New Zealanders at Gallipoli

The first account of New Zealand's role at Gallipoli, written by a man who was there. Fred Waite composed this narrative in 1919, while the smoke had barely cleared and the grief remained fresh. He writes not as a historian at a distance, but as a participant who watched young New Zealanders leave their farms and towns for a foreign shore half a world away. The book follows the New Zealand Expeditionary Force from the surge of volunteers flooding recruitment offices in 1914, across the ocean to Egypt where they trained under the desert sun, and finally to the cliffs of Gallipoli where they faced machine gun fire on April 25, 1915. Waite captures the determination of soldiers who believed they were fighting for empire and honor, the horrors they encountered, and the bonds forged in shared hardship. This is primary source history at its most immediate: a document from a young nation's soldiers discovering what they were capable of, and what it would cost them.