![]() ![]() Thankfully, Associate Professor Glyn Harper, head of the Centre for Defence Studies at Massey University and a former Lieutenant-Colonel in the New Zealand Army, rises above such simplistic distortions despite the fact that Dark Journey is squarely aimed at reminding his fellow New Zealanders of the experiences and, perhaps more pointedly, the achievements of their forebears on the Western Front. Despite being a nation of just under one million people in 1914 New Zealand sent a total of 100,000 men overseas to serve in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) of whom 59,000 became casualties. ![]() The NZEF contributed brigade level forces to the ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign in 1915 (hence the "NZ" in "ANZAC" – not that you would know it to read the work of some Australian authors on the subject), but the largest single formation fielded by the NZEF was in fact the New Zealand Division which served on the Western Front between 1916-18. Harper concentrates on the New Zealand Division's actions in three key battles: Passchendaele in October 1917, the defence of Amiens (Second Battle of the Somme) and the Battle of Bapaume in March and August 1918 respectively. In doing so he succeeds in producing a nicely balanced narrative that utilizes first-hand accounts adroitly whilst also maintaining a coherent operational overview of the division, brigade and battalion level actions unfolding around them. Harper does not subject the actual battles themselves to significant re-examination but then this is not the focus of his work – the focus is on the performance of the New Zealand Division within those battles. ![]()
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