe and drawing on a range of disciplinary approaches, from military, social and economic history to museum, memory and cultural studies, the collection highlights how the First World War remains ‘living history’. With contributions on the Russian revolutions, the entry of the United States into the war, the Caucasus and Flanders war fronts, as well as on India and New Zealand, and chapters by pre-eminent First World War academics, including Jay Winter, Annette Becker, and Michael Neiberg, the collection engages all with an interest in the era and in the history and commemoration of war.

They left their Southern Lands, They sailed across the sea; They fought the Hun, they fought the Turk For truth and liberty. Now Anzac Day has come to stay, And bring us sacred joy; Though wooden crosses be swept away – We'll never forget our boys. – Jane Morison, ‘We'll never forget our boys', 1917 Be it ‘Tipperary' or ‘Pokarekare', the morning reveille or the bugle's last post, concert parties at the front or patriotic songs at home, music was central to New Zealand's experience of the First World War. In Good-Bye Maoriland, the acclaimed author of Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music introduces us the songs and sounds of World War I in order to take us deep inside the human experience of war.

This practical guide will enable you to create your own realistic small-scale models from the period of The Great War, specifically those involving the forces, aviation and armoured cars of Great Britain, the Commonwealth, France and Belgium. It also touches on other Allied Nations, Russia and Italy. With over 325 high quality photographs, this book covers what soldiers looked like in WW1, with actual clothing and equipment examples for use as reference. There are 'step by step' projects of figures and busts from concept to completion using a wide range of scales, mediums and materials. Each project is explained with an 'Important Steps' and 'Key Points' guide, plus painting palette recommendation. 'How to' illustrations demonstrating techniques and highlighting details are included as well as 'How to' explanations of painting techniques to create realistic-looking skin, clothing and equipment textures like serge battledress and canvas webbing. Many tips are given on how to set up your projects to ensure you are ready to begin experimenting with your own approach. Use these tips to help grow your confidence in sculpting, converting and painting your WW1 projects.

This book addresses the conflicts, myths, and memories that grew out of the Great War in Ottoman Turkey, and their legacies in society and politics. It is the third volume in a series dedicated to the combined analysis of the Ottoman Great War and the Armenian Genocide. In Australia and New Zealand, and even more in the post-Ottoman Middle East, the memory of the First World War still has an immediacy that it has long lost in Europe. For the post-Ottoman regions, the first of the two World Wars, which ended Ottoman rule, was the formative experience. This volume analyses this complex configuration: why these entanglements became possible; how shared or even contradictory memories have been constructed over the past hundred years, and how differing historiographies have developed. Remembering the Great War in the Middle East reaches towards a new conceptualization of the “long last Ottoman decade” (1912-22), one that places this era and its actors more firmly at the center, instead of on the periphery, of a history of a Greater Europe, a history comprising – as contemporary maps did – Europe, Russia, and the Ottoman world.

Alexander Aitken was an ordinary soldier with an extraordinary mind. The student who enlisted in 1915 was a mathematical genius who could multiply nine-digit numbers in his head. He took a violin with him to Gallipoli (where field telephone wire substituted for an E-string) and practiced Bach on the Western Front. Aitken also loved poetry and knew the Aeneid and Paradise Lost by heart. His powers of memory were dazzling. When a vital roll-book was lost with the dead, he was able to dictate the full name, regimental number, next of kin and address of next of kin for every member of his former platoon—a total of fifty-six men. Everything he saw, he could remember. Aitken began to write about his experiences in 1917 as a wounded out-patient in Dunedin Hospital. Every few years, when the war trauma caught up with him, he revisited the manuscript, which was eventually published as Gallipoli to the Somme in 1963. Aitken writes with a unique combination of restraint, subtlety, and an almost photographic vividness. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Literature on the strength of this single work—a book recognised by its first reviewers as a literary memoir of the Great War to put alongside those by Graves, Blunden and Sassoon. Long out of print, this is by some distance the most perceptive memoir of the First World War by a New Zealand soldier. For this edition, Alex Calder has written a new introduction, annotated the text, compiled a selection of images, and added a commemorative index identifying the soldiers with whom Aitken served.

The war in the South Pacific saw some of the most gruelling fighting of World War Two. Conditions were unpleasant – fetid heat, torrential downpours and hostile flora and fauna – while the Japanese enemy were ruthless and would often fight to the last man. Amphibious warfare, jungle warfare and the need to co-operate with our American ally all meant that new demands were made on New Zealand soldiers. Yet the war in the South Pacific came to be seen as an easy war, generally overlooked (with the exception of Guadalcanal) by historians. From ignorance of what the soldiers were called upon to endure, the notion arose that service in the South Pacific was somehow less worthy than the ‘real war’ in Europe against the Nazis. This attitude continued in the post-war world and today the soldiers of 3NZ Division are all but forgotten. Pacific Star sets the record straight, shedding new light on the sacrifices and tribulations which the soldiers of 3NZ Division had to endure in the service of the Allied cause. The book covers their initial deployment in Fiji and New Caledonia, and describes the major battles the division fought in the Solomons: Vella Lavella, the Treasury Islands and the Green Islands, as well as their sometimes strained relationship with the US military. Reg Newell has interviewed veterans for this book, which includes new maps and previously unpublished photographs.