Anzac Day Commemorations In France To Remember All New Zealand Soldiers
Press Release – NZ Liberation Museum – Te Arawhata
Anzac Day commemorations will see hundreds visit a New Zealand museum in France which has become a place of pilgrimage for families discovering stories about relatives who served on the Western Front.
The New Zealand Liberation Museum – Te Arawhata, with a visitor experience created by Wētā Workshop, tells the story of the Kiwi soldiers who liberated the French town of Le Quesnoy on November 4, 1918. Te Arawhata marks Anzac Day with a weekend of remembrance from April 25 – 27.
Museum Director, Elizabeth Wratislav, says since the museum opened in 2023 it has revealed many poignant and often untold stories about soldiers who served during World War One.
'The museum has inspired visitors and family members to find out more about their relatives, the part they played in the war, and to delve deeper into the lives they lived after the war.'
These stories include 16-year-old Otago Boys High School student Cameron Brown who visited Le Quesnoy to trace the history of his great grandfather, Frederick Lyders; Jim Craig whose family discovered a 100-year-old letter he wrote detailing the events of the liberation; and the survival tale of Mac Bethwaite whose son Dave visited Te Arawhata last year.
'Seeing the emotional response visitors have to the museum is one of the most rewarding parts of the job,' says Wratislav.
'It is incredibly touching to know that the stories of these people will live on, they will be documented for future generations of these families, and that Te Arawhata had a part to play in it.'
For Sydney-based Kiwi, Sally Varnham, visiting the museum and Le Quesnoy in March this year instilled a deep connection with her father Harry who was wounded during the Liberation and lost his leg.
'It was very emotional just to be there and to see dad's name on the Roll of Honour that comes up on the museum wall,' says Sally. 'It all became real rather than something that happened on the other side of the world.'
Sadly, while Harry survived and returned to New Zealand, he was impacted both physically and mentally by the war. He spent periods of time in Wellington Hospital suffering from severe depression until he tragically took his own life aged 73. Sally was just 20 years old.
'He felt alienated in New Zealand when he came back,' Sally says. 'He wanted to go back to Britain where people were much more aware of what had happened. He felt more comfortable there.'
Anzac Day renaissance
Anzac Day was particularly difficult for the Varnham family. Sally recalls in earlier times Dawn Parades were not as well-attended as they are today.
'Dad used to go off to the Dawn Parade every Anzac Day and come home 'shickered' after a few drinks at the RSA and he would be quite down because no one went to services back then.
'I think he would be so amazed by how many people attend the parades now.'
Ms Wratislav says with 2025 marking the 110th anniversary of the April 25th landings at Anzac Cove, it is an especially significant time to remember all New Zealand soldiers.
'Te Arawhata is Aotearoa's tūrangawaewae, New Zealand's place on the Western Front. The museum is a place where all Kiwis, and people from all countries, can come to remember all those who served and lost their lives during war time.'
As is tradition in Le Quesnoy, Anzac Day is commemorated on the nearest Sunday to April 25. Te Arawhata is holding a weekend of remembrance beginning on Friday April 25 and concluding with the town's official commemorations on Sunday April 27.
The next generation
This month, in the lead up to Anzac Day, dozens of students from Auckland Grammar, Epsom Girls Grammar, and New Plymouth Boys High School are visiting Te Arawhata to pay their respects to fallen Kiwi soldiers, and to learn more about World War One and the relationship between France and New Zealand.
Auckland Grammar student Andrew Eldridge says visiting the Western Front and Te Arawhata brought home the reality of what 100,000 Kiwi soldiers experienced.
'Many of them were our age. It's incredibly humbling to see these people doing what I don't think I would be capable of doing.
'It's important we remember the stories of bravery, but we also need to learn lessons so that future generations don't experience what these people experienced. That's why it's important to visit places like Te Arawhata where you can see what they saw and feel what they felt.'
Te Arawhata's visitor experience features a large-scale, hyper-realistic soldier from the NZ Rifle Brigade caught in a moment of reflection following the liberation. In the museum's Te Ara Tuku Room visitors leave personal messages on the walls to be read by those who follow them. The museum's 7.4m centrepiece, Te Arawhata (the ladder), is key to the Le Quesnoy story and represents a pathway to gaining a higher level of knowledge.
Every year thousands of people visit the museum including travelling Kiwis, our local French, British and European weekend tourists, corporate groups, and schools from both France and New Zealand.
'It's not just Kiwis visiting Te Arawhata and Le Quesnoy,' says David McLean, chairperson of the New Zealand Memorial Museum Trust. 'The museum has helped to put the town on the local tourist map with Kiwis, French locals and visitors from neighbouring Belgium, Holland, and Germany visiting to celebrate our values of freedom, friendship and learning from the past to support a better future.'
For ANZAC events at Te Arawhata see below or go to: https://nzliberationmuseum.com/anzac-day-2025/
Te Arawhata Anzac events schedule
Museum open every day.
Friday 25 April
Te Arawhata will offer guided tours of the museum and Le Quesnoy's imposing 17th century ramparts.
Last Post ceremony – 6pm. Held in Te Arawhata's forecourt, the Last Post Ceremony is a moment to reflect on the sacrifices of the ANZAC soldiers 110 years ago.
Saturday 26 April
Walk from Te Arawhata to the Le Quesnoy Communal Cemetery Extension – 8.30am. The cemetery is the final resting place of 50 New Zealand soldiers.
Le-Quesnoy-New Zealand Association bus tour of nearby towns of Beaudignies, Romeries and Vertigneul – 10am
Anzac Dinner – 7pm. A three-course, authentic French meal for locals and Kiwis to celebrate a friendship that has lasted 107 years. Features a kapa haka performance by Ngāti Rānana, the London Māori Club.
Sunday 27 April
Le Quesnoy Anzac Commemorative Service – 11am. This will be attended by dignitaries from New Zealand and France, locals and Kiwi visitors. A reception will follow the service, open to all who wish to attend.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
2 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Famed Kiwi author Maurice Gee dies
Respected Kiwi writer Maurice Gee - author of 'Plumb' and 'Under the Mountain' - has died, aged 93. Considered one of New Zealand's greatest novelists, his work extended over 50 years. He wrote about ordinary people and ordinary lives, often with the narrator looking back at events that caused damage and unhappiness. "I don't deliberately set out to do this, but the stories turn in that direction following their own logic," he said. "All I can do about it is make the narrative as interesting as I can and give those people lively minds." Maurice Gee was born in Whakatāne in 1931 and educated at Auckland's Avondale College in Auckland and at Auckland University where he took a Masters degree in English. He worked as a teacher and librarian, before becoming a full-time writer in 1975. He passed much of his childhood in what was then the country town of Henderson. The town, disguised as Loomis, and its creek are featured in many of his books. "I grew up alongside that creek in Henderson, and it seemed all sorts of exciting and dangerous things happened down there," he said. "You know, that creek I could plot its whole length pool by pool for a couple of miles even today." His reputation took an enormous leap in 1978 with the publication of 'Plumb', the first of a trilogy about three generations of a family. The novel won the British James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1979. The character of Plumb was based on maternal grandfather Jim Chapple - a Presbyterian minister, who was ejected from the church, because of his rationalist beliefs and jailed for preaching pacifism during World War I. Gee inherited strong left-wing views from that side of his family and a burden of sexual puritanism, which he said caused him a tortured adolescence, although he denied claims of a strong authorial voice in his work. "I can't look at my books the way I read other books," he said. "I look at them quite differently. "I'm intimately connected with them and probably wouldn't be able to identify my voice in them, if someone asked me to." He said his novel 'Crime Story' stemmed from his anger over the changes made in New Zealand by the Lange Labour Government in the 1980s, and politicians and businessmen are seldom portrayed favourably in his books. Gee's output included short stories and television scripts, and his children's fiction was highly regarded, although it was not his preferred genre. "Children's writing seems to be easier than adult writing, because it's coming off a different level," he said. "There's still some pleasure to be got from both and I try to do each as professionally as I possibly can, but the thing that really engages me fully is adult fiction." Written in 1979, 'Under the Mountain' was probably his best-known children's work, and was later converted into a film and TV series. He received many awards for his work, including the Burns and Katherine Mansfield Fellowships, honorary degrees from Victoria and Auckland universities, and the Prime Minister's Award for literary merit. He won the the Deutz Medal for fiction in 1998 for his novel 'Live Bodies' and the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Award for 'Blindsight'. "Sad to hear of Maurice Gee's passing," Arts, Culture & Heritage Minister Paul Goldsmith said. "Our thoughts are with his family. "He was a prolific and graceful author. 'Plumb' is my favorite, although thousands of Kiwis will have their own." Gee is survived by wife Margareta, their two daughters, and a son from an early relationship.
RNZ News
4 days ago
- RNZ News
Are young people having less sex? Why it matters
life and society 11:35 am today Generation Z - people born between 1997 and 2012 - are much less likely to be having sex. One study done by the Kinsey Institute found the median number of times Gen Z-ers reported having sex in the past three months was three - compared to 5 for Millennials and Gen X. 37 percent reported no sex in the last month- compared with 19 percent of Millennials and 17 percent of Gen X. So why is it happening? Does the answer lie in their being the first generation to fully come of age in the era of smartphones and social media? And is it a bad thing? Therapist, educator and researcher Jo Robertson will take your questions - text them to 2101 or email ninetonoon@
Scoop
6 days ago
- Scoop
Remembering New Zealand's Missing Tragedy
Every country has its tragedies. A few are highly remembered. Most are semi-remembered. Others are almost entirely forgotten. Sometimes the loss of memory is due to these tragedies being to a degree international, seemingly making it somebody else's 'duty' to remember them. This could have been the case with the Air New Zealand flight which crashed on Mt Erebus. It was only not like that because it was an 'international' flight where the origin and destination airports were the same; and where the location of the crash was in the 'New Zealand zone' of a foreign landmass (Antarctica). So, we remember 'Erebus'. We remember 'Tangiwai' too; Christmas Eve, 1953. And of course Napier (1931) and Christchurch (2011). And the Wahine (1968). And Pike River (2010). The forgotten tragedy was actually a twin-tragedy; two smaller (but not small) tragedies may more easily fall below the memory radar than one bigger tragedy. The dates were 22 July 1973 and January 1974. The death toll was about 200; possibly half of that number were New Zealanders, many of them being young New Zealanders my age or a little bit older. On Saturday I watched (on Sky Open) the first part of a documentary about the Lockerbie crash of PanAm Flight 103, on 21 December 1988. This is particularly remembered globally because, as well-as being a first-order human-interest tragedy, it involved geopolitical skullduggery. Going into the documentary – and I have yet to see the recent drama 'Lockerbie' starring Colin Firth – my understanding of the above-Lockerbie bombing of a Pan American Boeing 747 is that it was a revenge attack, following the shooting down months earlier of an Iranian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655, an Airbus A300 flying from Tehran to Dubai with 290 people on board). I left New Zealand for my 'OE' by ship – the Northern Star – in April 1974, just before my 21st birthday. I returned via Africa, flying via numerous stops, in 1978; many of my school-peers were just about to leave New Zealand when I returned. I started planning about how I would travel in mid-1973. In the very early 1970s, it became more common to fly to the United Kingdom than to sail. Pricewise, 1973 was about when the fare was the same by both transport modes. Since Air New Zealand had had its Douglas DC8 aircraft, the most popular flying route was across the Pacific Ocean. It was then usual to do two stopovers – Nadi and Honolulu – on the way to Los Angeles. The main competitor airline on that route was Pan American. It mainly flew via Pago Pago and Honolulu, using Boeing 707 aircraft. But it had also just started flying to Los Angeles with just a single stop, Papeete in Tahiti. One On 23 July 1973, Pan Am Flight 816 took-off for Papeete. This was also the month in which the New Zealand Navy's HMNZS Otago – with cabinet Minister Fraser Colman on board – sailed into the Mururoa French nuclear testing zone; a New Zealand government protest against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. (Ref. RNZ 7 July 2023, 50th anniversary of nuclear test protests.) After refuelling, and presumably taking on some passengers, Pan Am 816 took off that evening (22 July, due to the date line), and crashed into the sea. It may have been overweight; although it was not full of passengers. There was one survivor, a Canadian passenger. 78 people died. No cause has ever been determined. The 'black boxes' sunk in 700m of water and could not – or would not – be recovered. There was one famous New Zealander on board Flight 816. Geoff Perry (b.1950) was already a world-class motorcycle racer, who competed at 1972 Daytona 200 in Florida. He was a "superstar in the making". In 1971, Roger Donaldson made a short film Geoff Perry, narrated by Ian Mune. It was the beginning of Donaldson's stellar career as a filmmaker. Two On 31 January 1974, Pan Am Flight 806 left Auckland for Pago Pago, American Samoa. It crashed on landing. Four people survived; 97 people died from their injuries. The explanation for the crash is not very satisfactory; 'human error', it would seem. Impact on me I am not sure to what extent the first of these crashes persuaded me to sail to the United Kingdom, rather than to fly. I do remember at some point someone I knew telling me they had a friend on board one of those flights. There was little analysis of these crashes at the time, and even less in later years. Aeroplane crashes were more common around the world in those days, much more likely (but still unlikely!) than in this century. And 1973 had a record high road death toll that year; more than double what we get in even a bad year these days. As a society, in those times we were somewhat blasé then about accidental death. Many people my age died in motorcycle crashes; and, yes, I motorcycled from one end of the country to the other from May 1972 to May 1973. So, even though more of my age cohort died on the roads than in the air in those years, I do believe that the 175 victims of Pan Am 816 and 806 should be better remembered than they have been. It's time to produce a docudrama – like the Tangiwai television docudrama, and the Lockerbie programmes – while there are still the memories of brothers and sisters of the young victims; young people like me heading for their lives' first great adventure. ------------- Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Keith Rankin Political Economist, Scoop Columnist Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s. Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like. Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
