Mobilisation

New Zealand's response to the outbreak of war on 4 August was quick and wholehearted. Compulsory military training had begun in 1912 and had already yielded 29,447 Territorials and 26,446 senior cadets; but there were only a few modern guns for them, many old-fashioned rifles, and little else. There were nearly 4,000 tents, but fewer than 20,000 groundsheets and no permanent camps. As administrative services existed mainly on paper, the staff corps of 100 officers and the permanent staff of 211 warrant and noncommissioned officers had to improvise almost miraculously to accommodate a field force and begin training. Trentham, Featherston, Narrow Neck, Avondale, Awapuni, and Papawai (Wairarapa) camps sprang up like mushrooms and were soon filled with busy recruits.

Samoa

No role for New Zealand had been decided beforehand, but on the night of 6 August 1914 a note arrived from London that it would be “a great and urgent Imperial service” if New Zealand forces seized Samoa. This was approved next day, and four days later a mixed force of 1,413 men plus six nursing sisters was equipped and ready. On the fifteenth it sailed, picking up 10 more infantrymen, some naval details, and guides and interpreters at Fiji, and on the twenty-ninth it landed unopposed at Apia. Thus the island of Upolu was the first German territory to be occupied in the name of King George V. After eight months a relief force of 358 men took over and by the end of the war another 298 men were supplied to maintain the garrison.

The New Zealand Expeditionary Force

In a rush of enthusiasm another expeditionary force intended for France was soon assembled, consisting in the end of the following:

A divisional headquarters.

The Otago Mounted Rifles Regiment (divisional cavalry).

A mounted rifles brigade (Auckland, Wellington, and Canterbury Regiments).

A field artillery brigade and brigade ammunition column.

An infantry brigade (Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury, and Otago Battalions).

With supporting troops and reinforcements 8,427 men embarked, with 3,815 horses.* No nurses were included. The Main Body, as it was later called, under Major-General Godley was the largest single body of New Zealand troops ever to leave these shores. It sailed from Wellington in 10 transports on 16 October, linked with an even larger Australian contingent, and at sea was redirected to Egypt. A loss of 700–800 horses on the voyage had been predicted; but only 77 died. Early in December the NZEF settled into camp at Zeitoun, near Cairo, and was soon joined by the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade, the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps, and 240 New Zealanders from England. All combined to form the New Zealand and Australian Division to which the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade was added at the end of January 1915. Before this, however, the New Zealand Infantry Brigade had been sent post haste to meet a daring but easily repulsed Turkish thrust across the Sinai Desert. The Canterbury Battalion saw action in support of an Indian Brigade south of Ismailia on 3 February, frustrating repeated Turkish attempts to cross the Suez Canal by boat or pontoon. In so doing, a private was killed and a sergeant wounded, the first NZEF battle casualties. (*Over 10,000 horses all told were shipped for service in the NZEF.)

Gallipoli

The NZ and A Division sailed to the Aegean in April, leaving behind (to their dismay) the Mounted Rifles Brigade, the Otago Mounted Rifles, and the 1st Australian Light Horse. It was part (with the 1st Australian Division) of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (abbreviated ANZAC), itself part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force under General Sir Ian Hamilton. The MEF was to seize key points on the Gallipoli Peninsula and help the Navy through the Dardanelles – a huge amphibious operation mounted with extreme haste against the forewarned Turks.

The Australian division began landing at first light on Sunday, 25 April, 13 miles north of Cape Helles, on a rocky shore fit for mountain goats rather than laden soldiers clambering upwards under fire. Companies and battalions soon became hopelessly intermingled and, when the New Zealand Infantry Brigade began to reinforce the left at noon the situation was highly confused. The Auckland Battalion came in first, through a curtain of Turkish shrapnel, then two companies of the Canterbury Battalion, and then the Otago Battalion. All were at once dispatched to the front where they were hotly engaged. Withering shrapnel sprayed the foremost troops, the Turks counter-attacked strongly, and much valuable ground gained in the first advance had to be given up. Not until next day did the New Zealanders hear the comforting sound of their own guns, and the naval guns could do little to help. A toehold on Gallipoli 2,500 yards long by about 1,000 wide had nevertheless been won, and reinforcements – the Wellington Battalion among them – and supplies were arriving and wounded departing over two makeshift piers in what was to become known as Anzac Cove.

The British 29th Division had similarly failed to win its objectives on Cape Helles, but its small gains there seemed for the moment secure. At Anzac there was high-level talk of immediate evacuation, but Sir Ian Hamilton (like the men at the front) would not hear of it, though he continued to regard the Anzac affair as subsidiary and decided to reinforce the Helles landings with the Royal Naval Division and a French division. Off the narrow waist of the peninsula at Bulair the Royal Naval Division staged a demonstration to pin Turkish forces there. As part of this a young officer, B. C. Freyberg, swam ashore at night and lit flares, winning for himself a D.S.O. New Zealand was to hear more of him.

Sixteen Turkish battalions under Mustapha Kemal attacked Anzac on 27 April to drive the invaders into the sea; but their combination broke down, the local thrusts were all beaten back with heavy loss, and the Anzac front, a staff officer's nightmare, held firmly. Four naval battalions then landed and the units in the line were by degrees relieved and sorted out. Strenuous efforts were made to straighten the line, particularly by Canterbury and Otago, in the night 2–3 May, but they failed and the tired troops had to make do with existing positions, strengthening them by digging, mining, wiring, and roadmaking. Bit by bit all positions acquired names which became symbolic of Anzac daring, skill, and hard work. In front of Quinn's Post, scene of continual bombing, the Turkish lines were barely 30 yards off; behind it the ground fell away to form a cliff. A more vulnerable position would be hard to imagine, yet the troops hanging on there by their eyebrows knew that it must be held; for behind it was Monash Gully leading down to Shrapnel Valley, the main supply route. Tiny Plugge's Plateau (pronounced “Pluggie's”), overlooking the latter, was crowded with guns and howitzers, and below it was the beach. All saw their daily scenes of gallantry and defiance; for nowhere on Anzac was safe.

For lack of room at Anzac, one New Zealand battery went to Helles on 4 May and next day the infantry brigade followed. On the eighth the New Zealand infantry made two thrilling charges across the “Daisy Patch” towards Krithia, gaining 500 yards but losing 800 men (compared with 931 in the first three days at Anzac). An Australian brigade, charging in similar heroic fashion across the flat against countless machine guns, lost 1,000 men.

The mounted rifles and 1st Australian Light Horse (minus horses) reinforced the Anzac landing soon afterwards and on the nineteenth were severely tested. The Turks attacked repeatedly all along the line and were everywhere repulsed in a grim slaughter, more than balancing the Helles account. Next day the infantry brigade returned and found the Anzac front quiet, though gruesomely strewn with Turkish corpses. On the twenty-fourth there was an armistice to bury the dead. June started with a raid from Quinn's as part of a scheme to distract attention from a big Helles attack; both the Anzac and Helles thrusts were strongly opposed. At the end of the month the Turks made their last attempt to push the invaders off their soil, first at Helles and then before dawn on the thirtieth at Pope's and Russell's Top, where three battalions swarmed bravely across no-man's land and were cut down almost to a man.

From then onwards, apart from the daily shelling to which the Anzac guns, starved of ammunition, could seldom reply, and the ceaseless bombing at Quinn's, the front was quiet. Thirst, vermin, and flies in the fierce summer heat were enemies as relentless as the Turks. In August the MEF, strongly reinforced, staged a great offensive: heavy attacks at Helles and Anzac to pin down Turkish reserves, a tremendous and complicated assault on the commanding feature, Sari Bair, by a mixed force under Godley including the NZ and A Division (less the 1st Light Horse), and the landing of a fresh corps at Suvla Bay to extend the Anzac front northwards. All demanded immense and difficult preparation. All four mounted rifles regiments and the Maori Contingent (fresh from Malta) climbed tortuous slopes and scaled cliffs silently and irresistibly to gain the western foothills of the Sari Bair massif by 1 a.m. on the seventh. Then the New Zealand infantry passed through but failed to gain the crest at Chunuk Bair. The Wellington Battalion and the Gloucesters tried again at dawn on the eighth, reached the crest, and won a breathtaking view of the Dardanelles. All day the Turks showered them with grenades, enfiladed them with machine guns, and sprayed them with shrapnel; but they held on just below the crest, joined in the late afternoon by a gallant party of the Auckland Mounted Rifles. Malone, the inspiring colonel of the Wellingtons, was killed and only 70 of nearly 800 of his men remained in action. After dark the Otago Battalion and Wellington Mounted Rifles came up and the situation eased, though the Turks counter-attacked throughout the night. Early on the ninth Gurkhas and some South Lancashire men reached the crest higher up but were driven back. By the eleventh the Turks regained all but the foothills and the vision of victory faded. In a last effort the mounted rifles, Australians, and Indians on the twenty-first gained a toehold on Hill 60 to the north in bitter, costly fighting and enlarged it a week later; but the Suvla force failed in a parallel mission and at all points the Turks still overlooked the final line.

In mid-September the mounted rifles and infantry (less machine gunners and a few others) sailed for a rest at Lemnos. Of the mounted brigade there were only 249; of 677 Canterbury Mounted men (including reinforcements) only 28 sailed and 12 stayed behind; of the Wellington Mounted Regiment, 70 went, 14 stayed. The four infantry battalions each 1,000-strong when they landed and thrice reinforced since then, sailed in one small ship – 239 of the Canterburys, 130 of the Otagos, fewer than 100 of the Wellingtons, all looking like scarecrows. Rested, reinforced to about half strength, and smartened up, all units early in November returned to Anzac, to a snowstorm on the twenty-eighth, then winter gales with promise of more to come. But the promise was not fulfilled. Silently, skilfully, but with a sad sense of deserting their dead comrades, the men of Anzac and Suvla departed in mid-December, taking animals and guns and losing scarcely a man. As the last boats put to sea before dawn on the twentieth, mines exploded, many stores went up in flames, and the Turks fired wildly. This miracle was repeated at Helles on 9 January 1916 and the Gallipoli enterprise thus ended.

In all, 2,721 New Zealanders died, and 4,752 were wounded (some of whom later died). The British also suffered severe losses, and all who set foot on the peninsula paid in some way for the terrible hardships of that campaign. The adjective “untried” now disappeared from references to Australian and New Zealand troops and with it any doubt of their abilities. Their countries had come of age and were comrades in arms. Anzac Day in both countries commemorates the loss and also the gain.

The Senussi

The New Zealand Rifle Brigade (less two battalions) had meanwhile reached Egypt in November 1915 and was sent into the Egyptian desert to help defeat a Senussi invasion from Libya. The 1st Battalion fought two brisk but inexpensive actions south-west of Matruh as part of a mixed force (including British, Australians, and Indians), one on Christmas Day, the other on 23 January 1916. Both were successful and broke the back of the invasion. In mid-February the 1st Battalion rejoined the rest of the brigade at Moascar in the Suez Canal area.

The New Zealand Division

In an upheaval at Moascar the NZ and A Division, less the mounted rifles brigade and Australian light horse and plus new or newly arrived units, became the New Zealand Division. The Otago Mounted Rifles were reduced to a squadron, nine artillery batteries were raised, and a second infantry brigade emerged from the doubling of existing battalions, so that the infantry became established as follows:

1st Infantry Brigade (1st Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury, and Otago Battalions).

2nd Infantry Brigade (2nd Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury, and Otago Battalions).

3rd (Rifle) Brigade (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Battalions).

Major-General A. H. Russell became divisional commander, but Godley continued to command the NZEF.

ArmentièGres

Destined for the Western Front, the Division reached Marseilles in April 1916 and entered the line in May south-east of Armentières. The land was low lying and soggy, and trenches shallow, but living conditions were far better than at Anzac, except for the weight and vigour of artillery. It was a “quiet sector”, but trench warfare was already highly developed and there was much to learn. The Division, under I Anzac Corps (Birdwood) and then II Anzac Corps (Godley), staged 11 major raids (against four German ones) in three months and countless patrols on its 8-mile front and when relieved in mid-August had lost 2,500 men, nearly 400 of them dead.

The Somme, 1916

In September the Division was committed to the gigantic offensive on the Somme which had begun on 1 July. The 2nd Brigade attacked at dawn on the fifteenth on a 1,000-yard front behind a formidable artillery barrage to seize two trenches on the way to Flers. The Rifle Brigade passed through with two tanks – a startling novelty introduced to action that day – and helped to capture the village. The 1st Wellington went on next day to gain a trench north of Flers. Then rain set in. Fierce night fighting with bomb and bayonet by the 2nd Canterbury followed on the twentieth, a short but economical advance by the 1st Brigade on the twenty-fifth, and a partially successful one on the twenty-seventh in which the 1st Otago suffered grievous loss. On 3–4 October the Division withdrew from the muddy horrors of the Somme. It had lost in 23 days some 7,000 men, 1,560 of them killed. The gunners stayed behind, as usual, and endured three more weeks of toil and danger in worsening conditions, a nightmare of flooded gunpits in a shell-torn swamp.

Winter on the Lys

Winter of 1916–17 passed coldly but quietly at Fleurbaix, near ArmentièGres, where the 1st Brigade was reorganised to include all North Island battalions and the 2nd Brigade commanded all South Island battalions. There also the 2nd Auckland on 21 February staged with mixed success the heaviest New Zealand raid of the campaign. Next day the Division sidestepped to the left and then left again a few days later, settling for three months between Ploegsteert and Wulverghem facing the strongly fortified Messines ridge.

Messines

At 3.10 a.m. on 7 June nearly 500 tons of explosives in huge mines on both sides of the New Zealand sector blew up with a thunder heard in England. The earth was still trembling when the 2nd and 3rd Brigades scrambled over the top, in and out of shell holes, and up the battered slopes. Carrying the German front line and supports, they were soon into the ruined village. The 1st Brigade passed through, helped on the left by a solitary tank, to the final objective. With prisoners and booty including many guns it was a striking success at no great cost; but the German artillery revived and by the time the Division was relieved on 9 and 10 June it had lost 3,700 men, evenly distributed between the three brigades.

The 4th New Zealand Brigade, formed from reinforcements in England, had served in Corps reserve and on the tenth entered the line, passing to New Zealand command two days later. Back in the line the Division gained further success and worked hard to consolidate before handing over to the Australians at the end of the month. In two more attacks in this area on 27 and 31 July the Division finally gained and held La Basse Ville. Heavy artillery fire in the first fortnight of August caused the loss of nearly 1,000 men and rain made conditions miserable.

Passchendaele

Many valuable weeks of the 1917 summer were wasted and when Field-Marshal Haig started his great offensive from the Ypres Salient on 31 July autumn rains had begun. Hope of strategic objectives faded; but successes in late September and early October made him try to win the rest of the Passchendaele ridge for his winter line. The New Zealand Division had been training since the end of August to overcome the numerous concrete “pillboxes” in this sector. The first objective of the Division was the Gravenstafel Spur, attacked before dawn on 4 October, as part of a major advance. The 1st and 4th Brigades forestalled a heavy German counter-attack, and the supporting artillery barrage inflicted frightful slaughter on the waiting Germans. Crossing this scene of carnage, the 1st and 4th Brigades gained their objectives after a hard fight, inflicting exceptionally heavy loss on the enemy and capturing much equipment. For such a resounding success the 1,700 New Zealand casualties, though a sad loss, did not in current terms seem excessive. But heavy rain turned the countryside into a bog and tragedy lay ahead.

A British attack on the ninth on Bellevue Spur and part of the main Passchendaele ridge gained a little ground at prohibitive cost. Heavy swathes of barbed wire still girdled the hillside, however, and belated and meagre heavy artillery made no impression on them, nor on the many pillboxes beyond. New Zealand gunners slaved to breaking point to get only a few guns and howitzers forward, but stable platforms and accurate fire were unattainable. The 2nd and 3rd Brigades – the latter weary from heavy work in the salient – nevertheless renewed the attack early on the twelfth.

There was little to encourage the men as they waited overnight in a morass under steady rain. Shelled in their assembly area, some were shelled again by their own guns when the thin barrage opened at 5.25 a.m., and then they led off into a deluge of small-arms fire, speckled with geyser-like eruptions as shells exploded in the mud. Worst of all was the wire, covered with deadly fire, its few gaps deliberate deathtraps. Some men tried to crawl under it, some threw themselves at it, two got right through and were killed in the act of hurling grenades at the loopholes of the nearest pillbox. The left gained 500 yards of slippery slope, the centre 200 heartbreaking yards, the right nothing until the 80-odd occupants of two blockhouses and a trench used up all their ammunition. Then they were captured, blockhouses and all, by two brave and skilful men, sole survivors of two Otago platoons.

The cost of these small gains, 640 dead and 2,100 wounded, made the Passchendaele mud in New Zealand eyes rich soil indeed and what the wounded suffered in drenching rain is another chapter of horrors. For the first time the Division had failed in a major operation; but what New Zealander can look back in memory or imagination on those dogged thrusts, time and again, by the Otago and Canterbury Battalions and the Rifles across the boggy flat and up the bullet-swept slopes of Bellevue Spur, without being stirred by their resolution in the face of hopeless odds.

The steady drain of men while units only held the line was less spectacular, though it made up half the losses of the Division. Here, before withdrawing from the front, 400 more men were lost in the 4th Brigade alone.

The Ypres Salient

Winter of 1917–18 passed busily in the Polygon Wood of Becalaere sector at Ypres, a scene of utter desolation. The Germans were bound to attack in the spring with forces released from Russia, and the Division worked hard to turn the wrecked trenches into a defensible front. An attack by the 2nd Brigade on 3 December gained useful ground but failed to capture Polderhoek Chateau. When the Division was relieved, on 24 February 1918, its three “quiet” months had cost 3,000 men, more than 470 of them killed.

Before and after the relief many changes took place. II Anzac Corps (in which the Division served), now minus Australians, became XXII Corps (commanded throughout by Godley), and the New Zealand part of its corps troops included the Otago Mounted squadron and a cyclist battalion. The 2nd Field Artillery Brigade was at the disposal of the Second Army and did not return until May. The 4th Infantry Brigade, to save manpower, became the Entrenching Group, a labour and reinforcement depot (though it soon saw hard fighting). A machine-gun battalion was formed from the brigade companies and the pioneer battalion became exclusively Maori. Allied and enemy divisions were by this time reduced in strength; but the Division retained four battalion brigades and remained the strongest division on the Western Front.

The Division and the many non-divisional units of the NZEF were also strong in the knowledge that they were members of a warmly united family. Men at the front knew that behind them were reliable supply services – field bakery and butchery, motor workshops, depots, even a light railway operating company. Their medical and dental services were unsurpassed in skill and devotion. In France and in England hospitals and convalescent homes were staffed by hundreds of New Zealand nurses and aides. On leave the men had good pay, and could use if they wished comfortable establishments provided through voluntary channels by the people of New Zealand. At home needy dependants were cared for. Above all, reinforcements well trained in the six reserve depots in England were always ready.

The Somme, 1918

In the great German offensive on the Somme, in March 1918, the Division was rushed to help stem a dangerous breakthrough towards Amiens. Unit by unit, as each arrived, it hastened to fill a gap between IV and V Corps in the Ancre Valley on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh. In confused fighting the New Zealanders gradually gained the upper hand against an enemy flushed with victory. A surprise attack on the thirtieth regained advantageous ground overlooking the valley, taking 300 prisoners and much material. With further fighting, much of it at night, a stable line emerged here and elsewhere on the Somme front, and German pressure was promptly transferred to the Lys (where non-divisional New Zealand units became engaged from April onwards). In June the Division was able to enjoy three sunny weeks in reserve.

Back in the line on 2 July, this time facing Puisieux-au-Mont, the Division gained ground against lively opposition in a series of strong thrusts, preceded by bold daylight reconnaissance and fighting patrols – though not bold enough for the more ardent spirits, who had to be restrained. First, there was Rossignol Wood, seized in hard fighting in mid-July. A few days later the whole Division mourned the death of that peerless trench fighter, Sergeant R. C. Travis, V.C., D.C.M., M.M., of the 2nd Otago. Puisieux fell on 14 August, then Grevillers, and on the twenty-ninth, Bapaume, a bigger prize. As the enemy fell back on the Hindenburg Line he showed increasing reluctance to be hurried and the last fortnight of August cost the Division 2,500 men, 411 of them killed. The morale of the New Zealanders, however, fed by success and the change to a war of movement, bounded upwards.

The Hindenburg Line

In September the tempo increased: Haplincourt, Bertincourt, Ruyaulcourt – all in ruins – and then the southern half of Havrincourt Wood, from the deep thickets of which on the ninth the Division assaulted the Trescault Spur, the last position before the Hindenburg Line. There the defence hardened. Picked German troops threw everything into the battle – flamethrowers in the front line, intense gassing of rear areas, heavy counter-battery fire – and the New Zealanders gained only a slight advantage in five days of bitter fighting, though this check cost the enemy heavy loss of first-class units. When the Division was relieved on the fourteenth the crest of the Spur remained in no-man's land.

Against the Hindenburg Line proper the 2nd Brigade gained ground on the twenty-ninth and the 1st Brigade was irresistible, sweeping past the first objective and over the Cambrai Road to pause breathlessly before the Escaut or Scheldt Canal and river below, the spires of Cambrai to the north, and the inviting land to the east, unscarred by war. After an awkward pause, the 1st Auckland and 2nd Wellington crossed the canal and river lower down in the VI Corps sector and seized CrèGvecoeur on 1 October against stiffening opposition. The Division now faced the very last of the Hindenburg defences on heights to the east. On 8 October, under a barrage, the 2nd Brigade hacked its way through wire 50 yards deep – a hopeless task had the enemy not lost heart. Linking up with the Rifles pushing on from CrèGvecoeur, the advance quickened, Lesdain and then Esnes fell, a short step next day and then a long one on the tenth to Viesly. On the eleventh the 1st Brigade crossed the River Selle south-west of Solesmes. There on the twelfth, a year to the day from the reverse at Passchendaele, the Division attacked another Belle Vue Spur and had some sharp fighting before it fell. In five days the Division had advanced 11 miles and had taken over 1,400 prisoners and much material at a cost of 536 casualties. The pace, to men used to advancing yards rather than miles, was exhilarating; but supplies now had to catch up.

Le Quesnoy

The Division gained Beaudignies after dark on 23 October and the high ground beyond next day, bringing into view the mediaeval fortress of Le Quesnoy, ringed with 60-ft ramparts and full of civilians. A barrage, of extraordinary complexity, planned so that not one round fell in the town, led the infantry round both sides on 4 November, with batteries leapfrogging forward to cover the advance nearly to the Mormal Forest. Bypassing the fortress on both sides but taking four neighbouring villages, the infantry reached the edge of the forest at 2.15 p.m. A standing barrage meanwhile played on the ramparts and with the aid of scaling ladders the Rifles carried the outlying bastions and entered Le Quesnoy soon after 4 p.m. Nearly 2,000 prisoners, 60 field guns, and hundreds of machine guns were taken in this fitting climax to two and a half years on the Western Front. The infantry were relieved on the eastern side of the forest at midnight on 5–6 November and the war ended five days later.

Germany

The Division left the Third Army on 28 November, warmly farewelled by the fine 37th Division, its companion almost throughout the long advance to victory. A memorable march through Belgium followed, to entrain at the German frontier for Cologne and take up billets in neighbouring towns as part of the army of occupation. Demobilisation soon started and at Mülheim near Cologne the Division was finally disbanded on 25 March 1919.

Casualties

The cost of maintaining the Division for two and a half years on the Western Front was appalling. Altogether some 13,250 New Zealanders died of wounds or sickness as a direct result of this campaign, including 50 as prisoners of war and more than 700 at home. Another 35,000 were wounded, and 414 prisoners of war were ultimately repatriated. The total casualties therefrom approached 50,000, well over half the number of those who served in France or Belgium.

Sinai and the Holy Land

Another tale remains, of fighting in Egypt and Palestine, of sand, heat, and flies in Sinai, winter in the rocky wilderness of Judah, humid summer by the Dead Sea shore, and, for unlucky wounded, perhaps a journey to hospital of such exquisite torture as to turn young men grey-haired. But battle losses by the standards of France were not great. There were no months in trenches under massed guns, and clashes with the enemy were apt to be brief, adventurous, and even chivalrous, though they called for grim determination against a stubborn foe.

The Mounted Rifles Brigade (Auckland, Wellington, and Canterbury Regiments with supporting troops) under Brigadier-General E. W. C. Chaytor, in March 1916, joined with three Australian light horse brigades and four Royal Horse Artillery batteries to form the Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division (the “Anzac Mounted”) under the Australian Major-General H. G. Chauvel. The Division moved 20 miles into the Sinai Desert in April to help guard the Suez Canal. Patrols, reconnaissances, and one or two minor clashes ensued. Then, in the early hours of 4 August, 18,000 Turkish infantry attacked Romani. A superb Australian delaying action upset the Turkish timetable and when the 2nd Light Horse Brigade (with the Wellingtons under command) entered the fray the sun was pitiless and the Turks already flagging. The New Zealand Brigade shattered the enemy flank before dark and the whole Division followed through, fighting two sharp actions in the next week and bringing Turkish losses to some 10,000 men. Though other troops were engaged it was very much an Anzac victory.

This defensive success stimulated the British command to extend the railway and water pipeline along the coast and advance at least to El Arish. Next came a hard fight for Magdhaba, 23 miles up the El Arish wadi, on 23 December. In a brilliant action at Rafa on 9 January 1917, the Mounted Brigade attacked gallantly from the north, while the Imperial Camel Corps (including one New Zealand company and later another) pushed doggedly from the south. Australians and British yeomanry then closed in. (Both mounted and camel troops rode into action but usually fought dismounted.)

At Gaza on 26 March the British infantry were held up but the mounted troops, attacking skilfully late in the day, were on the point of success when the operation was mistakenly called off. A second attack a month later inevitably failed, with heavy loss of British infantry and also of Anzac horses, bombed and shelled in the horse lines. Trench warfare then developed on a 30-mile front to the hills at Beersheba.

Chauvel was now given command of the Desert Mounted Corps (including the Anzac and Australian Mounted Divisions and British yeomanry), Chaytor took over the Anzac Mounted, and Brigadier-General W. Meldrum of the Wellingtons commanded the New Zealand Brigade – all of them outstanding leaders who retained their commands to the end of the campaign. The desert army, with two other corps of infantry, was under General Allenby. A New Zealand Rarotongan Company gave valuable service to XXI Corps by landing supplies on beaches.

In an attack on Beersheba on 31 October the New Zealand Brigade seized the key redoubt at Tel el Saba and opened the way for the Australian light horse into the town. With Turkish reserves thus drawn to the inland sector, British infantry broke through on the coast and the Gaza-Beersheba line collapsed. After a pause to refresh the horses, the New Zealand Brigade made a stirring advance along the coastal plain in November, fighting two sharp actions. Then the Wellingtons, exceeding their orders, pushed on into Jaffa on the sixteenth.

Clothed and equipped for summer, the men found Jerusalem and the Judean hills in December and January bitterly cold. Jericho, falling to the Aucklands on 21 February 1918, was a town of pestilence. In miserable late-March weather the Division and the Camel Brigade, supported by an infantry division, crossed the flooded Jordan and scaled the heights of Moab in the most ambitious raid of the campaign-a difficult journey for horses and terrible indeed for camels slithering on mud and wet rock. Es Salt was taken, but at the end, after hard fighting and heavy loss, the garrison of Amman proved much too strong. A hill dominating the town from the south-east fell to the Mounted Brigade and the Camels and some of the Canterburys even set foot in the streets. But all was in vain and the journey back on 1 April became a long agony. Another raid in April, though it also gained Es Salt, similarly failed in its main purpose.

The Jordan Valley in summer became a humid, dust-laden oven, menaced by virulent malaria. There the Camel Corps was reduced in strength, and its New Zealand companies became the 2nd NZ Machine-gun Squadron, supporting the 5th Australian Light Horse Brigade – the only New Zealanders committed to Allenby's September thrust to the north. On the thirtieth the machine-gunners engaged the fleeing enemy in deadly fashion in the Barada Gorge outside Damascus and by 31 October, when the armistice took effect, they had reached Homs.

The Anzac Mounted Division had meanwhile exacted a stern revenge for its reverses at Es Salt and Amman, capturing both with ease by 25 September and amassing over 10,000 prisoners before turning back on 3 October. This grand finale to the operations of a magnificent body of horsemen came just in time. Many of them were already incubating malaria blown from the Turkish lines in the valley, and in the first week of October the disease struck viciously, emptying hundreds of saddles.

By degrees the New Zealanders found their way back through Jerusalem to a camp near Jaffa, where the Canterburys left in November to occupy Gallipoli–a proud distinction, though 11 men died there of sickness. Retracing their steps, the other units reached Rafa and sadly parted with their horses. There the Canterburys rejoined them and all expected to embark. But one last task awaited the Brigade. In the middle of March 1919 riots broke out in Egypt and, with the remaining Australian Light Horse, the New Zealanders were hastily re-equipped to deal with them, which they did firmly and effectively. In June and July they sailed for home, having suffered some 1,700 casualties in all, including over 500 dead.

The Navy

Though New Zealand had paid for the battle cruiser New Zealand, it did not have a naval unit of its own until the old light cruiser Philomel was commissioned at Wellington in July 1914. With its complement augmented by 60–70 New Zealand reservists, the Philomel escorted first the Samoan force and then the Main Body. From the latter task it went on to serve in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, refitting from time to time at Malta or Bombay. But age began to tell and in March 1917 the old ship docked at Wellington for major overhaul.

New Zealand waters had hitherto been free of trouble; but in June 1917 the German raider Wolf laid minefields which caused the loss of a merchant ship off Farewell Spit in September, and another off Three Kings Islands the following June. Two fishing trawlers, the Nora Niven and Simplon, were therefore taken over, fitted as minesweepers, and manned partly by ratings from the Philomel. With the latter as depot ship they then swept both minefields.

At least 539 New Zealanders served in these or other ships of the Royal Navy. Among them was Lieutenant W. E. Sanders, RNR, who, as commander of the little Q-ship Prize, won the V.C. and later gained the rare distinction of a posthumous D.S.O.

New Zealanders in the Royal Flying Corps

(The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service united on 1 April 1918 to form the Royal Air Force.)

In the air war New Zealand contributed through private enterprise rather than Government action. Two private companies, one operating the New Zealand Flying School at Kohimarama, Auckland Harbour, and the other the Flying Training School at Sockburn, Canterbury, made their own arrangements with the United Kingdom Government whereby they trained pilots for Royal Aero Club certificates on the understanding that they would then be accepted for commissions in the RFC. Under these schemes 224 pilots sailed from New Zealand as cadets and 203 were duly commissioned, though only 68 were in time to see action. Hundreds of other New Zealanders joined the RNAS, RFC, or RAF by transferring from the NZEF or by direct enlistment. Of the latter, Second-Lieutenant W. B. Rhodes-Moorhouse, RFC, won a posthumous V.C., an achievement matched by his son as an RAF pilot in the Second World War – a unique family distinction.

A Massive and Costly War Effort

Of a total (by 1918) of some 275,000 New Zealand men of military age, more than 120,000 enlisted (over 43 per cent), and over 103,000 served abroad, 3,659 of them more than once. A quarter of the enlistments were under the Military Service Act (effective from 1 August 1916), but the great majority of these needed no urging. Altogether 2,688 Maoris, at least 346 Pacific islanders, and six British residents of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands served in the NZEF. A wireless troop served first in Mesopotamia in 1916, was among the first into Baghdad in March 1917, and later that year joined the NZEF in France. At least 3,370 other men left New Zealand during or just before the war and served in the Australian or Imperial forces, among them four V.C. winners. Colonel R. H. Davies, for instance, after passing a staff course at Camberley, had been given command of a British infantry brigade. He took a distinguished part in the retreat from Mons, and then, as a major-general in 1916, he commanded the 20th Division. Not least of the New Zealanders who served abroad were 550 nurses of the NZEF (10 of whom died in a transport torpedoed off Salonika). Many others went to the United Kingdom to enlist.

Losses were tragically heavy. In the NZEF alone they amounted to almost 16,700 dead, and another 1,000 died from war causes within five years of discharge, while 507 died in New Zealand before completing their training. Some 18,500 New Zealanders all told died in or because of the war, and nearly 50,000 were wounded (many of them twice or more), while thousands more suffered in later years from the strain of their war service.

by Walter Edward Murphy, B.A., Lecturer, School of Political Science and Public Administration, Victoria University of Wellington.

• The New Zealanders at Gallipoli, Waite, F. (1919)
• The New Zealand Division, 1916–1919, Stewart, H. (1921)
• The New Zealanders in Sinai and Palestine, Powles, C. G. (1922)
• The War Effort of New Zealand, ed. Drew, H. T. B. (1923)
• Some Records of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (comp.), Studholme, J. (1928)
• The Story of Anzac, Bean, C. E. W. (2 vols., 1921, 1924)
• The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914–1918, Gullet, H. S. (1923).