Bateman Illustrated History of New Zealand by Wright Matthew

Author:Wright, Matthew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: David Bateman Ltd

By the time the New Zealanders reached Ypres – ‘Wipers’– it had been on or near the front line for two years.

Henry Armitage Sanders, gelatin dry plate negative, RSA Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, PAColl-5311, G-12950-1/2

The net result was that socially significant numbers of New Zealanders—up to half the cohort of young men of the day—were thrown together under adverse conditions for a far longer period than Gallipoli, and their experiences defined the reality of the war for New Zealand. It was a shattering time. Young New Zealanders, some fresh out of school, fought, bled and died in places that most had not even known as names on a map: Flers, Messines and Passchendaele among them. These tiny villages and the fields between them became irrevocably associated with an endless, inhuman and de-humanising world of mud, filth, bullets, shells, bombs, mines and the corrupting remains of earlier casualties. The spectre of it haunted the generation who fought through it—and defined all that was wrong with war for half a century afterwards or more.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.