Anzac Day in Christchurch and Canterbury 2016

Monday 25 April 2016 is Anzac Day. All our libraries will be closed on this public holiday. Read our page on Anzac Day and Gallipoli to find out more about this commemoration.

Commemorative services often begin before dawn with a march by returned and service personnel to the local war memorial, where they are joined by other members of the community for the Dawn Service.

Assembling for the Anzac Day Parade, 301 Halswell Road. Photo by Ellenor Waters. CCL-HP2015-EW-DSCF2940 Photo from The Halswell Project.

Christchurch services and events

The following information is from Christchurch City Council:

Dawn service at Cranmer Square

• 6am–6.15am: the people gather
• 6.15am: the parade begins from the RSA building on Armagh Street
• 6.30am: the service begins centred around the memorial cenotaph
• 7.15am: the service concludes with wreath-laying

Organised by the Canterbury Branch of the Malayan Veterans Association in conjunction with the Christchurch Branch of the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association (RSA) and Christchurch City Council. Mayor Lianne Dalziel will lay a wreath on behalf of the citizens of Christchurch.

Citizens’ Service: 10am – ChristChurch Transitional Cathedral, Latimer Square

Organised by Christchurch City Council in conjunction with ChristChurch Cathedral and the RSA. It will be attended by representatives of the Defence Force, Consular Corps and local youth groups.

Find more Anzac Day services

The RSA website features a Find an Anzac Day service resource.

More Anzac related events

Fields of Remembrance

In 2015, the Canterbury Province Field in Cranmer Square contained 632 crosses commemorating the men and women of Christchurch who died in 1915. That number will be added to in 2016.

Field of Remembrance, Cranmer Square [2015] Flickr 2015-03-27-IMG_6781

Exhibitions and displays

• Canterbury Mounted Rifles regiment display – 18 to 30 April at Te Hāpua: Halswell Centre. Joe Dixon talk on the Canterbury Mounted Rifles, Tuesday 19 April, 2pm.
• ANZAC: Photographs by Laurence Aberhart at the Canterbury Museum
• Anzac display Brighton Gallery
• ANZAC Commemoration Linwood Cemetery (Sunday 24 April)
• Linwood Community Arts Centre (corner Worcester and Stanmore Road). Anzac Exhibition 2016 Monday 11 April – up to and including Anzac Day. A multi-media participatory experience on the theme, “We honour, we remember, we reflect”. Photographs, artworks, installations, talks, readings, poetry and prose, printed and audiovisual material.

Troops watering horses in the Avon River near Carlton Bridge, Christchurch [23 Sept. 1914]. CCL PhotoCD 7, IMG0069

Find out more:

• WW100
• Canterbury 100
• First World War
• See more activities and projects in Canterbury listed on the WW100 site.

Anzac Day 2014

Friday 25 April 2014 is Anzac Day. Christchurch is currently celebrating Anzac Day with a Dawn Service in Cranmer Square (where a temporary cenotaph is erected) and a Citizens Service at the ChristChurch Transitional Cathedral in Latimer Square. The details for each service are available on the Christchurch City Council website. For the locations and times of other commemorations around Christchurch details can be found on the RSA website.

Each year many wreaths and bouquets from the Dawn Service end up at the statue of Sgt Henry James Nicholas V.C. M.M., northwest of the Bridge of Remembrance on Cambridge Terrace.

Henry Nicholas was the first soldier from the Canterbury Regiment to be awarded the Victoria Cross. He died in action on 23 October 1918 aged 26. He was awarded the Military Medal posthumously for his bravery during the fight for the bridgeheads at the River Ecaillon near the village of Beaudignies on 23 October 1918, 12 days before the New Zealanders’ capture of the town of Le Quesnoy.

• About Anzac Day
• Anzac Day events in Christchurch and Canterbury
• Anzac Day in pictures
• Anzac Day information for kids
• World War I resources
  
• The Bridge of Remembrance

All of our libraries are closed on Anzac Day.

The tiger ate my arm is no excuse!

A Canterbury trooper (not Leopold Acland), 3rd New Zealand Mounted Rifles (Rough Riders), preparing to depart for the Boer War (1899-1902)
[1900]

This amazing story from World War I raises the “dog ate my homework” excuse to a whole higher level. “The tiger ate my arm” is no excuse for missing military service it seems. How would that play in these PC and health and safety conscious times? Leopold George Dyke Acland (1876 – 1948) was the author of a well known series of books – Early Canterbury runs and served in the First World War despite having lost an arm in a tiger attack.

Acland lead an adventurous life. He began his working life on high country stations Mt Peel and Cracoft Station. He then bought Glentanner Station near Mt Cook.  He served in the Boer War with the 3rd New Zealand Contingent known as the “Rough Riders”. In 1902 he joined an expedition to New Guinea.

After the war he sold Glentanner and briefly owned Lavercost Station at Amuri. He sold this in 1906 and went on a tour to India where he lost his left arm in a tiger attack. Acland’s obituary in the Press described the event. Acland, an English officer and an Indian sergeant major set out bait for a tiger that had been attacking local people. They managed to wound the tiger but while tracking it were suddenly attacked. Acland was dragged away by his arm and only rescued when the sergeant major managed to kill the tiger. Asked what he felt he replied “Oh! I felt no pain but what worried me was the stinking breath of the beast after it had been feeding on dead horse”.

From India he went to Japan and managed a shipping office in Kobe. After a trip on the trans-Siberian railway to Moscow and St Petersburg, he went on to London and then back to New Zealand buying more sheep stations – Braemar in the Mackenzie Country followed by North Clumbar at Hororata.

At this point the First World War came along and despite his missing arm he joined the Army Service Corps and won the Military Cross at Gallipoli. The NZASC was not usually a front line unit, providing logistical and administrative support, but at Gallipoli geography changed that. The army would not normally have taken a one armed man on overseas service but Acland had past army service and good connections so that was probably how he managed it. His later army service  on the Western Front was on the staff of General Alexander Godley (nephew of John Robert Godley) who was commander of the ANZAC troops at Gallipoli and later on the Western Front. Acland rose to the rank of major, was mentioned in dispatches three times and was awarded the O.B.E.

Other stations he owned during or after the war included Loburn and Cecil Peak. He continued farming part of North Clumbar. Early Canterbury Runs was published in 1930 and revised in 1946 and he wrote numerous newspaper articles. He was famed for his wealth of stories (not all of them printable) about early days in Canterbury. He married his childhood sweetheart in 1935. In later years he lived at Hororata.

This man surely deserves a book and somehow dying at Number 50 The Esplanade Sumner, in 1948,  seems a rather tame ending.

Sources:

• Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966 
• Leopold Acland’s World War 1 service record
• Obituary, The Press 8 April, 1948

Thanks to Richard Greenaway who asked the question of Te Ara “how come he was allowed to serve in the military?” and Te Ara for forwarding the fascinating information about Acland’s military record.

A hero for Anzac Day

Thursday 25 April 2013 is Anzac Day. You may have noticed last year that many wreaths and bouquets from the Dawn Service ended up at the statue of Sgt Henry James Nicholas V.C. M.M., northwest of the Bridge of Remembrance on Cambridge Terrace.

Henry Nicholas was the first soldier from the Canterbury Regiment to be awarded the Victoria Cross. He died in action on 23October 1918 aged 26. He was awarded the Military Medal posthumously for his bravery during the fight for the bridgeheads at the River Ecaillon near the village of Beaudignies on 23 October 1918, 12 days before the New Zealanders’ capture of the town of Le Quesnoy.

• About Anzac Day
• Anzac Day events in Christchurch and Canterbury
• Anzac Day in pictures
• Anzac Day information for kids
• World War I resources
  
• The Bridge of Remembrance

All of our libraries are closed on ANZAC Day.

Lest we forget – 11/11/11

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month – Armistice Day –  commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany in 1918. In 2011, Armistice Day commemorations will be held on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and also the eleventh year of the century (11am, 11 November 2011).

Before the earthquake,  the bells of the ChristChurch Cathedral would ring at 11 o’clock in the morning to mark the time, something we will be missing this year.

Instead, following the observation of a two-minute silence at 11am, a service will held at the Henry Nicholas V.C. M.M. statue in Remembrance Park, on the corner of Hereford Street and Cambridge Terrace (adjacent to the Bridge of Remembrance). The service is to commemorate those members of the armed forces who were killed during World War I .

• Find out about Armistice Day commemorations in Christchurch
• Read our page on Armistice Day
• Our images of New Zealand at war
• Explore our resources about World War One
• Read about World War One

Dardanelles living – Image of the Week

At the Dardanelles during World War One, 1914-18.

“A striking photograph of a corner of ANZAC where New Zealand troops were stationed”. This is a view of sandbagged living quarters at Gallipoli.

Do you have photos of Christchurch? We love donations. Contact us

Also contact us if you have any further information on any of the images. Want to see more? You can browse our collection here.

Anzac Day for children

Anzac Day is celebrated on 25 April every year in New Zealand and Australia to remember all the members of the armed forces who served in the two World Wars and other major conflicts, such as the Vietnam and Korean Wars.  Children can learn some interesting facts about Anzac Day and some of the wars that our troops fought in by:

• Checking out the Anzac Day and Gallipoli fact page on our Kids website.
• Borrowing some nonfiction books about war from your library. There are some really good books that have true stories about soldiers in the wars and children who lived through war, like True Stories of the Second World War and Under Fire: Children of the Second World War tell their stories.
• Reading some stories set in war-time. Goodnight Mister Tom is one of the best, but you could also try The Silver Sword, Rose for the ANZAC Boys, and War Horse.

There are also a number of dawn parades and memorials around Christchurch and Canterbury that you could go along to to remember those that died fighting for their country.

Remembering Great Uncle Tom

For a long time, Anzac Day just meant to me another public holiday and yummy Anzac biscuits for morning tea, until our family discovered a personal connection. Delving into our family history, we discovered that my grandmother’s favourite brother, my Great-Uncle Tom, had fought and died at Gallipoli on Anzac Day, which was poignant for me and fascinating for my sons!

We checked out some of the military history books in the library, in particular Bloody Gallipoli: the New Zealander’s Story and Gallipoli : the New Zealand Story, and amazingly discovered a couple of references to Great-Uncle Tom in the descriptions of what happened at Gallipoli. The description of his death was particularly moving.

Corporal Gillanders, modest and brave, was shot through the head whilst passing an order.

We also found more information about him on the Cenotaph database. Now on Anzac Day we always set up a photo of Great-Uncle Tom, with a poppy next to it. We will remember him.

Many New Zealanders have a relative who fought, and possibly died at Gallipoli or in other World War One battles. Christchurch City Libraries’ New Zealand At War and Anzac Day resources have an amazing amount of information for people interested in the wars that New Zealand has been involved in and researching the personal stories of soldiers.

Has anyone else researched their relatives who fought at Gallipoli? How do you mark Anzac Day? Is it more than just Anzac biscuits for you?

Image of the week

A view of Beach V, one of the initial landing points for troops, Gallipoli Peninsula. 1915.

Source: The Canterbury times, 28 July 1915, p. 39. File Reference: KPCD-03-048. From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries. Collated for 2009 Beca Heritage Week’s ‘Doves & Defences’ – Discover Christchurch in Peace and Conflict

Do you have any photographs of war time? Contact us.

Contact us if you have any further information on any of the images. Want to see more? You can browse our collection here.