A letter home from Alister Robison, a young Nelson signaller, showed the joy the Pierrots created.
"They are absolutely good," he told his family. "When they first started they were rotten but now they have improved out of recognition."
Robison said he went to a packed show in May 1917. Arriving a good half hour before the 5.30pm start, he could only find a back-row seat.
"They have any amount of costumes and the stage effects are marvellously good considering the conditions," Robison wrote. "Fair dinkum they're worth it."
The Pierrots (later known as the Digger Pierrots when the soldiers demobilised) sprang from spontaneous performances created by soldiers Tano Fama and Stan Lawson at the NZ Division's base camp at Etaples in France. Fama, a gifted entertainer who served as a stretcher bearer and Lawson, who revelled in the role of female impersonator, performed with a dozen or so soldiers to troops who passed through the camp, and took the show on the road, playing in camps, hospitals and theatres in France, Belgium and Britain.
Taking their name from an Italian pantomime tradition, the Pierrots' fame was such that one ensemble toured New Zealand after the war and went on the road in Australia.
The idea of entertaining the troops was sanctioned at the highest level. In a preface to a book about Kiwi wartime entertainers, divisional commander Sir Andrew Russell wrote that the soldier-actors gave great pleasure when they performed "within sound of the guns during those eventful years, 1915-1918".
Major-General Russell gave his four-square support to a measure he felt gave comfort to bone-tired troops. He would not hear of complaints that the performances somehow detracted from the sombre business of war.
On one occasion Russell took to the stage to thank Theo Tresize after his final show. Tresize, who worked in opera and musical comedy in London before the war, suffered from poor health after Gallipoli. The Chronicles of the NZ Expeditionary Force noted that even without Tresize, "the atmosphere remains charged with the peculiar grace, daintiness, and vitality that characterised him."
Russell also paid tribute to Captain David Kenny, an officer in the machine gun corps and a dedicated entertainer.
Wrote Russell in Ernest McKinlay's account of the New Zealand entertainers: "Dave Kenny stands out clearly in my own recollection as one whose cheerful face, as he turned to the audience with a broad smile, could dispel the nostalgia of a week in the front lines. His death was indeed a loss to the New Zealand Division and to the Kiwis."
Thirty-three when he enlisted in August 1914, Kenny fought and played with distinction in Europe.
With his distinctive red hair and rollicking abilities at the piano, Kenny was a key figure as officer in charge of the performing New Zealanders. He was born to the role. In Wellington, where he had taught music, the robust Kenny could entertain all night.
The Observer, a lively weekly newspaper, noted that he "had a lot of the red corpuscle about him".
Performing at a show in 1917, Kenny played the part of Titania, Queen of the Fairies.
A solidly built soldier, Kenny took to the stage with a pair of gossamer wings, crying 'I'll fly, I'll fly!"
The sight was too much for a soldier in the audience, who cried out 'Like hell you will Dave!' according to an account in McKinlay's 1938 book, Ways and By-Ways of a Singing Kiwi with the N.Z. Divisional Entertainers in France.
In early 1918, Kenny became ill with appendicitis and went to England for an operation.
He never recovered and was buried at Brookwood Military Cemetery near London.
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