Another Anzac Day remembered (this is the 95th anniversary) and another clutch of books with military themes have appeared. Here are four:
Anzacs at War
From Gallipoli to the present day
by Peter Pedersen
(Crowns Nest, $59.99)
In a survey of conflicts involving New Zealand and Australian soldiers over 150 years, historian Dr Peter Pederson manages a fresh twist on military history by including facsimile documents in his book. Diary entries,
moving letters, telegrams and battle dispatches are tucked into envelopes scattered through the chapters.
The book leans more towards Australia's wartime experiences - the author is a senior historian at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra - but one of its most poignant pieces is a heartfelt letter written in September 1916 by Private W.M. Innes of the New Zealand Division at the Western Front.
Innes wrote to the father of his close friend, Private Harold Beach, who was ripped apart by German shelling at the Somme and lay dying on the battlefield for 24 hours before stretcher-bearers, guided by his groans, got to him.
Innes records: "A large piece of shell hit him just above the groin and it went right through him. The doctor said there was no hope for him as soon as he saw him and we can say he could not have died more nobly and is at rest now."
Voices from a Border War: Borneo 1963-65
by Brigadier Robert Gurr
(Willson Scott $60)
Bob Gurr led a battalion in the jungles of Malaysia and then Borneo in the Malayan Emergency and the Confrontation led by Indonesia's mercurial President Sukarno, who opposed the British-backed Federation of Malaysia. Gurr's account, first published in 1995, includes snippets of his own verse and impressions of equatorial warfare by colleagues who served alongside him in 1 RNZIR.
The soldiers were competent and well-drilled. They inflicted substantial losses on the enemy and emerged virtually unscathed. Gurr also has a thought for advocates of slashing national security: "Some have smelt cordite, and those who haven't should listen very intently to those who have."
Swift to the Sky: New Zealand's Military Aviation History
Errol W. Martyn
(Penguin $65)
Fifteen years ago the Air Force base at Wigram closed. But volunteers made certain the country's youngest service never really left its home on the southern edge of Christchurch, creating a museum which serves as a memorial to those who served in the RNZAF. Martyn's richly illustrated book - published with the Air Force Museum of New Zealand - draws on the collection to chronicle the story of the men and women and the machines they flew in their service to their country.
For a compact service its contribution was considerable: Keith Park and Arthur Coningham had command roles crucial to Allied success in World War II and Lowell Yerex, who flew a Camel plane for Britain in World War I, went on to set up TACA, an airline in Latin America that became the world's largest air cargo carrier.
The Western Front Diaries
Jonathan King
(Simon & Schuster $40)
Prolific Australian historian King uses diaries, letters and postcards to describe three years on the killing fields of Western Europe. The author tells the grim story battle by battle in the words of soldiers whose accounts in many cases were sent to him in response to a public appeal. The Anzac troops paid a terrible price in this theatre of war and death is never far from each page.
Though Australian soldiers and military leaders dominate the book, King records the bravery and heroism of New Zealanders amid the mud and barbed wire. One was sports-mad Lance Corporal Reg Childs, who won a Military Medal for "conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty" in 1918, and loved playing rugby between battles.
In his diary, Childs told of close-quarter fighting in France: "Jerry opened out with his artillery and gave us a hot time for about half an hour but after that it was 'tres bon'."
