History – Letters home

The Kauri Museum is staging an exhibition entitled Letters Home to open in time for this year’s Anzac Day parade and civic service at the museum. The exhibition pays tribute to the importance of humble letters, exchanged between those away at war and those ‘at home’.

To quote historian Dr Aaron Fox, “What the authors thought to commit to paper has much to say about New Zealand’s role in the modern world as a peacemaker and nation builder. Letters, diaries, photographs and souvenirs are the very stuff of history, helping us all to better understand what it means to be a New Zealander.”

He said a letter may be “the last tangible link with that soldier, or nurse, or whoever … one letter is a taonga in itself, but a collection of letters … that’s a group experience.”

Because of heavy military censorship during the war, people wrote what they thought they could get past the censors. Consequently, the subject matter was often pedestrian, but the role of letters, cards and parcels to troops was recognised by the government as core to the soldiers’ morale.

In July 1916, the newly-established New Zealand Army Base Post Office (BPO) moved from Calais to London, and then to the huge Mt Pleasant sorting office, on the site of the former Coldbath Field Prison. Every NZ infantry company had a soldier assigned as a postman. Mail was sent daily to France, and twice daily to NZEF camps and hospitals in England. Letters were given priority over parcels and newspapers. Letters usually took two to three days to reach a field post from London.

Letters which have been preserved all add to the mosaic of universal understanding of what occurred. NZHistory.net.nz has published a letter from Private Leonard Hart to his parents on 19 October 1917, describing the horrific events he was involved in one week earlier at Bellvue Spur, near Passchendaele, Belgium. He gives a detailed description of the battle as he experienced it, and what he calls ‘terrible blunders’ by senior military commanders, contributing to many unnecessary deaths during the assault. In one day, 843 New Zealand troops were killed.

Pvt Hart writes: “I have just decided to have this letter posted by someone going on leave to England, so I will tell you a few more facts which it would not have been advisable to mention otherwise.” He recounts two instances when he saw groups of wounded British troops abandoned and left to die on the field.

“After reading this, do not believe our lying press, who tell you that all the brutality of this war is on the Hun’s side.”

Dr Fox encourages anyone with military letters in their possession to get them copied, digitised, or transcribed. Fox says military letters do not have to be old to be significant, as letters from local peacekeepers who have served since the 1990s are also invaluable historical documents.