Western Front The New Zealand Division in the First World War 1916-1918 By Matthew Wright.

Western Front The New Zealand Division in the First World War 1916-1918 By Matthew Wright.

Publisher: Reed New Zealand, Auckland, 2005, First Edition

Very good softback, no inscriptions, minor marks, and fading to spine. 204 pages, illustrated.

Sources agree that 100,444 NZers served overseas during the First World War. This number totalled 42 percent of all those of military age in NZ., at a time when the national population was just under 1,100,000. Of the total mobilised 12.4 percent were killed. The largest proportion of these men fought with the NZ Division on the Western Front. As the golden summer of 1914 gave way to a bitter autumn, men of the British Expeditionary Force reached Ypres. Both sides were exhausted by the fastest-moving war the world had yet seen. Within a few weeks the forces had settled into muddy trenches that defined the new face of combat. New Zealanders were caught in the maelstrom. Posted to France in 1916 after the failed effort to break into Turkey from Gallipoli, Kiwi soldiers of the NZ Division fought in the deadly battles of the Somme, Passchendaele, and the colossal spring offensive of 1918. More New Zealanders were killed here than at Gallipoli. These soldiers' experiences helped define twentieth century New Zealand. The poppy is the flower of the Western Front, a lasting symbol of New Zealand's war effort.