After being found guilty of desertion, 28-year-old Private Frank Hughes was killed by a firing squad in Hallencourt, northern France. He was the first New Zealand soldier executed during the First World War.
WW1 Stories
Events In History
9 May 1915
New Zealand's most successful tennis player, Anthony Wilding was one of the stars of the sport in the decade before the First World War.
13 August 1914
Sapper Robert Arthur Hislop was guarding the Parnell railway bridge in Auckland when he accidentally fell. He died from his injuries six days later, but it would take a century for Hislop to be officially recognised as the first New Zealand casualty of the Great War.
22 March 1902
Victoria College’s first professor of modern languages joined the fledgling institution’s four foundation professors.
Articles
New Zealand and Le Quesnoy
It was the New Zealand Division's final action of the First World War. On 4 November 1918, just a week before the Armistice was signed, New Zealand troops stormed the walled French town of Le Quesnoy. The 90 men killed were among the last of the 12,483 who fell on the Western Front. Read the full article
Page 4 - Battle accounts, Lieutenant Averill
Leslie Cecil Lloyd Averill is best remembered for his exploits during the liberation of Le Quesnoy on 4 November
Page 5 - Battle accounts, Private Nimmo
Captain James Matheson Nimmo joined 3rd Battalion, 3rd New Zealand (Rifle) Brigade on 27 September
The Gallipoli campaign
Each year on Anzac Day, New Zealanders (and Australians) mark the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings of 25 April 1915. On that day, thousands of young men, far from their homes, stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Türkiye. Read the full article
Page 10 - Gallipoli biographies
Find out more about some of the New Zealanders involved in the Gallipoli campaign between April 1915 and January 1916.
The Salonika campaign
23 October is the anniversary of the 1915 sinking of the Marquette with the loss of 32 New Zealanders, including 10 nurses. They were en route from Egypt to the Greek port of Salonika as New Zealand’s contribution to the little-known Allied campaign in the Balkans Read the full article
Page 6 - Hidden Anzacs
A number of New Zealanders served in the British imperial forces at Salonika rather than with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.
The War in the air
More than 800 New Zealanders served as air or ground crew in the war between 1914 and 1918, the vast majority of them in Europe. A handful saw action in Gallipoli and the Middle East. Read the full article
Page 5 - Kiwi stories
Find out more about some of New Zealand's First World War
Biographies
Charles Begg was New Zealand's most decorated member of the Medical Corps during the First World War. He played a major role in the treatment of troops during the 1915 Gallipoli campaign.
William Wallace Allison Burn was the first New Zealander to qualify as a military aviator. During the First World War he served in the Middle East, where he became the first New Zealand pilot to be killed in action.
One of New Zealand's greatest aviators, Keith Caldwell recorded 25 confirmed victories while serving as a pilot in the First World War.
William Rhodes-Moorhouse, the first airman to receive a Victoria Cross, served as a mechanic and pilot in the early months of the First World War.
Malcolm McGregor, known to colleagues as ‘Mad Mac’, achieved fame as a First World War air ace and later helped to establish civil aviation in New Zealand.
Euan Dickson was one of the most successful Allied bomber pilots of the First World War, flying 175 raids, and shooting down 14 enemy aircraft with the help of his observer.
Perhaps New Zealand's most qualified and experienced First World War pilots, Clive Collett flew a total of about 1200 hours, many of them on experimental work, on at least 46 different types of aircraft.
Wellington lawyer, Alfred de Bathe Brandon, was famed for his attacks on German Zeppelin airships during the First World War.
Main image: George Bollinger
George Bollinger's diary documents superbly the experiences and shifting attitudes of a New Zealand soldier during the Gallipoli campaign.
