New Zealand volunteers heed ‘call to arms’

Press, 20 November 1989, Page 23

New Zealand volunteers heed ‘call to arms’

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated at Sarajevo, setting in motion a train .of events which led to the outbreak of World War I, when German troops attacked Belgium on August 4. Great Britain’s declaration of war at this violation of Belgian neutrality was followed on that same day by one from the Governor-General of New Zealand, the Earl of Liverpool, who pledged the dominion’s armed forces to the Allied cause.

The main body of 8427 men left Wellington Harbour on October 16, 1914, on board 14 transport ships. They fought in. Egypt and later took part in the Gallipoli campaign where the Anzac legend was born. In 1915 they moved to France to serve on the Western front where the troops lived, fought — and many died — in primitive conditions, barely a stone’s throw from their adversaries. The gaining. of a few yards of ground was only, achieved at the cost of enormous casualties. ‘ ;; .- ■ . „ . ~J,...

By 1917 the adversaries were at a stalemate which was broken by the

intervention of fresh American troops. From then on the tide turned in favour of the allies.

On November 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany abdicated. Two days later, on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, the war ended.

The armistice was signed in a railway carriage at Rethondes in France. (When France collapsed in 1940, the Germans used the same carriage to sign the terms of surrender.) For many years, life in most of the countries involved in The Great War came to a stop as two minutes’ silence was observed to allow each to remember their war dead. The combatants had mobilised 65 million men, of whom 8.4 million were killed, or missing in action, and about 21 million wounded.

New Zealand’s losses were comparable. Out of 100,444 volunteers who served overseas (this was 42 per cent of the male population of military age — aged 19 to 45), 16,697 were killed, 41,317 wounded, and 84 were missing in action. About 550 New Zealand nurses also served.

Some volunteers made their own way to the United Kingdom to serve in other units of the British Armed Forces.

The photographs used on this page, taken from glass negatives stored in the photographic files of “The Press,’’ show volunteers of the Canterbury Regiment of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force embarking for The Great War, the conflict from which so many never returned. The regiment cdmped and trained at the Addington Show Grounds until early September, 1914, when bad weather forced it to move to the adjoining Metropolitan Trotting Club’s grounds. On September 7 another move was made to the Plumpton Park Trotting Ground at Sockburn. The men paraded at a review by the Minister of Defence on September 14 and on September 23 they made their way to Lyttelton to board the troopships. , < ' rd They left Lyttelton on October 2, arriving with Otago troopships in Wellington the next day. On October 16 they ■ieft Wellington with the Wellington and Auckland ships which made up the main body of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. , .. . :