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Abstract
Drawing on school histories, published adult recollections, oral interviews and children’s letters, this article explores how the lives of young New Zealanders were affected by contemporary attitudes and activities during World War I in a country far removed from the actual theatre of war. Particular emphasis is given to school‐related experiences.
Acknowledgements
A University of Waikato Faculty of Arts and Social Science Small Research Grant provided funding for travel to Waiouru and Wellington, and a short period of research assistance. The author is grateful to Christopher Burke for his intensive exploration of school histories; and Dolores Ho, Archivist at the Army Museum, for facilitating her access to an appropriate selection of correspondence.
Notes
4 Turkish president Kemal Ataturk, greeting the first official visitors from Australia, New Zealand and England to Gallipoli, in 1934, cited in Tanja Luckins, The Gates of Memory: Australian People’s Experiences and Memories of Loss and the Great War (Fremantle: Curtin University Books, 2004), 9.
1 See Maureen Sharpe, “Anzac Day in New Zealand 1916–1939,” New Zealand Journal of History 7, no. 2 (1973): 97–114 and Scott Worthy, “A Debt of Honour: New Zealanders” First Anzac Days,” New Zealand Journal of History 36, no. 2 (2002): 185–97. The acronym of ANZAC derives from the combined Australian and New Zealand Army Corps which first fought on the Turkish peninsular as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, commanded by General Sir Ian Hamilton, in 1915. See Christopher Pugsley, The ANZAC Experience: New Zealand, Australia and Empire in the First World War (Wellington: Reed, 2004) for an overview of the involvement of both Dominions in the conflict.
2 See, for example, Bruce Scates, “Imagining Anzac: Children’s Memories of the Killing Fields of the Great War,” in Children and War: A Historical Anthology, ed. James Marten (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 50–62; and “Broken Journeys: Australian Pilgrimages to the Cemeteries of the Great War, 1915–2005,” paper presented for the CISH 2005 Round Table 20, “Remembering the ‘Great War’: Towards the Centennial of World War 1”. Available at http://www.cishsydney2005.org/program.asp?lang=En (accessed 4 July 2005).
3 Australia’s 26,000 casualties included 8000 deaths. British and French casualties in the costly campaign, for which Winston Churchill was the principal advocate, numbered 120,000 and 27,000 respectively. For a comprehensive outline of New Zealand and Australian involvement, see Ian McGibbon, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Military History (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2000), 190–8.
5 Stephane Audoin‐Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18, Understanding the Great War, translated from the French by Catherine Temerson (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002), 10 for the first reference to this term; 94–158 for an exploration of its implications.
6 Rouzeau, 113–58 for the concept of crusade. For combatant perspectives, see The Great Adventure: New Zealand Soldiers Describe the First World War, ed. Jock Phillips, Nicholas Boyack and E.P. Malone (Wellington: Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, 1988).
7 For the link between patriotism and the curriculum, see Roger Openshaw, “Patriotism and the New Zealand primary school: the decisive years of the twenties”. DPhil thesis, University of Waikato, 1978; and E.P. Malone, “The New Zealand School Journal and the Imperial Ideology,” New Zealand Journal of History 7, no. 2 (1973): 12–27.
8 Deborah Montgomerie, “Reconnaissance: Twentieth‐Century New Zealand War History at Century’s Turn,” New Zealand Journal of History, 37, no. 1 (April 2003): 62–79.
9 For example: Audoin Stephane‐Rouzeau, La Guerre des enfants, 1914–18 (Paris: A. Colin, 1993); William Tuttle, “Daddy’s Gone To War”; The Second World War in the Lives of America’s Children (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); James Marten, The Children’s Civil War. (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 1998); and his Children and War anthology referenced in note 2.
10 For graduate research on these wartime letters, see Deborah Challinor, “Children and War: A Study of the Impact of the First World War on New Zealand Children,” MA diss., University of Waikato, 1993, 27–39; also Rosemary Goodyear, “Black Boots and Pinafores: Childhood in Otago 1900–1920,” MA thesis, University of Otago, 1992, 289–91.
11 Simon Johnson, “The Home Front: Aspects of Civilian Patriotism During the First World War,” MA thesis, Massey University, 1975, 28–9, footnotes 26, 31, 32.
12 Challinor, 21.
13 Otago Daily Times, May 8, 1915, 13.
14 Otago Witness, Nov 6, 1918, 5.
15 Elsthorpe: The People, the Place compiled by Elizabeth and Yvonne Macaulay (Waipukurau: Elsthorpe School and District Centenary Committee, 1998), 6.
16 Havelock North Primary School 125th Jubilee [no author noted] (Hastings: Cliff Press, 1988), 14.
17 M.H. Durie, Learn By Doing: A Centennial History of the Taonui School and District 1879–1979 (Feilding: Taonui Centennial Committee, 1979), 79–80.
18 M.P. Condon, Fraser Road School and District 1899–1999 (Hawera: Fraser Road School and District Centennial Committee, 1999), 17.
19 Maurice Gee, Nelson Central School: A History (Nelson: Nelson Central School Committee, 1978), 46; also Colin Harrison, Clive School Centenary 1879–1979 (Clive: Clive School Centennial Committee, 1979), 22.
20 Elsie Ryden. in School Days, ed. Lynley Martin (Wellington: New Zealand Country Women’s institute, 1994), 40.
21 Colonial Childhoods Oral History Project (CCOHP) interview with Stan C. (b. 1902), 15 May 1989, Tape 2 Side 1. All tapes and copyright are in the author’s possession. Although all of the participants are now deceased – very few were younger than 85 at the time of the interviews – anonymity was an option preferred by some of the interviewees. For the sake of consistency in this paper, I have used only first name followed by surname initial.
22 Hawera Main School Centennial 1875–1975 compiled by Alison Robinson (Hawera: School Centennial Committee, 1975). Unpaginated: entries for the “Fifth Decade 1915–1925.” See also Goodyear, 294 for an example of elderly Dunedin residents recalling the scale and competitiveness of their wartime bottle drives.
23 Jeanine Graham, “My Brother and I: Glimpses of Childhood in our Colonial Past,” Hocken Lecture 1991 (Dunedin: Hocken Library, University of Otago, 1992), 5.
26 CCOHP interview with William D. (b. 1903), February 15, 1989, Tape 1 Side 2.
24 Letter from “Blue Eyes” cited in Stones from the Spring: School Journal Part 4 no. 2 (1979), 22.
25 Douglas: A Taranaki Rural Community: School 75th Jubilee 1906–1981, compiled by Tom Bredow (Douglas: School Jubilee Committee, 1981), 19.
27 Jacqualine Hollingworth, “For God, King and Country 1900: Australia at the Turn of the Century,” New Zealand Journal of Social Studies 12, no. 1 (2004): 46–57 for a parallel study of imperial indoctrination affecting the outlook of young Australian men eligible to enlist in the armed forces in the First World War.
28 N.Z. School Journal 3, no 7 (August 1916): 207–15.
29 Heather Nicholson, The Loving Stitch: A History of Knitting and Spinning in New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1998), 88 for both words and music; Goodyear, 293–4 for the recollections of Dunedin schoolgirl and schoolboy knitters.
30 CCOHP group interview with elders at Whareroa Marae, Mt Maunganui, March 28, 1989, Tape 1 Side 1.
31 Hawera Main School Centennial 1875–1975, unpaginated entries for the “Fifth Decade 1915–1925.”
32 CCOHP interview with Mervyn M. (b. 1902), February 8, 1989, Tape 1 Side 1.
33 For details on Maori involvement, see the entry “Maori and the First World War,” in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Military History, ed. Ian McGibbon (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2000), 296–99.
34 See Christopher Pugsley, Te Hokowhitu a Tu: The Maori Pioneer Battalion in the First World War (Auckland: Reed, 1995) for nominal rolls of the Maori Contingents and Reinforcements 1914–18, 85–130.
35 Jim Henderson, Te Kao: 75 (Kaitaia: Aupouri Maori Trust Board, 1957), 38.
36 See the entry by Monty Soutar in the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Military History, 309–11.
37 K.A. Trembath, Ad Augusta: A Centennial History of Auckland Grammar School 1869–1969 (Auckland: Auckland Grammar School Old Boys’ Association, 1969), 181–2.
38 W.E. Langford, Hastings Central School 1875–1975 Centenary (Hastings: Hastings Central School Centennial Committee, 1975), 51.
39 See Education and the Second World War: Studies in Schooling and Social Change, ed. Roy Lowe (London: Falmer Press, 1992), passim, for examples of changes and comparisons between First World War and Second World War experiences.
40 Trembath, 178.
41 CCOHP interview with Brian B. (b. 1901), March 16, 1989, Tape 2, Side 1.
42 Baume, Eric. I Lived These Years (London: George Harrap, 1941), 48–9.
43 Baume, 50–53.
44 Lauris Edmond with Carolyn Milward, eds, Women in Wartime (Wellington: Government Printing Office, 1986), 219.
45 Olive Deaker, Not For School But For Life: Southland Girls’ High School 1879–1979 (Invercargill: Southland Girls’ High School Centennial Committee, 1979), 52.
46 Edmond, 220.
47 Ibid., 219.
48 Ralph Richardson, Call Back Yesterday: A New Zealand Idyll (Lewes: Book Guild, 1983), 119.
49 Richardson, 115.
50 Richardson, 120.
51 Christine Cole Catley, Springboard for Women: New Plymouth Girls’ High School 1885–1985 (Whatamongo Bay: Cape Catley, 1985), 25.
52 The Kippenberger Military Archive and Research Library at the Army Museum, Waiouru, contains an extensive collection of such letters. Particularly useful amongst the sample consulted for this paper was the correspondence of Rifleman Edward Percival Miller, 1987–1645 MSS 035; Private Archibald Frederick Robbie, 2004–208 MSS 045; and Private William Thomas Dundon, 1986–1645 Box 2.
53 CCOHP interview with Poula C. (b. 1906), March 14, 1989, Tape 1 Side 1.
54 CCOHP joint interview with Hermann (b. 1908) and Bruno (b. 1900) D., March 30, 1989, Tape 1 Side 2.
55 CCOHP interview with Carl M. (b.1901), April 26, 1989, Tape 2 Side 1.
56 CCOHP interview with Hector D. (b. 1900), April 19, 1989, Tape 1 Side 1. See also Goodyear, 296–7 for recollections of antagonism towards German residents in Otago.
57 Johnson, 82, footnotes 51–53.
58 Richardson, 121; Goodyear, 296.
59 Edmond, 134–35.
60 Maurice Gee, The Fire Raiser (Auckland: Penguin, 1986), 20–7, 109–12.
61 Gee, Nelson Central School, 46.
62 Prominent peace campaigner, Elise Locke, recalled questioning xenophobic attitudes as a child in her Peace People: A History of Peace Activities in New Zealand (Christchurch: Hazard Press, 1992), 68.
63 Edmond, 99. No surname is noted in the account.
64 Hawera Main School, unpaginated entry for the “Fifth Decade”.
65 For the casualty rates and community impact, see Plates 77 and 78 of the Bateman New Zealand Historical Atlas, ed. Malcolm McKinnon (Auckland: David Bateman in association with Historical Branch, Department of internal Affairs, 1997).
66 Rouzeau, 207–12.
67 Rouzeau, 212–15.
68 Hone Kaa, personal communication facilitated by Tahu Kukutai, November 7, 2004.
69 Twenty–third Reunion, 28th Maori Battalion, Te Poho‐o‐Rawiri, Gisborne, March 29–April 2, 2002, Proceedings, 15.
70 Monty Soutar, ed., Hiruharama School Centennial, 1895–1995 (Palmerston North: Hiruharama School Centennial Committee, 1995), 61.
71 Rosalie Spence, comp., “Hukarere Centenary 1875–1975”, unpublished pamphlet, 1975, 69; McGibbon, Oxford Companion, 153 for details on Ismailia.
72 Interview with Diggeress Te Kanawa, North and South. November 2004, 31. The term came from the exploits of the Maori troops on the Somme in 1916 where they earned the reputation of being the “digging battalion” and were referred to as “Diggers”. The label was in common use for all NZ soldiers by the end of the war.
73 Phillips et al., The Great Adventure, 194.
74 Judith Fyfe, ed., War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us (Auckland: Penguin, 1995), 139–41 for Tepara Mabel Waititi’s comments in relation to a post‐First World War Maori example. David Ballantyne’s barely disguised autobiographical novel, The Cunninghams (New York: Vanguard Press, 1948) was widely read after its release in New Zealand in 1950, possibly because many could identify with the postwar family tensions that he depicted.
75 Miles Spencer interview with Jim Sullivan, “Sounds Historical” programme, October 3, 2004, Radio New Zealand.
76 For a revealing account of one father’s changing views on the war, as expressed in private, see Ross Galbreath, Scholars and Gentlemen Both: G.M. & Allan Thomson in New Zealand Science and Education (Wellington: Royal Society of New Zealand, 2002), 201–17.
77 Openshaw, passim.
78 John Mulgan, Report on Experience, 2nd ed. (Auckland: Blackwood & Janet Paul, 1967), 33.
79 “Nurse,” in Edmond, 238.
80 Luckins, 253.
81 Rouzeau, 4–10.