Not enough has been done in the past 90 years in recording personal stories and histories of World War One veterans. I don’t know if that is the case overseas, but I suspect it may be the same as here. I’ve certainly not seen many autobiographies of WWI vets compared with WWII, etc.
Here in New Zealand it was only when we started getting down to the last handful of WWI vets still alive that people started to really interview them. Yes, the odd interview had been done in the 1950’s-80’s, mainly for radio, but not much and not really in depth or very personal.
Our last few WWI soldiers (all of whom are now dead) are much more well known now because of media attention and historians tapping into their knowledge, and I think they’ve ignited a lot of interest in the past decade. This year alone a swag of new books about New Zealanders in WWI have been released, many of which are very revisionist and prove old facts and figures to be quite wrong.
I have also been enjoying and recording a great series off National Radio that they put together of a reading from a New Zealand soldier’s autobiography, “Ways and Byways of a Singing Kiwi” by Ernest McKinley. He was a tenor singer in the Kiwi Concert Party, regarded as one of the best on the Western Front. He described his own job and life as both an entertainer and a singer very well, and also wrote about what he saw on the battlefronts he visited. Jolly interesting and a really great way to keep the memory alive. The series was made this year, the book written in 1938. So that’s one way to do it if you can find as good a source material. But then, there isn’t a lot about like it.
I think in the early days we can attribute the media to glorifying many of the heroes which no doubt put many ordinary people off talking or writing about their own experiences. It wasn’t all Biggles and Boys Own, but that’s the stuff people wanted to read.
I think we can also lay more blame on the hippy generation for this lack of recording of personal memories. After the war the vets never wanted to speak of the horror they saw. Later in life it is natural for anyone to start talking about such things though, especially to granchildren. But when that generation got to that age, there was so much antiwar stuff around, the hippies completely disrespected their memories. I am not prowar, and I like the idea of peace, which is what the hippies stood for, but it makes me sick to the bone to think that in the 1960’s and 1970’s those idiots used to protest and jeer and carry on during ANZAC services when these veterans were trying to come to terms with their own experience and to remember their cobbers. I’m told there was often violence and tussles, young idiot hippies supposedly anti-violence, fighting with men 40 and 50 years their senior and a ton better than they would ever amount to be. I don’t know if this happened outside NZ, I suspect perhaps in Aussie too as they too were in Vietnam.
So yes, there are reasons why these stories haven’t been told, but I really think things are being readdressed now. As I say, many more books, plus just look how many WWI films are in the pipeline – films always generate interest. And there are more and more replica aircraft and even tanks being built that bring it to life for we younger ones. The airshows at Omaka are doing a huge service for remembrance here in New Zealand, as is Cambridge’s Armistace Day commemorations, something not done elsewhere in NZ.
The Auckland War Memorial Museum has a really excellent display now about WWI, and I really think that the IWM’s one at Lambeth was great when I was there. People are interested more now, and I am also certain that the public and the media are finally realising that the next generation, WWII, are important in terms of recording stuff. They at least are generally very ready to talk and remember and record, compared to their forebears, so when they’re gone we’ll have a much better record. Lt’s hope so.
Sign In
