60: At the outbreak of World War I, Victor Spencer joined queues of young volunteers eager to fight for king and country.

Few major institutions in Auckland's history devoted 82 per cent of their staff to a war.

Seventy years ago today, a German submarine went on an unsuccessful search for ships to sink in New Zealand waters.

58: He was a dashing English gent of Maori descent with a daring need for speed, who became the first airman to win a Victoria Cross in World War I.

57: One hundred and forty chaplains accompanied New Zealand forces to war.

57: Important chapters in Alfred Shout's life took place on both sides of the Tasman and he is remembered with pride in New Zealand and Australia.

The war is officially over, victory secured. And Afghanistan, once again, has been rebuilt. But for many, life in the restive provinces is much as it ever was.

Anton Tumanov gave up his life for his country, but his country won't say where and it won't say how.

There is a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass in which Alice meets the White Knight who is wearing full armour and riding a horse which he keeps falling off.

Captured Yazidi girls in Iraq are killing themselves to escape rape and torture at the hands of Isis (Islamic State) militants holding them prisoner.

One Christmas story above all deserves a run this year: the sound of Silent Night from the trenches in the first Christmas of the Great War.

A veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion, he fought alongside Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, and has a treasure trove of anecdotes...

A 93-year-old German man Oskar Groening, who claims he was an accountant at Auschwitz, to go on trial for being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 prisoners.

A 15-year-old was prevented from joining Isis by British police who hauled her off a plane at Heathrow just as it was due to take off.

55: For five anxious years the troopships set sail from New Zealand, carrying her men in uniform away to war.

54: Nothing seemed to frighten Dick Travis. His turf was No Man's Land, the zone of death between enemy trenches and his regiment's frontlines.

Four surviving veterans of one of New Zealand's most famous naval battles joined nearly 600 sailors and thousands of well-wishers in a parade on Auckland's Queen St yesterday to mark the Battle of the River Plate's 75th anniversary.

"I wasn't as dead as I had first surmised." Those were the words of HMS Achilles gunnery officer, Lieutenant Richard Washbourn, in a previously unpublished letter.

With bells clanging, whistles screeching and hundreds of booted sailors clattering to their firing stations, boy seaman Bob Batt had every right to be scared.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters claims "large-scale" military preparations are under way at New Zealand bases in anticipation of a deployment to Iraq.

51: New Zealanders from different points on the political spectrum hated censorship.

World War II's greatest escape, which involved Kiwi officers scaling barbed wire fences instead of the previously favoured method of tunnelling, has been told for the first time.

The Iraqi army includes 50,000 "ghost soldiers" who do not exist, but their officers receive their salaries fraudulently, according to the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

50: On a night-time sea-borne raid in a high-speed motor boat in 1918, mechanic Roy Alexander took a bullet in his stomach.

Today, Trevor Strong marks off another accomplishment in a long and remarkable life; tackling it in the same steely, unruffled style he has approached all of his missions.

Only in a topsy-turvy world would it be seen as rational to bring a posse of spies to heel by increasing their rights to snoop without a warrant, writes Brian Rudman.

Two military heroes - former spy Pippa Doyle and Willie Apiata - rubbed shoulders last night as France bestowed its highest honour on the 93-year-old Mrs Doyle.

She parachuted behind enemy lines, evading the Nazis to to spy on their troop movements. Now a quiet Aucklander is to receive France's highest honour.

48: A third of the kauri bushman who went to war did not return home and today a memorial plaque on the landward side of Lion Rock records 49 names in their memory.