We Australians are sometimes guilty of forgetting that ANZAC Day isn’t all about us. I confess, for example, to having been somewhat surprised to learn in my twenties that troops from France and India had been involved in the Gallipoli campaign.
While I knew well enough that the NZ in ANZAC stands for New Zealand, that’s about all I know of the New Zealand role in the famous campaigns of the Great War. So, when I found myself in Auckland on ANZAC Day, I set out to find how our kiwi brothers and sisters commemorate the day and learn more about New Zealand’s war history.
New Zealand, like Australia, observes two days of commemoration for their war dead. Armistice Day on 11 November is shared with the commonwealth, while ANZAC day is shared only with Australia.
My New Zealand ANZAC day began with the familiar very early rise to attend the dawn commemorative service at the Auckland war memorial and museum atop Auckland Domain. The commemoration of New Zealand’s dead was literally cast in stone with the erection of the Cenotaph and monolithic war museum in 1929.
The dawn service commemorates the landing on the Gallipoli peninsula by Australian and New Zealand infantry on 25 April 1915, in what would be the first major campaign of World War I for for both Australia and New Zealand. It was a disaster, costing both countries thousands of their young men.
An immediate difference in this dawn service is the prominence of Maori culture. The commemorative service begins with a call of the conch in recognition of 500 Maori soldiers who served in the campaign. Throughout the service odes of remembrance are delivered in Maori and English.
In his address at the service, Auckland Mayor and former New Zealand government Minister Phil Gough told how the Great War had a huge impact on the then young and small country. When Great Britain declared war on Germany as World War I broke out in 1914, it took just one day for New Zealand to declare her hand and join the fight.
“With a population of barely one million, New Zealand mobilised more than 100,000 of its people to fight overseas… Scarcely a family across the country was not in some way affected by the loss of a loved one.”
“In the battles that followed at Gallipoli and then on the Western Front our soldiers endured the hell of trench warfare, shelling, rifle and machine gun fire, later gas,” Gough said.
Following the Dawn Service, the war museum was thrown open to the public and I took the opportunity to join a guided tour of the World War I gallery.
The Gallipoli campaign was devised by Churchill to take Turkey out of the war. Taking the Dardanelles would get supplies to and from Russia, our ally, and allow troops through to take Constantinople. Or so theory went.
It was, of course, a complete failure. From the tour guide I heard a familiar tale of troops being landed on the wrong beach to be cut down by machine gun fire. New Zealand’s ANACS told stories of the sea running red with the blood of their Australian comrades, already slaughtered by machine guns, and bodies of Australian soldiers floating in the water as the New Zealanders tried to land.
Those who survived then endured months of terrible trench warfare in unimaginably dreadful conditions. In August 1915, coinciding with the Australian attack at Lone Pine, the New Zealanders attacked Chunuk Bair. They held it for some 48 hours only to see most the troops killed in Turkish counter attack.
The only thing that went right at Gallipoli was the evacuation in December 2015. Soldiers rigged rifles to fire at regular intervals to trick the Turks into believing they were still in their trenches as they snuck down to the beaches to evacuate. No troops were lost in the retreat.
In the end New Zealand lost 2779 or a sixth of their troops at Gallipoli. The campaign cost the lives of 44,000 allied troops and more than 80,000 Turks – something we tend to forget.
Many of those ‘lucky’ enough to survive Gallipoli went on to fight in Palestine and then the Western Front. In the terrible battle of Passchendaele in October 2017, New Zealand’s ANACS faced their darkest hour. The kiwis suffered 2400 people killed or wounded in the first four hours of battle – New Zealand’s worst losses.
When the war broke out many of the young New Zealand men who signed up believed they were off on a great adventure. Less than 100 years since European settlement, New Zealanders also felt a sense of obligation to help defend ‘Mother England.’
By war’s end, some 60,000 New Zealanders had been wounded, more than 18,000 perished and many more were mentally scarred by their experience.
The war changed both New Zealand and Australia greatly. Common to Australia, ANZAC campaigns of the first world war saw the young New Zealand forge its own national identity, the people realised they were their own country and a pacific country, not part of England.
The war that was supposed to end all wars of course didn’t. Just 21 years later, 12,000 more New Zealanders answered the call to fight in Europe and the Pacific in World War II.
Over the last century, 300,000 New Zealanders have served in wars overseas with 30,000 killed. Around 9000 of New Zealand’s fallen have no known grave.
On the way back into Auckland I paused at the field of remembrance where 4799 white crosses acknowledge Aucklanders who died at Gallipoli, Sinai and Palestine and Flanders and on the Somme in 1916 and 1918.
We will remember them.