Fiona Martin, Libraries Advisor, Service Development, went to hear journalist Jane Tolerton, author of a new book which draws on her first-hand interviews with veterans of the Great War.
A collection of oral histories
recorded 33 years ago by Jane Tolerton for the Stout Collection at Victoria
University and the Turnbull Archive was aching to be made into a book,
particularly with the World War I centenary falling next year. She has revisited
those recordings and the photographs of the contributors, the result being the
wonderful ‘An awfully big adventure: New Zealand World War One veterans tell their
stories.’
With an average age of 90 at the
time of being interviewed, the veterans were at a point in their lives when
they wanted to tell their stories, not to just anyone who would listen, only to
anyone who was really interested. For many of them, this was the first
time they had explained what their war experience was actually like, having
maintained a stoic silence to family and friends since their return. The
stories, illustrated by photographs of them as soldiers, and again as old men,
ranged from the horrific, a man who was injured and left to die among a pile of
corpses at Gallipoli until a family friend saw his foot twitch and rescued him,
to the bittersweet, “All I thought was, I’m going to die, and I’ve never slept
with a woman.”
All the interviewees had volunteered to fight -- conscription only began in 1916 -- as at the time New Zealand saw itself as a
vital part of the Empire, determined to punch above its weight. This was
evidenced by the huge numbers of ‘our boys’ who died either on the field, or of
their injuries once the war was over. The friendly banter between
Australian and New Zealand soldiers was reinforced by mutual respect,
camaraderie and an independent streak, particularly towards authority, each
considering the other as ‘tough’, both mentally and physically, as opposed to
the English soldiers who were young, weaker and unquestioningly obedient to
their superiors.
The author takes us to the
Sinai-Palestine campaign, Chunuk Bair, Armentières and of course Gallipoli and
Passchendaele. The duplicity of the New Zealand media is exposed –
newspapers reported only positive news, implying that the boys were having a
jolly good time ‘over there’. New Zealand and Australia remained in
blissful ignorance of the trauma and deprivation experienced by everyone in
Europe, so when they returned home, the men could not share their experiences
with family and friends as they would not understand, and quite possibly, would
prefer not to know.
Jane Tolerton allowed the men to talk for
themselves during the session, and it felt as though we were with each of them
in their sitting room, hearing first-hand about the pranks, the lice, the
trenches, the laughter and the tears.
-- Fiona Martin
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