Armistice Day graphic feature
One hundred years ago today, the guns fell silent on ‘the war to end all wars’. Dominic Harris revisits the hopes and exuberance of a nation that had suffered so much at home and abroad and discovers their mix of relief, sorrow and pride.
On November 11 1918, Noble Lowndes was due to be shipped back to the front, ready to fight the Germans again after convalescing from an injury that had almost killed him.
A long-in-the-tooth veteran at 22, the young soldier was in London on a final few days of leave when news came through that the end of the war was imminent.
While British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was relaying the ceasefire to Parliament and crowds were clamouring for a speech from King George V at Buckingham Palace, Lowndes was running down to The Strand with other New Zealand soldiers to join the thousands already celebrating.
In later life he would recount the ‘‘joyous’’ occasion, with ‘‘everyone dancing and leaping around everywhere’’, the only minor drawback – for a Kiwi, at least – being the ‘‘bloody Aussies playing two-up on every street corner’’.
But though he was at the centre of the world for that historic moment, his heart lay elsewhere – home.
In a letter written later that day to his father, Lowndes described his longing for New
Zealand.
I should very much have liked to have been in Gisborne when the news came through. Personally I cannot realise yet that there is no war on, and I can’t help feeling that it is too good to be true. However I hope to wake up one of these mornings to see the rugged coastline of dear old NZ looming up in the distance, which to me a few months ago seemed an unnatural or far off dream, for I can honestly say that I did not think I should ever have the good fortune to have seen this war through.
Lowndes had a remarkable war. Lying about his age so he could enlist at 17, recruit number 732 helped liberate German Samoa before being sent to Europe, eventually being promoted to Company Sergeant Major.
He was wounded during the Battle of the Somme, served at Passchendaele and almost died in 1918 when 100 shrapnel splinters from an exploding shell ravaged his body.
He also endured the horror of learning his cousin had been killed when he pulled on a new uniform jacket to replace his own mud-ruined one, only to read his relative’s name inside.
Come Armistice Day, after 52 months of service he was ready for the war to end.
I can return home now feeling that I have done my bit and by my actions over here, be in a position to face the world in the face and move on ever upwards.
While Lowndes celebrated on The Strand – only pausing to roll his eyes at the Australians – his countrymen at home were just hours from receiving the news themselves.
Word reached prime minister William Massey late on November 11 and was announced to the nation the following morning shortly before 9am, his message ‘‘Armistice signed’’ sent to post and telegraph offices.
Up and down the country bells and whistles sounded, workers deserted offices and factory floors in spontaneous celebration, descending on town halls and squares to hear patriotic speeches from mayors and launch into song.
In the capital, hordes gathered outside the Parliamentary Library at 10.30am for the formal announcement from the Governor-General, crowds breaking into the national anthem.
Isobel Haresnape, a nurse in Auckland at the time, described the excitement of seeing people dancing and impromptu bands in the streets for a 1968 recording to mark the 50th anniversary, held by Nga¯ Taonga Sound & Vision.
I woke next morning to a tremendous noise of sirens, and bell-ringing, and voices, and feet running, and everyone was wanting to know what it was all about, and I was one of them, and I heard someone say, ‘It’s peace!’
I went down to Queen Street where I saw all this excitement. People had benzene tins, and there was, I remember, one band was out. I don’t know if there were any more, but there were a lot of makeshift bands...
People [were] very hysterically excited, really. People who didn’t know each other, strangers, kissed strangers and went drinking with them in hotels. They danced with them. Everyone was dancing to the bands, or without the bands.
Quaker Edward Dowsett was serving two years’ hard labour in Waikato’s Waikeria Prison as a conscientious objector when peace was declared.
Prisoners were informed by warders and then given a ‘‘holiday’’ – which meant being shut in their cells all day.
Dowsett told the same recording:
My first thought was one, like everybody else, of immense relief. My immediate reaction in my cell was to break the law and sing, and I sang Edward Carpenter’s poem ‘England, arise! The long, long night is over.’
Then I began to wonder whether it really was, and I suppose my next thought was the hope that we had learned our lesson and wouldn’t be such fools as to again embark on a wide-scale war, or for that matter, any war at all.
But while small towns held parades and burned effigies of the Kaiser, the elation and relief – already tinged with sadness for the families of those killed – was marred further by fresh tragedy.
An influenza pandemic was sweeping the world, spread partly by soldiers on the battlefield and returning home, and then by the celebrations themselves.
So great was the concern that in Auckland the chief medical officer warned against public gatherings and, in Christchurch, indoor gatherings were banned, leading to thanksgiving services being held in the open, one in the city’s Cathedral Square; events in Dunedin and Wellington still went ahead.
But the flu was unstoppable. In little over a month it killed 9000 people in New Zealand, along with soldiers still in camp – half the 18,000 who died while serving. Worldwide the eventual toll was between 50 and 100 million.
Neill Atkinson, chief historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage said the pandemic was a ‘‘tragedy piled upon tragedy’’.
‘‘While people are celebrating and there’s a sense of relief, it’s again in the middle of another really tragic event.
‘‘It was very much a time of mixed feelings – many families were sad about their own loss, and people were worried about sickness.’’
Despite the death and suffering, new life still flourished. Children born on and around Armistice Day brought hope for the future, and many were given names to mark this symbolism – the so-called ‘‘peace babies’’.
Historian Imelda Bargas has uncovered around 20 New Zealand children given ‘‘Peace’’ as a first name, another 100 or so having it as a middle name. Some had the Latin version Pax, others christened Victory and occasionally Armistice itself.
But while some were happy with the association, for others it was a burden.