One for ANZAC Day

 AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE

New Zealand World War One veterans tell their stories

Jane Tolerton

“As we draw close to the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War much will be written about it . . . I expect, though, that for me few publications will be quite as engrossing as this one . . . I found the stories of these very real people, who went to war almost a century ago, enormously interesting, moving and compelling.”

– Lt Gen The Rt Hon Sir Jerry Mateparae, Govenor-General

An Awfully Big Adventure is a new oral history of the First World War from interviews with 80 veterans recorded in their nineties.

Oral historian Jane Tolerton uses the interviews she and Nicholas Boyack recorded for the World War One Oral History Archive (WW1OHA) in the late 1980s to tell the story of the war in the men’s own words.

She presents the edited pieces in chronological order – including Gallipoli, the Western Front, the Sinai-Palestine Campaign and the occupation of Germany, and covering before and after the war.

The veterans range from the youngest, Sydney Stanfield, who joined up aged 15 and spent two and a half years on the Western Front, to the oldest, Frank Leslie Hunt, who was rescued from a pile of dead men on the beach at Gallipoli by a family friend who saw his foot twitch and ordered that he be pulled out.

“Many of the men had never spoken in any depth about the war before but they were happy to go on the record and speak candidly late in their lives,” says Jane Tolerton.

“An Awfully Big Adventure covers the big stuff – death and fear, love and comradeship – but also what they thought of their allies and enemies, what they did on leave, having shell shock and their feeling of disillusionment as they were trapped in a war that seemed as it if would never end.

“There have been plenty of ‘mud and blood’ books about the war, but I wanted to get beyond the terrible conditions to what was in their heads and their hearts. They are recognisably New Zealand men with their laconic sense of humour. And there are some nice love stories.

“This is the old veterans’ version of the war. Some things may not be strictly ‘true’ but this is what they said in interviews about 25 years ago – for posterity.”

With the centenary of the First World War beginning in August 2014, the national focus is turning to what the war meant then and now.

The WW1OHA recordings, from which the pieces in the book have been drawn, are in the Alexander Turnbull Library where they are the most used collection in the Oral History Centre.

Jane Tolerton is the best-selling author of Convent Girls and NZ Book Award-winning Ettie: A Life of Ettie Rout – both from Penguin.

Footnote:

In 1987, Tolerton and Nicholas Boyack established the World War One Oral History Archive while based at the Stout Research Centre at Victoria University. They interviewed 84 veterans, gifted the tapes to the Alexander Turnbull Library, and produced an accompanying book, In the Shadow of War (1990).

26 APRIL 2013 | RRP $45.00 | PAPERBACK | PENGUIN GROUP (NZ)