It has been 99 years since the first New Zealanders set off for Europe to fight in World War I.
The men who returned were changed by their experiences, and for those who never came home, their families were changed for generations.
But what about the rest of us? How did taking part in World War I change who we are as a nation?
Slightly more than 100,000 New Zealanders served in WWI, alongside men and women from the Commonwealth of Nations
"In particular when they saw themselves alongside other Commonwealth and British servicemen they felt that they were somehow different, and of course in a lot of ways they were," says Neill Atkinson of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.
But how did being different shape our identity and how we saw ourselves as a nation?
"Whether that same sense of identity would have developed over time, of course it's hard to say," says Mr Atkinson.
Dr Gwen Parsons is trying to find out just that. She's spent years researching the impact of New Zealand's participation in the war.
"We've got New Zealand historians who've already looked back to the colonial/pakeha era and seen the development of all those sorts of ideas," she says.
"Yes, the Great War developed them further, but we were already coming to terms with who were were as a nation, I think."
Beyond the big questions of who we are, we do know some of what we learned from the terrible losses we sustained in the war.
Eighteen-and-a-half thousand New Zealanders were killed and some 40,000 were wounded. But our surgeons and scientists learned life-saving techniques from their attempts to treat the suffering they saw.
"I think New Zealand certainly benefited, which is an awful way to think about it for the whole development of medical science in response to what was happening on the war front," says Dr Parsons.
"One in particular that was in relevance to New Zealand was in the field of dentistry and facial reconstruction for soldiers who suffered facial wounds, and their were some key New Zealand figures who were quite prominent in that field."
And after the conflict, when the soldiers came home the Government had to step in and provide assistance in ways it hadn't before.
"To help them buy suburban houses which was very successful, to help them set up businesses, to help them do training – all of those were quite a success really and marked, for the first time really, the Government becoming involved in the lives of all New Zealanders," says Mr Atkinson.
"I think if we hadn't of gone to war, I think we probably wouldn't have been as advanced in social welfare," says Dr Parsons. "I think the sorts of things that were developed would have been stunted by 20 years."
So there are some concrete changes that came out of that terrible conflict and there are some that are harder to define.
But nearly a century on, the physical reminders of the war can be found in almost every New Zealand town. It's stamped on our urban geography, in the form of war memorials and street names – everyday reminders of what we lost and what we learned.
3 News
source: newshub archive
