New Zealand - WW1
- Piture taken before bombing & gas drill, Featherston Military Camp (?)
- 29/7/1918
- Real Photo Post Card Format
#338475
Featherston Military Training Camp and the First World War, 1915–27
- Featherston Camp was New Zealand’s largest training camp during the First World War, where around 60,000 young men trained for military service on European battlefields between 1916 and 1918.
- At its peak, Featherston Camp could sleep and feed more than 9000 men, and train them to be infantrymen, artillerymen, cavalry, and machine gunners. The government used the camp as a German prisoner of war camp and military hospital in 1918-19, and as a storage facility from 1919-26.
(https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/featherston-camp)
Quick facts and figures about World War 1
- The total population of New Zealand in 1914 was approximately 1.1 million
- Almost 100,000 New Zealanders served overseas in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF)
- More than 2200 Māori and around 500 Pacific Islanders served overseas with the New Zealand forces
- 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded to soldiers serving with New Zealand forces
- Several thousand New Zealanders served in the Australian or British imperial forces, being awarded a further five Victoria Crosses
- In all, 550 nurses served overseas with the New Zealand Army Nursing Service, while others enlisted in the United Kingdom
- Around 18,000 New Zealanders died in or because of the war, and there were 41,000 instances of wounding or illness; 2779 died at Gallipoli and more than 12,000 on the Western Front
- The names of those who died are recorded on approximately 500 civic war memorials throughout New Zealand
(https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/first-world-war-overview/introduction)