Heritage et AL

Recently a customer called into the Central Auckland Research Centre looking for a photograph of his uncle published in the Auckland Weekly News in 1943.  He said the photograph was the first indication to his family that his uncle was no longer a prisoner of war. A search of the Heritage Images database produced no results, which is not uncommon as many of the images from the Auckland Weekly News have a caption but few of the people are named. There is, however, ongoing work to rectify this.  When the Italian Armistice was announced on 8 September 1943, Colin Tayler was a prisoner of war at Campo PG 107, about 9 kilometres north of Schio in Northern Italy.  Over the next three weeks he and his travelling companions, Privates D R Muir, R Kendrick, I Penhall and E Barnett, travelled approximately 566 kilometres south: by train to Pescara on the Adriatic coast, before walking some distance and catching another train as far as they could go.  They met allied s...

The WW100 commemorations have drawn renewed attention to our First World War memorials. This does not mean our Second World War memorials should be forgotten: 13 December 2015 is the 75th anniversary of the unveiling of a unique and spectacular memorial at Achilles Point , overlooking the Waitematā Harbour and Hauraki Gulf. Ref: Bruce Ringer,  HMS Achilles memorial, St Heliers, 2014. 

The 1940s were boom times for Auckland’s Dalmatian-run grill room restaurants, especially after US soldiers, sailors and nurses arrived in June 1942 - there were six grill rooms on Victoria Street West alone (Clarich, Jelich, Kosovitch, Lipanovich, Makovina and Urlich) and a further 20 in the central city. The Americans came for R and R after fighting in the Pacific, for medical attention, and for training. For the next two years about 50,000 American servicemen and women were in the country at any one time. They were often paid twice as much as local wages, and had three out of every four days free. Ref: Auckland Weekly News, US troops in Queen Street, 1942, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 7-A14390.

There is an interesting and rather beautiful little hall in Union Road, Mauku (a semi-rural locality between Waiuku and Pukekohe). Known as the Mauku Victory Hall, this was formally opened by Governor-General Viscount Jellicoe on 7 June 1922. Ref: Bruce Ringer, Mauku Victory Hall, August 2014.

Ref: JTD-04A-01111, Piha Number 4 Radar Station antenna, 1958, West Auckland Research Centre The Piha Radar Station was constructed during WW2 by the NZ Air Force. Located at the end of Log Race Road in the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park, it was part of a network of radar stations along New Zealand's coast. The purpose of this site was to use radio wave transmission aerials and receiving equipment to detect any signs of attack from enemy aircrafts or vessels. Ref: JTD-04J-01110, Te Ahuahu Road and radar station, 1958, West Auckland Research Centre The site was closed permanently in the 1950s and the buildings and other structures removed. However, there are remains that can still be seen, including the concrete pads where the aerial tower once stood. Ref: JTD-04A-00307-1, remains at radar station site and Hikurangi beacon, 1963, West Auckland Research Centre This site has been added to the schedule of significant historic heritage places in the Proposed Auckland Uni...

70 years ago the Patumahoe State Gardens were established in the Franklin District. Bountiful supplies of vegetables were to be grown there for the remainder of the war years. From the early to mid 1940s parts of the NZ countryside were acquisitioned by the Department of Agriculture and used for the purpose of increasing large scale vegetable production. The department implemented its Services Vegetable Production Scheme in 1942. These farms were established to address the need to feed US troops stationed here during WW2. The gardens became known as 'State Farms' or 'Government Gardens'. Within six months the NZ government had established 7 state farms totalling 663 acres; the total later grew to 27 farms covering 5,200 acres. A significant number of these were based in the South Auckland region from Mangere to Pukekohe and Waiuku. By the end of 1945 all of state farms had closed down. Ref: AWNS-19431222-15-1, American and NZ soldiers at the wedding and harvesting...

We have in the Central City Library an old but most gorgeous book that I would love to have a copy of. 'Pilots of Fighter Command ' (1942) is a book of 64 charcoal portraits of fighter pilots drawn by Cuthbert Orde , an artist and a pilot in the First World War. Over a one year period in 1941, Orde spent time living on RAF bases to draw pictures of the men who would become known as the “Few” -  the airmen of the RAF who flew in the Battle of Britain . The term had come from Winston Churchill’s phrase "Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few" and as Orde wrote: “I went off to find myself in the middle of  a world that was the talk of the world.” As well as the portraits themselves, the book includes Orde's thoughts on the pilots and gives an account of life on a fighter station during the Battle of Britain – “ordinary chaps doing an extraordinary thing.” Ref: Bendan 'Paddy' Finucane, from 'Pilots of Fighter ...

Ref: 7-A16555,  NZ POWs alongside camp huts, 1944, Sir George Grey Special Collections Margaret Pollock found the tattered blue diary of her late father Laurence after his death in 1989 in amongst newspaper clippings and prisoner of war artifacts. The diary details Laurence's time in German, Polish and Italian POW camps during the second World War. Laurence  was serving in the 20th Battalion, 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Forces in North Africa when he was captured by German forces. He risked his life to record the horrific and harrowing conditions inside the camps.

The International Commission for the International Tracing Service (ICITS)  is handing over management of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen to the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) after over 50 years. The ICITS will continue to give technical expertise, helping the ITS serve the victims of Nazi persecution and their families. Ref: T7129, North Auckland Research Centre The archives cover civilians detained in Nazi concentration or labour camps and people who had to flee their homes because of World War II. They house over 50 million card files relating to more than 17.5 million civilians persecuted by the Nazis.

Sixty years ago, the 2nd Battle of El Alamein , the battle that turned the war towards the allies' favour, was fought in North Africa. Recent commemorations saw New Zealand veterans invited to the El Alamein Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Egypt to remember New Zealand and allied forces; fortunately many of their stories now live on in the written and oral histories. George Mackay from Westport fought at Tripoli and in The Desert Rd  recounts the thoughts that go through one’s mind leading up to battle. “You don’t know what to expect.. . It’s an uncanny moment, zero hour. Everything’s going through your mind, whether you’ll survive, whether you’re going to get killed, blown up or shot at, or anything like that. What’s going to happen? What’s it going to be like? You don’t know. All those things are going through your mind and then finally its zero hour and the shelling starts. Then you’re waiting for the Germans to retaliate with their shells.  That’s what it’s all ab...