New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front by Wright Matthew

$49.99 NZD

Category: First World War

In The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front, historian Matthew Wright goes to the heart of how the First World War affected the lives of ordinary New Zealanders. The book analyses what it was like for New Zealand soldiers at the two main battle fronts where they fought, and frames i t with the social effects back home. Beginning with an outline of pre-war New Zealand society, Wright portrays the extraordinary world of war into which its young men plunged as they entered the baptism of fire at Gallipoli. The end of innocence that the withdrawal from the Dardanelles implied led to a harder, more fatalistic approach in the theatre of mechanised death that was the Western Front. By war's end, hope and glory had faded, replaced by a new view of military heroism - in a country forever changed ...Show more

Anzac The New Zealanders at Gallipoli by Christopher Pugsley

$25.00 NZD

Category: First World War

Tiger Moths & Butterflies by P. Norman

$25.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

Tiger Moths and Butterflies: With the Airforce in War and Peace is the fascinating story of a schoolboy and his contemporaries during WWII. In 1942, Peter Norman and his friends were excited at the thought of escaping boyhood and getting into uniform to serve their country in the war. Desperate to take part in the action, they enlisted in the New Zealand Air Force, where unlike the Army, they would not need to wait until turning twenty-one before being sent overseas. In this beautifully written account, the reader is given an insight into the feelings of trepidation of a first solo flight in a Tiger Moth and the thrill of accomplishment. The book covers the period of training, both in New Zealand and in Canada, voyages in US troop ships across the Pacific, the exciting conversion to modern fighter aircraft, the companionship of a squadron and the inevitable loss of friends. Tiger Moths and Butterflies is a fully illustrated book with a wealth of photographs both private and official. It includes operating characteristics of four well-known wartime aircraft and how it felt to fly them. Peter Norman was born in Christchurch in 1924. He was educated at Christ’s College. After the war he returned to New Zealand where he took up a position with Thos Borthwicks and Sons and in 1982 he retired as Managing Director of that company. Norman was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal in 1976. He lives at Drummond Cottage in Greytown and is married with a son and daughter. Tiger Moths and Butterflies is his third book. ...Show more

To Find a PathThe Life and Times of the Royal Pacific Islands Regiment Vols one and two by James Sinclair

$270.00 NZD

Category: Other Wars

Race for the Rhine Bridges, 1940 and 1944-45 by Alexander McKee

$10.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

With the Old Breed: The World War Two Pacific Classic by E. B. Sledge

$10.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands... Landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 as twenty-year-old new recruit to the US Marines, Eugene Sledge can only try desperately to survive. At Peleliu and Okinawa - two of t he fiercest and filthiest Pacific battles of WWII - he witnesses the dehumanising brutality displayed by both sides and the animal hatred that each soldier has for his enemy. During temporary lapses in the fighting, conditions on the islands mean that the Marines often can't wash, stay dry, dig latrines, or even find time to eat. Suffering from constant fear, fatigue, and filth, the struggle of simply living in a combat zone is utterly debilitating. Yet despite horrendous conditions Sledge finds time to keep notes that he would later turn into a book. Described as one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war, With the Old Breed tells with compassion and honesty of the cruelty, bravery and deaths of the men he fought alongside, and of his own journey from patriotic innocence to batte-scarred veteran. ...Show more

Wartime Experiences - A Collection of Short Stories from Members of the Country Women's Institute by New Zealand Country Women's Institute Staff (Contribution by)

$25.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

Published by NZ Country Women's Institute, 1996.Fine condition.  A5 Soft cover, stitched 116 pages. B&W illustrations. 

P.O.W.: One Girl's Experience in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp by Gerarda Bossard

$10.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

Gerarda Bossard was in her early teens in 1943 when the Japanese army swarmed through the Dutch East Indies and took her, along with her mother and two sisters, prisoner. For three years she suffered a painful and humiliating existence as a prisoner of war. This is her story.

Kippenberger: Dauntless Spirit by Denis McLean

$15.00 NZD

Category: Second World War | Reading Level: Very Good

Sir Howard Kippenberger is widely acknowledged as the ideal of a New Zealand citizen-soldier and our foremost soldier-scholar; a country lawyer and provincial intellectual who became a national figure as New Zealanders made the transition from colonials to a forthright nationhood. As a military leader, editor and author he was one of the prime movers in that process. His democratic style of leadership reflected the ethos of a new nation - active, competent and engaged in the world in its own right, no longer a dependency of Britain A second-generation New Zealander, born in 1897, his military career was probably unique in that he was a 19 year old private soldier in one war and emerged in the next as the commander of choice of what was in effect a national army - the 2nd NZ Division. First Page torn top right-hand corner, Biro marks on the last page / slight water damaged to back of book. ...Show more

Love, Sex and War - Changing Values, 1939-45 by John Costello

$20.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

The Art of War: New Zealand Artists in the Field 1939-1945 by Jenny Haworth

$85.00 NZD

Category: Second World War | Reading Level: Very Good

In the first book of its kind, author Jenny Haworth shows World War II through the eyes of five of New Zealand's commissioned war artists - Peter McIntyre, Austen Deans, Russell Clark, Allan Barns-Graham and John McIndoe. Stationed to the areas where New Zealand soldiers were fighting in the Mediterrane an, North Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific and Europe, these five men saw it as their duty to depict the war in line with the government's attempt to reassure those at home. Beautifully illustrated throughout with large full-colour reproductions of each artist's work, as well as numerous drawings and photos. 224 pages 248 x 248 mm First published September 2007. ...Show more

The Sword and the Pen - Selections from the World's Greatest Military Writings by Basil H. Liddell-Hart; Adrian Liddell Hart

$30.00 NZD

Category: Other Wars