War Memorials of New Zealand

The New Zealand war memorials of the First World War have become part of the common fabric of NZ life, like stop signs or lamp-posts. Virtually every township in the country has one, usually in the main street. Excluding the many honours boards and plaques in schools and churches throughout the country, there are well over five hundred public memorials to the soldiers of the Great War.

Inglewood (New Zealand) Great Wars Memorial

As in Australia one common theme is a soldier in the position known as "Rest on Arms Reversed", i.e. the rifle pointing down and the soldiers head lowered with both hands resting on the rifle butt.

Images are courtesy of Jock Phillips and Chris Maclean


This soldier is at the "At Ease" position. Relaxed but watchful. This is at Papakura.	This is another way of depicting the soldier "Resting on Arms Reversed".

Cambridge detail

Masterton war memorial. Frank Lynch's bronze statue of the "untidy soldier".

Another casting was used for the Devonport memorial (above right).

A second figure with a deliberate disregard for military appearance is to be found at the base of the Cambridge memorial. This time the digger is stripped to the waist. He has been building trenches with sand-bags and he is looking skyward — perhaps from sheer exhaustion, perhaps as he contemplates the sacrifice of war.

The bomb-thrower (18k)

The third locally produced soldier figure of real note is on the Kaiapoi war memorial in Canterbury.

The sculptor, William Trethewey, was a Christchurch monumental mason who had always yearned to mythologise New Zealanders in stone.

When the war ended he actually produced a remarkable figure, ‘The Bomb-thrower’ (see below left) which he exhibited in the hopes that a local community might want it as a memorial.

The sculpture was of a Gallipoli soldier about to hurl a grenade made from a bully-beef tin.

His face is lean and strained and his clothes are not simply disheveled — this time they are torn in shreds.

The realism was too much for locals still wedded to an idealistic view of war, but the citizens of Kaiapoi had their interest aroused and invited Trethewey to sculpt a New Zealand digger.

'The figure was a soldier in full kit, and his digger friends assured him it was complete in every detail, even to the broken boot-lace!

The soldier was resting after a desperate charge; the torn sleeve and wounded arm showed what he had been through....The face was lined and careworn, and bore the marks of what the soldier had experienced.... Yet there were indications of that tenderness shown to a wounded comrade, or even to a wounded enemy.... The figure was typical of the spirit that sent over 100,000 of our men from New Zealand — a typical Anzac.'

Christchurch war memorial (detail)

Four figures on the Christchurch war memorial; From left to right: youth, justice, peace and valour.

The 2 unseen in the above photo are, with arms outstretched, the maternal figure of sacrifice and above them all is the superb figure of an angel, nude to the waist, who is about to break the sword of war. See left.

Other human figures on war memorials include two statues of King George V, both sculpted by an English migrant, W. H. Feldon.

One at Matakana was done in Oamaru stone and is now badly weathered into a ghostly visage;

Matakana memorial

and the second sits atop a wonderfully rich memorial to the dead of Te Arawa at Rotorua. See right.