Fighting for Empire - A lively account of the Great War

Fighting for Empire:
New Zealand and the Great War

of 1914-1918

Christopher Pugsley

Publication date: 15 August 2014, RRP $19.99       

A lively account of the Great War from pre-eminent historian Christopher Pugsley has over 100 images and quotes from diaries, letters and interviews.

This is a 100-page extract from Scars on the Heart: 200 Years of NZ at War (later published as Kiwis in Conflict) by acclaimed military historian Dr Christopher Pugsley, former Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst whose books include Gallipoli The New Zealand Story, On the Fringe of Hell, Te Hokowhitu A Tu, and The ANZAC Experience.

This is a lively mix of text, photographs and soldiers’ own accounts covering all aspects of the war: from NZ’s seizing German Samoa five days after war was declared, ANZAC Cove and Gallipoli, patriotism at home, Mounted Rifles in Sinai and Palestine, role of our nurses, the Western Front, and ‘Sea Dogs and Flying Aces’ – how our sailors and airmen fought the war.

About the author:

Christopher Pugsley is a freelance historian. He was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst from 2000-2012. A former infantry Lieutenant Colonel in the New Zealand Army, he was commissioned from the Royal Military College Duntroon and attended the British Army Staff College at Camberley and has held appointments at universities in New Zealand and Australia.

He received his PhD from the University of Waikato with a thesis on the discipline and morale of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the First World War. He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, Senior Research Fellow in Humanities at the University of Buckingham; a Distinguished Alumni of the University of Waikato and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was elected Vice President of the Western Front Association in April 2013 in recognition of his research, writing, lecturing and guiding on the Western Front campaigns.

He is regarded as one of New Zealand’s foremost authorities on the First World War and of the Gallipoli Campaign in particular.