Looking at the Great War from New Zealand with a nod to this Sunday's remembrance event in Southern Cemetery

A G Webber remembered in  Southern Cemetery

It is easy to view events from a European perspective; after all I was born in Britain, and have family in Italy and a grandmother who was born in Germany.

All of which means I tend to see the Great War as a European tragedy, more so because it and the war that followed were in a sense a family civil war for us.

So while I can count on six immediate members who fought in the first of those world wars and two in the second, I know that there were also some who fought in the armed forces of Imperial Germany and three who stare back at me in German army uniforms from 1938.

But that is to ignore that both conflicts were really world wars which saw the fighting spread out to other continents as well as the oceans of the world and drew in men and women from everywhere.

And so it is fitting at a time when we remember the fighting at Gallipoli and the contributions made by the ANZAC forces and French colonial regiments that I focus on the feelings of one group in New Zealand in 1916.

Now the date is important for the conflict was now into its second full year and much of the optimism of a short war had vanished under the weight of the casualties on the Western Front, and the Middle East along with those on the high seas.

In Auckland at the University there was much to ponder on, ranging from those amongst the staff and students who had enlisted, to all manner of shortages.

And so in the August of 1916 the editor of the college magazine was in reflective mood commenting that

“Looking back over the last twenty months we cannot but be struck at the change that has come over the College. 

This change is none the less noticeable for the fact that it seems scarcely a definite alteration in any specific thing or things, but rather a feeling that we are not the same as we were a short time ago.

We do not hesitate to ascribe this feeling-this atmosphere of change-to the war and its direct effect upon us.  

And when we think of the number of students who were with us a few months ago and who are now thousands of miles away taking part in the great world-struggle that is convulsing Europe, do we wonder that the College is not as it used to be?”*

That said the College while it had seen some of its members go off to fight had received new students, so that in one sense the editor could say that in sheer numbers the place was much as it was.

But the College was missing many of its experienced and older members, added to which most of the magazine was given over to photographs of those who had left and descriptions of what had happened to them.

Some had died others invalided home and most were still far.

And that is what makes this magazine such a powerful insight into the impact of the war on New Zealand.

The numbers at the college may not have been big and we are dealing with a very small community but for me it is the start of the journey into discovering how other people thought about that war fought out on my continent.

And that is perhaps the point to draw attention again to this Sunday when David Harrop will be in attendance at the Remembrance Lodge on Sunday April 26 which houses his collection of memorabilia from both world wars, but given that this is the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign David will have items which reflect the campaign.**

Pictures; Lance Corporal Alleyne Gordon Webber, 1914 and R W Lambert, 1914 from The Kiwi, The Auckland University Magazine

*The Kiwi, The Auckland University Magazine, August, 1916, Vol 11, www.thebookshelf.auckland.ac.nz/docs/Kiwi/kiwi_011_01.pdf

**New Zealand, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/New%20Zealand