Services to mark end of slaughter

Auckland RSA president Graham Gibson expects up to 2000 people to gather outside the War Memorial Museum from about 10.30am. Photo / Richard Robinson

Armistice Day commemorations of the end of hostilities on the Western Front in World War I will involve services around New Zealand at 11am today.

A two-minute silence will be observed at cenotaphs around Auckland, including at the War Memorial Museum, and in centres such as Hamilton, Whangarei, Tauranga and Rotorua.

That will mark the moment on November 11, 1918, when hostilities ceased in a war that claimed the lives of 18,166 New Zealand men and women.

That included about 5 per cent of the military-age male population of a country of 1.1 million residents at the time, the highest proportion of war dead among the dominions of the British Empire.

About two-thirds of those who died fell in the Kiwis' 30-month Western Front campaign.

Although Anzac Day on April 25 remains the pre-eminent war commemoration for New Zealand and Australia, new Returned and Services Association national president Barry "B.J." Clark expects observances of Armistice Day to grow during the centenary of the 1914-18 war.

An exception to the timing of commemorations will be a special event at Parliament's Grand Hall this evening in which British and German diplomats will join Rongotai Labour MP Annette King to mark the armistice.

They will watch a community theatre piece commissioned by the British Council and the Goethe-Institut which will tell women's stories from the Great War.

The event will also include a book launch of The Three Uncles, in which author Tina Blackman details the fate of her forebears and the impact of war on their family tree.

Auckland RSA president Graham Gibson expects up to 2000 people to gather outside the War Memorial Museum from about 10.30am.

He hopes the occasion will also lend momentum to a campaign to encourage as many schools as possible to establish "Field of Remembrance" gardens of white crosses representing men and women who left their districts to serve in World War I but did not return.

Mr Gibson's Whangarei counterpart, Chris Harold, said today's commemoration in the city would be held on a grassed area outside RSA clubrooms because its cenotaph was being re-established at a larger site in Laurie Hill Park to cater for growing crowds on Anzac Day.

"Last year we had 5500 people and we just can't accommodate that sort of crowd," he said of the former site in Rose St.

Cambridge in the Waikato, which has a sister town relationship with Le Quesnoy in northern France to mark its liberation by Kiwi soldiers on November 4, 1918, held its Armistice Day commemorations on Sunday, as did Matakana, north of Auckland.

Armistice Day

What is it?
It marks the moment when hostilities ceased on the Western Front in Europe at 11am on November 11, 1918 - the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

What happened at that time?
An armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany was signed at Compiegne, France, to take effect at that hour.

How it is commemorated?
A two-minute silence is observed at local time in many parts of the world.

What that signifies?
The first minute is to honour the approximately 20 million people who died in the war, including 18,166 New Zealanders, and the second is dedicated to the loved ones they left behind.

How it has unfolded in New Zealand?
It was marked solemnly in New Zealand between 1919 and 1945, when pedestrians and traffic would stop in the streets to observe the silence, but was supplanted by Remembrance Day in honour of the dead of both world wars until being revived by the Returned and Services Association in 1993.