The Penguin Book of New Zealanders at War.

• Author: McKinnon, Alex
• Position: Book review

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF NEW ZEALANDERS AT WAR

Editors: Gavin McLean and Ian McGibbon, with Kynan Gentry

Published by: Penguin, Auckland, 2009, 512pp, $45.

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As the editors accurately assert in the bibliography, 'the literature on New Zealanders' experience of warfare is now enormous'; and of course it is growing, with rediscovered memoirs and newly penned reflections being added regularly. This all helps to supply New Zealanders' continually growing interest in and respect for the country's military experience.

Reviewing and selecting from this vast reservoir must have been an immense job, but the leading historical triumvirate of Gavin McLean, Ian McGibbon and Kynan Gentry have produced a suitably monumental anthology; monumental not just at the tangible levels of historical scope and size, but also for the ferocity of experience that rises from almost every entry.

Spanning almost 200 years, the editors have taken writings from New Zealand's early domestic wars, through the world wars, Korea, Malaya, Vietnam and right up to Iraq and Afghanistan. The early entries from pre- and post-Treaty New Zealand serve as a sometimes startling reminder that for several years New Zealand was at the bloody front line of Empire. The concerns and fears of the early British troops provide interesting context and contrast for the remainder of the book as these combatants' actual and spiritual descendents (as well as those of their opponents) head overseas to lands as frightening as they found here.

Unsurprisingly there is relatively limited material on the Maori experience of war in early New Zealand. Nonetheless the book's source material is throughout broader and more original than one might expect. A huge range of primary sources in the form of letters and diaries are drawn upon for all the conflicts, but additionally there are later memoirs and autobiographies, ordinary biographies and those by descendents, oral histories, novels (such as those by Dan Davin and Robin Hyde) and even New Zealand Truth making an entry. All of which helps to define a picture of New Zealanders' evolving attitudes to conflict. The entries also do not just cover combatants either; they include medical staff and later peacekeepers/monitors and even, fascinatingly, one entry from a private security company employee at Baghdad airport. Naturally 'army' memories dominate through to the end of the First World War, though air and sea battle memoirs take greater...