We need to talk about America…

Not that we haven’t been doing just that for the last few months, but there’s so much to say. America fascinates and repulses me. I couldn’t live there – not just because I would eat all the food – but it is a fascinating place to observe, and we are fortunate to generally be able to enjoy its cultural output, both high and lowbrow. So naturally I was intrigued when I spied Claudia Roth Pierpont’s American Rhapsody in a bookshop in Auckland. I immediately went to the nearest library, hopped on the wifi and requested a copy (btw – aren’t libraries great?).

It’s a funny book, endeavouring to “present the the kaleidoscopic story of the creation of a culture.” Lofty intentions indeed! However, it is more of a collection of biographical and critical essays about a range of major players in American culture. The first two-thirds of the essays – which include Wharton, Fitzgerald, Hepburn and Gershwin are perfectly okay, but it’s the final third where, for me, the book truly comes alive. Orson Welles‘ and Laurence Olivier‘s (not from the US but that’s not the point) approaches to acting and Shakespeare are compared and contrasted. What is naturalism, how – and should – America tackle Shakespeare? These themes of naturalism and an American theatrical tradition are continued in an essay on Marlon Brando.

We are reminded that Brando was a supporter of the Civil Rights movement, and the last two essays cover novelist James Baldwin and singer Nina Simone who – to my shame – I didn’t know much about at all. Reading about these two African-Americans and learning more about the the nuances and iterations of the wider Civil Rights movement is inspiring me – to read their words and listen to their music and make an effort to further understand America’s painful history.

So, I’ve come away from this book thinking about acting and how we express our country through our cultural creations, and also with some new inspirational figures to look to. We need them.

The Battle for Crete

This May sees another 75th anniversary from the Second World War with great significance for New Zealand.

From 20 May to 1 June 1941 Allied Forces, including the 2nd New Zealand Division, took part in the ultimately unsuccessful but fiercely fought battle for Crete. That April the Germans had invaded Yugoslavia and Greece and as they had quickly occupied these countries, the Allies evacuated to the island of Crete.

On 20 May German paratroopers invaded the island and over the next 12 days a tightly contested battle raged. The Allies were forced to retreat again, with many being evacuated to Egypt and several thousand becoming prisoners of war.

The 2nd New Zealand Division regrouped and went on to take part in successful campaigns in North Africa and Italy.

• Take a look at NZHistory’s article for more detailed information on the battle, including a great bibliography and links to biographies
• Sound archives: The Battle for Crete Radio New Zealand
• Find books and ebooks on the Battle for Crete in our catalogue
• Find books and other resources about the 28 (Māori) Battalion
• Find books about the commander of 2nd New Zealand Division and ‘Creforce’, Bernard Freyberg
• Double Victoria Cross winner Charles Upham won his for VC during the Battle for Crete. Find him in our catalogue
• See our page on New Zealanders in World War 2 – Greece and Crete

A small piece of Christchurch’s Antarctic heritage

Christchurch has many links with Antarctica, both modern and historic. This November sees the 105th anniversary of the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition sailing from Lyttelton. Led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott and officially known as the British Antarctic Expedition, the expedition ended in disaster when the polar party perished on their way back from the South Pole, having discovered that Roald Amundsen‘s Norwegian party had made it there before them.

Scott and his men had spent some time in Lyttelton and Christchurch before setting sail on the last leg of their sea voyage from the UK. Scott first came to the region in 1901 when he also used Lyttelton as last port of call on his way to Antarctica. This was the British National Antarctic Expedition, also known as the Discovery expedition.

Letter, 15 Nov. 1910, from Robert Falcon Scott, CCL-Archive18-003

Our digital collection includes a couple of nice mementos of these two expeditions, which highlight the Christchurch connection. On both occasions the people of Christchurch gave a gift to the expedition – firstly some sheep and secondly a mounted horseshoe. Scott wrote thank you letters to the town clerk and these are now part of the library’s archives collection and have been digitised.

• For everything you could ever want to know about Antarctica, take a look at the extensive links on our Antarctica web page.
• Find out about the Antarctic Heritage Trust‘s quest to restore the historic Ross Island huts of Scott, Shackleton and others

The sinking of the Marquette and the Nurses’ Memorial Chapel

Nurses’ Memorial Chapel, Christchurch Hospital, Riccarton Avenue, CCL PhotoCD 13, IMG0036

The Nurses’ Memorial Chapel is one of the most precious historic buildings in New Zealand. It is also internationally important – being probably the only purpose-built chapel in the world which commemorates First World War nurses, and also one of only two public memorials in the English-speaking world to the little-known Salonika Campaign. Built in 1927-28, the chapel is now almost 90 years old. On October 23rd it will be 100 years since that tragic event that led to its construction.

It was on that day in 1915 that the transport ship HMTS Marquette was torpedoed by a German u-boat when nearing the city of Salonika (now Thessaloniki). On board was the No. 1 New Zealand Stationary Hospital, travelling from Alexandria. In total 167 people on board died, including 32 from the New Zealand unit; of these 10 were nurses from the New Zealand Army Nursing Service.

Nona Mildred Hildyard, Kete Christchurch HildyardNM.jpg

The loss of so many nurses was extremely shocking to the New Zealand public, and the fact that a medical unit was travelling on a transport ship rather than a hospital ship, which could have been much safer, is still controversial.

Three of the nurses had trained at Christchurch Hospital, and it wasn’t long before the idea of a memorial chapel was broached. After a period of fundraising, construction of the chapel began.

• Browse Beca Heritage Week events Remembering the Marquette Nurses
• Items on our catalogue about the Marquette
• Digitised copy of the fascinating publication The Architectural Heritage of Christchurch 7: Nurses’ Memorial Chapel
• Digitised chapter about the ‘New Zealand Stationary Hospital at Salonika‘ from NZETC, the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
• Nurses’ Memorial Chapel website
• Find out more about the Salonika campaign

Coming soon: WW100 Speaker Series – Glyn Harper

Our WW100 Speaker Series continues on Thursday 22nd October at 6pm when Professor Glyn Harper visits Central Library Peterborough to talk about his recent book Johnny Enzed: The New Zealand Soldier in the First World War 1914-1918.

Glyn is Professor of War studies at Massey University and has published extensively on New Zealand’s twentieth century military history, including a number of books on the First World War and children’s books.

Johnny Enzed is part of New Zealand’s official First World War Centenary History and is an in depth social history of our soldiers in the war. It takes a comprehensive look at what everyday life was like for them in Egypt and Gallipoli, on the Western Front and in Palestine, plus their experiences on voyages to the different fronts and during training in New Zealand and the UK. Many topics are covered including gas attacks and what happened to the wounded, food and smoking, and swearing.

In the talk Glyn will provide a flavour of the book, helping to bring to life the diverse experiences that New Zealanders went through during the war.

• Find out more about Christchurch City Libraries’ WW100 centenary commemorations
• Take a look at a 2005 interview with Glyn from our Kids’ site

Anzacs and the Battle of Britain: author interview with Adam Claasen

Running from early July to the end of October, the Battle of Britain ended in the failure of the Luftwaffe to gain air supremacy over the UK. The German invasion of Britain was called off and Hitler turned his attention to the Soviet Union instead.

Together Australian and New Zealand airmen made up the second largest Allied foreign contingent in the battle. Their story has been told fully for this first time in Dogfight by Adam Claasen, Senior Lecturer in History at Massey University. In recognition of the 75th anniversary of the battle we spoke to Adam about its Anzac connections.

134 New Zealanders and 37 Australians fought in the Battle of Britain. How do their experiences add to the overall story of this pivotal event of the Second World War?

It’s a story that has never been brought together before. There has been the odd book either side of the Tasman but this is the first time the New Zealand and Australian experience has been combined and told within the four phases of the Battle of Britain.

What I discovered was that the Anzacs had a significant part to play in combat and a larger role in leadership. The Anzacs nearly made up a third of the top ten aces of the campaign and became widely known: Colin Gray and Brian Carbury from New Zealand and Pat Hughes for the Australians. Gray, Carbury and Hughes knocked out close to fifty machines in total over some four months.

Air Marshal Keith Park performed magnificently under very difficult conditions, notably a lack of trained airmen. His leadership and strategy at the time is widely seen as instrumental in the eventual success of Fighter Command the failure of Hitler to gain air ascendancy as a perquisite to an invasion of Britain.

A number of these Anzacs flew Boulton Paul Defiants with 141 and 264 Squadrons. How did this two seater fighter aircraft compare with the with the famous Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane?

The Boulton Paul Defiant was a strange beast. Officially it was know as an ‘interceptor aircraft’ but popularly known as a ‘turret-fighter.’ It looked very much like the Hurricane but with the important addition, directly behind the pilot, of a powered turret armed with four Browning machine guns. In a way, it harked back to the successful two-man fighters of the Great War, for example, the Bristol F.2 Fighter.

Boulton Paul Defiant Mk I. [circa 1940], Wikipedia

However, the Defiant was no match for the Luftwaffe single engine fighter, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, because it suffered from two principle impediments: first, a lack-luster climb rate and poor maneuverability due to the added weight of the turret; and, second, it was not equipped with forward firing guns. Once Luftwaffe airman had gotten over the initial surprise of a backward-firing fighter they simply attacked it from below or head on.

Eventually they were withdrawn from the frontline of the Battle of Britain, but not before a number of men were killed in these ill-fated machines, including the youngest New Zealander to lose his life in the battle, eighteen year old Lauritz Rasmussen, a Defiant gunner. In the pre-war period, Winston Churchill had strongly advocated that Fighter Command to be equipped with large numbers of Defiants but mercifully wiser heads prevailed and only two squadrons saw the light of day.

William Burn – 100 years since the death of a Christchurch aviator

On 30th July this year it will be 100 years since William Wallace Allison Burn was killed in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). A pre-war member of the New Zealand Army, he had trained as a pilot in the UK and in 1915 was serving with the Australian Flying Corps in the Mesopotamian Campaign against the Ottoman Turks. He was the first New Zealand airman ever to be killed in action.

Although born in Australia, the family later moved to Christchurch, living in Hereford Street. William was educated at Christchurch Boys’ High School and went on the join the New Zealand Staff Corps.

Find out more about William’s life and tragic death:

• Cenotaph record from Auckland War Memorial Museum
• A modern overview of the story from the New Zealand Herald and further information about the family
• NZ History biography and image
• Te Ara biography
• Information from the Royal Australian Air Force rugby website about Burn and George Merz, who was killed at the same time, and the Burn-Merz Shield that was named after them.

Do you have any connections with any less well-known parts of the World War One?

The power of forgiveness

A few years ago in another job I had the task of cataloguing a collection of about 100 Far East Prisoner of War memoirs. These stories of the terrible hardship suffered by military and civilian prisoners at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Forces during the Second World War were difficult – and humbling – to read, but truly showed how strong the human survival instinct is.

One book that wasn’t part of this collection was Eric Lomax’s The Railway Man. I always wanted to read it, but was hesitant. I honestly didn’t know if I wanted to read another FEPOW story. The other week I watched the recent film adaptation starring Colin Firth. It was a perfectly okay film, yet I knew there must be more in the book.

I requested the book, and am glad I did. Many aspects were familiar to me – capture at Singapore, time in Changi, being moved into the jungle to work on the Burma-Siam railway – but this book was different and not just because of the torture that Lomax endured. The story does not end at the end of the war; it goes on into great detail about the effects of his wartime experiences on his life and ultimately ends with forgiveness and friendship.

It is these aspects that set this book apart and make it a classic. If you’ve only seen the film, do read the book. If you haven’t seen the film, do read the book. But whatever you do be prepared to be appalled, astonished and deeply moved.

2015 – what to expect in anniversaries

While 2015 is going to be dominated by the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign, there are a number of major non-First World War military-related anniversaries coming up this year. (This is not an exhaustive list)

Although the campaign was a failure, the evacuation of the allies from the Gallipoli Peninsula was remarkably successful, as was the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and much of the French Army from Dunkirk in northern France 25 years later. In late spring 1940 Hitler‘s forces seemed unstoppable and withdrawal from continental Europe left Britain and her empire isolated and facing invasion. In order to invade the Nazis first needed air superiority, but during the tense weeks of the Battle of Britain that summer the RAF defeated the Luftwaffe and the invasion was called off.

A number of New Zealanders served with the RAF during the Battle of Britain, most notably Keith Park, from Thames, who commanded No. 11 Group defending London and the South-East of England.

This year will also see the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, both in Europe where VE (Victory in Europe) Day was held on 8 May (9 May in New Zealand) and VJ (Victory over Japan) Day on 15th August – although the official Japanese surrender wasn’t signed until 2nd September. As the Allies liberated Nazi-held territory in Europe the painful truth about their treatment of Jews was revealed. It was on 27th January that Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated.

The Battle of Waterloo was a major event in European history and took place in Belgium on 18th June 1815. The battle saw a coalition of British, Dutch, German and Belgian armies, led by the Duke of Wellington defeat the French and finally end Napoleon’s imperial aspirations in Europe. The Napoleonic Wars and the French Revolutionary Wars which had begun in 1792. If Napoleon had won, what would Wellington (and Picton) have been called?

The Hundred Years War lasted longer than 100 years, but one of the most significant battles of the war was fought 600 years ago this year. The Battle of Agincourt, which took place in northern France on 25th October, was a major victory for the English, immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry V.

There certainly is much to think about and remember this year.

Finding your World War One soldier – a quick online guide

With the centenary of First World War taking place over the next four years, now is the ideal time to start some research into those who served in the war. This is a very quick guide to six online resources that will help you begin research into those who served in the New Zealand Forces and help you find contextual information.

Produced by Auckland War Memorial Museum, the Cenotaph database contains biographical information about New Zealanders who fought in First World War – and other wars that New Zealand has been involved in. This is still a work in progress. The length of entries varies as does the information included, but all those who embarked with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force should have an entry.

New Zealand soldiers’ official service records have been digitised and can be found on Archives New Zealand‘s Archway resource. These can provide all sorts of information about a soldier’s service and background. You can potentially find out such things as home address, next of kin, pre-war occupation, when and where they served, and wounds and injuries. Records of nurses can be found in the same way. These records are full of abbreviations, but the New Zealand Defence Force’s glossary is very useful.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission looks after the graves of and memorials to those from the Commonwealth who died during both world wars. Their website includes a fully searchable database of graves, cemeteries and memorials, so this is the place to come if you want to find out where a soldier is buried or memorialised (if they have no known grave). Some records may contain further information about individuals.

If you are interested in war memorials in New Zealand, New Zealand History Online has a memorials register with lots of illustrations. This site is also a good place to find out more about First World War in general and how it affected New Zealand, although the number of websites and books about the war is increasing all the time.

More and more digitised material is being made available these days and one of the most useful is the National Library’s Papers Past, which contains a number local newspapers from the war years, including The Press. Newspapers can include casualty lists, letters home from soldiers and In Memoriam notices, as well as showing how the war was reported at the time.

Christchurch City Libraries has put together a dedicated WW100 page which is a gateway to lots of information about the war, both on the library website and further afield – it is well worth exploring, and includes booklists, links to further resources and details about events. If you wish to go further with your research the New Zealanders in World War One page will be of interest.

Over the next four years the amount of websites, books and digitised material will only grow, but the resources mentioned here will go along way to get you started.