COMING & GOING

WORDS: SALLY BLUNDELL

“We’re under canvas,” wrote trainee soldier Charles Borlase in 1916. “The rain comes in like thru a sive [sic]. No matrace [sic] and cold as hell.” The Tauherenikau training camp in the Wairarapa, he concluded, “is a bugger of a camp”.

From 12 August 1914, when Britain accepted New Zealand’s offer of a voluntary expeditionary force, it was clear that the country’s provisional training camps, previously used for local territorial forces, could not meet demand. “There were no large permanent military camps,” says Glyn Harper, Professor of War Studies at Massey University. “And there didn’t have to be – there was no permanent force. Race tracks were often used. The First World War gave a huge impetus to establishing permanent camps and keeping them going after the war.” In keeping with the four districts established under the territorial scheme, mobilisation camps were set up in Auckland (Alexandra Park), Wellington (Awapuni Racecourse, near Palmerston North), Christchurch (Addington Park) and Dunedin (Tahuna Park).

While newly established camps in Trentham and Featherston provided most of the training for reinforcements, a number of smaller camps sprang up around the country. Featherston had satellite camps at Tauherenikau and Papawai. Trentham, following an outbreak of infectious diseases, established temporary overflow camps in Waikanae, Rangiotu and Maymorn (near Upper Hutt). The Medical Corps continued to train at Awapuni, trainees bedding down in the grandstand, while Maori and Pacific troops and Tunnelling Corps reinforcements were trained at the new Narrow Neck Camp (it also served as an internment camp for “enemy aliens”).

“Narrow Neck was a very busy camp during those war years and a really nice location overlooking the harbour,” says Glyn. “It was warm and had a much healthier climate than Trentham.” But conditions, particularly in the country’s canvas camps, could be rough. Land often had to be cleared before tents could be erected and lowlying camps such as Awapuni were prone to flooding.

In 1914 territorials at the Takapau Divisional Camp at the historic Oruawharo homestead in Hawke’s Bay, known as the birthplace of the distinctive lemonsqueezer hat, decided enough was enough. While officers lived “softly in the mansion”, trainees contended with meagre food rations, long hours and only one uniform each (this during a particularly rainy season). According to The Sydney Morning Herald, demonstrators “took up a menacing attitude, hooting, yelling and throwing occasional stones amongst the police”.

After the required six to 14 weeks of training, volunteers and, from November 1916, conscripted soldiers throughout the country left their camps to travel by train or boat to Wellington. For the 8454-strong New Zealand Expeditionary Force that left on 16 October 1914, says Glyn, public interest was strong. Crowds of bystanders lined the streets to farewell the troops, who were expected to be home by Christmas. “It was a big celebration, like sending off a rugby team rather than men going to war.”

By mid-1915, when hospital ships began bringing home soldiers wounded at Gallipoli, the farewells had become less celebratory. Thomas Seddon of the Ninth Reinforcements, son of Richard (King Dick) Seddon, described the “serious-faced” crowd that came to see them off at Wellington in January 1916. After Gallipoli, he wrote, these onlookers “now realised that no easy conquest awaited us”.

World War I troops on parade, Lambton Quay Wellington

From the John Dickie (1869-1942) collection of postcards, prints and negatives, Alexander Turnbull Library

They were right. Of the 100,444 New Zealand soldiers who saw active service, 18,166 were killed. A further 41,300 returned ill or wounded. Specific wards set up in general hospitals in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch (the Annexe, Victoria and Chalmers Wards respectively) were stretched beyond capacity. New military hospitals were established, often in former training camps such as Trentham, Featherston (where a “lock hospital” was established for soldiers with venereal disease) and Narrow Neck.

The country’s first new military hospital, the King George V Hospital in Rotorua, opened in 1916. Its large octagonal dormitories, lantern roofs and unglazed windows typified the prevailing belief in the importance of fresh air, sunshine and a calming rural outlook for patient recovery. The octagonal buildings were later recycled to become the Otaki Children’s Health

Takapau Divisional Camp, 1914

Supplied by Oruawharo Homestead

Camp. Only one, the Heritage New Zealand Category 1-registered Otaki Children’s Health Camp Rotunda, now remains, a reminder of New Zealand’s first World War I military hospital and first permanent children’s health camp.

A number of small “war hospitals” were also established. Following the example of the 1903 Ranfurly War Veterans’ Home and Hospital in Auckland, the Montecillo War Veterans’ Home and Hospital opened in Dunedin and in 1921 the Rannerdale Veterans’ Hospital and Home opened in Christchurch.

Private homes were similarly opened up to this influx of sick and wounded men. In 1915 Dr Charles Izard offered his Upper Hutt house as a convalescent home for up to 30 “sick and wounded troopers coming from the front” (before that it had been used by trainee soldiers struck down with measles).

Oruawharo Homestead as it is today

Supplied by Oruawharo Homestead

In Lowry Bay on Wellington Harbour the Taumaru Convalescent Home occupied two houses owned by lawyer, politician and, briefly, Prime Minister Sir Francis Bell. According to the Journal of the Nurses of New Zealand (1916), “those whose spirits have suffered by the horror of all they have seen and endured should forget it all in the calm peace and beauty around them”.

Those returning with respiratory problems and tuberculosis were often sent to more remote locations, so prolonging the periods before they could be returned to families and working life. Existing spas in Wakari, Pleasant Valley and Rotorua could not keep up with demand. In 1919 the Repatriation Department took over the Tauherenikau lease as a farm for tubercular servicemen, with training programmes in market gardening, poultry keeping and pig breeding.

Convalescing soldiers off for a row at Lowry Bay, Wellington

National Army Museum

A new military sanatorium (“Soldiers’ San”, later called the Upper Sanatorium) was built in 1920 on the

Cashmere hills in Christchurch above the King George V Coronation Hospital. On the Maniototo Plain in central Otago the Orangapai or Waipiata Sanatorium catered for up to 122 patients.

Near Waipukurau the Pukeora (“hill of health”) Sanatorium built in 1918 was designed to make the most of the brisk air and 270-degree views. While many of the smaller buildings have gone, the veranda dormitories with their large, tilting windows are now home to the Pukeora vineyard and function centre owned by Max Annabel and Kate Norman, the high altitude and northfacing direction, once a prescription for tubercular patients, a winning combination for their Pukeora Estate (formerly San Hill) wine.

They came by train, then by foot – more than 1000 men from the upper South Island marching through fields of tobacco and raspberries in the Motueka Valley to a canvas town of regimented rows of bell tents in rural Tapawera, first as volunteers, then as territorials. As the Marlborough Express noted in 1914: “There will be hard work to do –nowadays we do not play at soldiering”.

“It was the end of the railway and there were no towns, no pubs. You could fire your cannon without anyone knowing,” says Maurice Taylor from the Tapawera Historical Society. While shells have become part of local folklore, there is no physical evidence of the infantry, mounted rifles, gunners, officers, medics and engineers who trained here.

Last year Maurice worked with the local school and historical society to recreate the regimental stag passant emblem of the former 12th and 13th Nelson-Marlborough-West Coast Regiment, originally picked out in whitewashed rocks on the hillside. With assistance from the New Zealand Army reserve, six tonnes of rock were carefully placed to a design mapped out by an eight-metre template to honour the men who trained there. “It was an important training ground and it’s an amazing piece of history.”

Maurice taylor at the Tapawera Memorial

Nelson Daily Mail

In many instances the men’s injuries defied orthodox medical treatment. Between 1916 and 1922 some 1500 soldiers returned with symptoms of battle fatigue, neurasthenia, combat hysteria or, as it was more commonly known, shell-shock. In England such symptoms were initially regarded as signs of weakness – some patients were shot as cowards – but increasingly they were recognised as serious but treatable reactions to the trauma of war.

Families and patriotic associations were adamant that these “broken heroes” should not carry the stigma associated with mental institutions. While the most serious cases were hospitalised, those suffering from “light mania” or “borderland” neurasthenia were placed in cottage annexes such as the country home of Plunket founder Truby King, then Medical Superintendent at Seacliff Mental Hospital at Puketeraki on the Otago coast.

In 1916 the Queen Mary Hospital for Sick and Wounded Soldiers, the first purpose-built institution to treat World War I veterans with psychological disorders, opened its doors to the bracing mountain air of Hanmer Springs. “It was the location,” says Heritage New Zealand Heritage Advisor Robyn Burgess.

“The idea was for people [soldiers] to come and be treated in a quiet alpine environment with fresh air and beautiful scenery.”

Built on the site of the former sanatorium (burned down on the eve of World War I) the Soldiers’ Block, now one of three Heritage New Zealand Category 1 heritage buildings on the 5.1-hectare site, was similarly designed to maximise access to clean air and sunshine, incorporating canvas blinds instead of glazed windows and a daily routine of rest, sport, gardening, physiotherapy, massage and vocational training. As at Rotorua, where treatments in the Bath House increased from 545 in December 1915 to 4000 in August 1918, veterans were encouraged to enjoy the therapeutic values of the thermal springs.

Fort Jervois, Ripapa Island

Megan Hieatt

Unlike the often-ostracised tuberculosis patients, there seems to have been a groundswell of sympathy for these damaged veterans. On the East Coast, the stable at historic Puketiti Station bears the simple signature “Jock” scratched on a wall. According to family tradition, Jock was a shell-shocked soldier recently returned from the war. The Williams family gave him a room in the stable and work as an odd-job man. Jock’s surname was McKenzie, but nothing more is known about him.

Jock's signature on the wall at Puketiti Station