Memories made of this
As the centenary of World War I draws to an end, it is appropriate to reflect on the legacy of the conflict, and the places that are key to the New Zealand experience of the war, such as Ypres and Le Quesnoy.
While a few old myths that sustain simplistic notions of national identity persist, over the past four years our understanding of the 1914-18 conflict, and the way it continues to affect how we see ourselves, our forebears and place in the world, has grown.
Like many New Zealanders, Euan Robertson, a senior lecturer from Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, has a family connection to the war. He is in France and Belgium this month to take part in centenary events concerned with his relatives’ experience of the conflict.
The commemoration of the signing of the armistice to end the war on November 11 will find him in the Belgian town of Ieper (Ypres) at the centre of a region full of cemeteries, memorials, and museums dedicated to remembering those who fought and died.
On the Menin Gate memorial in Ieper, which lists 54,896 British and Commonwealth soldiers whose bodies were never recovered, is the name of one of Robertson’s great-uncles, Corporal James Robertson. On November 9 Euan will play three original bagpipe compositions, including a waiata at the gate in tribute to his relative and the comrades who have no known grave.
This weekend, in Le Quesnoy, he will play two other original bagpipe tunes, The Liberation of Le Quesnoy and Marching up Rue Nouvelle Ze´lande.
His connection to the town is through another great-uncle, Alexander Fraser, a designer of the New Zealand battlefield memorial in one of the brick walls encircling the town. Fraser’s design depicts the New Zealanders climbing a ladder to reach the top of the ramparts.
In New Zealand during the four years of the WWI centenary there has been much commemorative activity. Manatu¯ Taonga/Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s WW100 website has catalogued an extraordinary array of events.
In the capital, a new memorial park has been built at the National War Memorial and occupied to date by memorial contributions from Australia, the UK, Belgium, France, and Turkey, and shortly, the US.
Substantial exhibitions such as Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War, a collaboration between Te Papa and Weta Workshop, have drawn record numbers of visitors to the museum. In Sir Peter Jackson’s The Great War Exhibition, the colourisation of photographs of New Zealand soldiers of a century ago uncannily projects these subjects into the present.
Many other cultural forms and resources related to the war have been developed, including ballet, musical compositions, written histories, theatre, poetry, art exhibitions, and biographical databases and conferences.
The Centenary History Programme, a partnership between Massey University, the ministry and the Defence Force, has produced 14 volumes forming the first complete and detailed account of New Zealand’s WWI experience.
So, what will be the legacy of this four-year commemoration? For members of the WHAM (war, history, heritage, art, and memory) Research Network like Robertson and myself, the past four years have been focused on WWI, including the organisation of an international, multidisciplinary symposium, The Myriad Faces of War: 1917 and its Legacy, and an ensuing book.
Now the network’s attention will be directed towards new projects advancing a deeper public understanding of conflict, its causes, and its impact. Its work will be aimed at contributing to the discourse of the ‘‘wicked problems’’ faced by humankind – from nuclear proliferation to climate change – that could spark conflicts to come.
Perhaps it is too optimistic to imagine the world’s reflection on the 1914-18 war over this centenary period will deter humanity from embarking on another such cataclysm.
Kingsley Baird is Professor of Fine Arts at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts. He designed the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, the New Zealand Memorial in Canberra (with Studio of Pacific Architecture) and the Cloak of Peace in Japan.