25 April 2024 : ANZAC Day

New Zealand: A few facts and some photos...

Apr 24, 2024

**New Zealand troops marching through London to Westminster Abbey for the Anzac Day service in 1916.** Image source.

The 1911 New Zealand census gives the male population as ~560,000. ~35% of males were aged 21-40, the main fighting age, representing slightly less than 200,000 men. About 100,000 enlisted or were conscripted in World War one. ~18,000 and ~40,000 men were killed and wounded respectively.

So approximately 9% and 20% of the 21-40 year old cohort were killed and wounded respectively, many permanently disabled, with some dying soon after. It is probably safe to say a quarter of New Zealand’s most productive male members of society were cut off in their prime to some extent due to World War One. And this does not include the untold psychological damage which did immeasurable post-war social harm.1

**Pte Robt Jarvie of Bulls, killed in action**

**Pte Wm Winter of Wyndham. Died of wounds**

**Sergt Geo Newton of Wellington, killed in action**

**Portrait of a soldier; Sargeant Jones**

**Behind the New Zealand firing line in Flanders: Māori soldiers performing a haka**

**Pte John Kay of Waihi, killed in action**

**Pte Alex Watson of Dannevirke, killed in action**

**Pte Charles Howie of Waverley, killed in action**

**New Zealand's soldier boys in Egypt: a group at Zeitoun, including several men from Eltham, Taranaki**

**Rfn David Tweedie of Milton. Died of wounds**

**Lieutenant George Ackhurst of Palmerston North, killed in action**

**Māori axemen on the Western Front: New Zealand warriors engaged in pioneer work near the firing line**

‘The end of a good pal’. This New Zealand Mounted Rifles horse received shrapnel wounds to the neck and shoulder during a bombing raid by Turkish aircraft, 1916-17. The horse had to be put down because of the severity of its wounds. Source.

**Culminating incident in the New Zealanders' fighting record in France the storming of Le Quesnoy, on November 4 last**

**The capture of Messines Ridge by the British forces in France: shells dropping on the ridge. The view also showing the country across which the New Zealanders advanced**

**With the New Zealanders in France: four of our boys, wearing French helmets, endeavouring to assist a mule exhausted by its struggles to get out of a shell-hole**

**Return of wounded New Zealand warriors from the Somme and other battlefields. A group of massage patients on board the hospital ship which reached Auckland last Sunday**

**Invalided New Zealanders happy to be home once more: some of the men with one of the nurses who arrived recently at Port Chalmers**

**War-scarred Gallipoli: a soldier resting outside his dug-out after a brush with the Turks**

**Back from the trenches: how a wounded New Zealander spent Christmas with his family at Auckland**

**Pte Chas Gow of Timaru, killed in action**

**Posthumous V C awarded to gallant New Zealand soldier: Sergeant Donald Forrester Brown of Oamaru, who was killed in action after outstanding bravery**

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Which had consequences, including homelessness. Returned soldiers were well represented, especially in the 1920s as the depression took hold. Unknown numbers died. These men were romanticized as ‘swaggers’ or ‘tramps’ and there was little popularly written about their condition. One who did was John A. Lee, with ex-soldiers appearing as characters in his writing, for example in these…

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Thanks to

ExcessDeathsAU

for the heads-up on the existence of this photo, and

Richard Seager

for finding it.

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