NEW ZEALAND IN THE GREAT WAR
August, 2024
110 years ago this month, in August 1914, World War I broke out, only a few weeks after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28. New Zealand declared war on Germany on August 5, as a Dominion being an automatic partner in the British declaration.
The First World War was the most documented of any up to that date; accounts of soldiers, journals and diaries, photographs, official documents, and media articles, postcards and cartoons - Land, Air, and Naval
Much of what is now available of the time, is quite rare and often very personal, photographs and diaries, very poignant as some 98,000 young men optimistically sailed off to Europe, some 20% never returning
About 60,000 troops were trained in the Featherston Camp. We have a collection of associated photographic postcards and cartoons #018995; #018996.
One method of recording the events was to transfer photographic images to glass slides. Such as a rare collection showing scenes of the Gallipoli campaign: including sports for the troops, the HMS Cornwallis, the Dardanelles campaign, etc (#018599)
Other slides include one titled "Hun Submarines Surrendered", showing three German WWI submarines with crews surrendering #018600.
More than a third of New Zealand casualties occurred in the trenches and battlefields of France. A collection of more than 40 b&w photographs (#019138) includes trench scenes, troops on the move on horse and foot, German prisoners, troops in action and nurses in their field hospital.
During the long sea voyage from New Zealand of the Twenty Second of the N.Z.E.F on the troopship Aparima, a rare journal was published on board, recording life of the troops on the way to war (#020173) It describes mock court martials, reminiscences, poems, etc, and a complete list of all the hundreds of troops on board,
It is these more personal items that often have a greater impact on our knowledge and understanding of the war than official records and accounts, although we have many of those as well
For instance the Cyclist Corps (#019836) and many more.