The New Zealand Army Nursing Service (NZANS) was formed in early 1915. The first 110 registered nurses were enlisted into the NZANS on April 6, and 50 of them sailed to England two days later. Appromixately 610 nurses served overseas with the NZANS and kiwi nurses joined overseas nursing bodies.
All nurses in NZANS were ranked as officers, though this was sometimes met with disbelief and ignored by other soldiers and officers. During the war New Zealand nurses and medical officers set up hospitals in Egypt, France, and the UK. There were also two New Zealand hospital ships.
14 members of NZANS lost their lives during or as a result of WW1, including ten killed when the Transport Ship Marquette was torpedoed by a German submarine in October 1915 while on its way to assist with the casualties from Gallipoli.
http://www.nzans.org/NZANS%20History/NZANSHistory-1915-1922.html
Enlistment for the New Zealand Engineers Tunnelling Company started in September 1915, and the Tunnellers were the first New Zealand troops to reach the Western Front, in March 1916.
A large proportion of the men were gold miners from Waihi or Thames. Coal miners were not allowed to enlist because they had an essential role in war effort. Many tunnellers were active union members who had taken part in major strikes before the war such as the one in Waihi in 1912. As a unit they had a strong egalitarian culture, and were famously reluctant to salute officers.
The Tunnellers were not attached to the rest of the New Zealand Division. Their most famous action was to expand old underground chalk quarries beneath the town of Arras to create a network of tunnels beneath the German lines. On April 9, 1917 they detonated mines near the enemy trenches, and Allied soldiers infantrymen swarmed out of the tunnels in a surprise attack.
During the war in Palestine the ANZAC mounted rifles were called “devils on horses” by the Turks, who never knew where they would strike next. The “Mounteds” would often ride through the night, taking the enemy by surprise at dawn. In combat, one trooper in each four-man section would usually hold the horses while the other three dismounted for action.
The New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade consisted of about 2,000 men and the same number of horses, arranged in three regiments from Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury provinces, plus support units. Each regiment contained three squadrons of 158 men and a machine gun section. The 4th Waikato Squadron was part of the Auckland Mounted Rifle Regiment.
The first New Zealand military operation of the First World War was the capture of the German colony of Samoa in August 1914. When the New Zealand Expeditionary Force landed at Apia on 29 August it was not known whether the German troops there would fight or not. In the event, they had been ordered not to resist and surrendered peacefully.
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/capture-of-samoa/seizing-german-samoa
The Gallipoli campaign was the first time NZ troops were involved in large scale fighting in WW1. The campaign was an attack on Germany’s ally Turkey by troops from Britain, France, Australia and NZ. The ANZACs landed on 25 April 1915, and were evacuated (along with all other Allied troops) in December. Gallipoli was a costly failure for the Allies: 44,000 Allied soldiers died. Among the dead were 2,779 New Zealanders – about a fifth of those who fought on the peninsula. Another 5,212 were wounded.
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/the-gallipoli-campaign/gallipoli-in-brief
The great majority of New Zealand’s casualties during WW1 were on the Western Front, where over 12,000 of our soldiers died. The front was a line of trenches that ran through the western edge of Belgium and northern France, with the German armies on one side and those of the Allies on the other. The New Zealand Division, which at full strength had about 15,000 men at any one time, was just one of about 70 divisions in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), with many more in the other Allied armies. Though a small cog in a massive military machine, the New Zealanders won a name for themselves at several battles, including the Somme, Messines and Passchendaele.
Armentières is a town in France right next to the border with Belgium. In May 1916 the New Zealand Division had its first experience on the Western Front here. Some of the New Zealanders had served at Gallipoli, but most were new troops. Armentières was a quiet sector, considered suitable for “blooding” inexperienced divisions. Though “green”, the New Zealanders soon gained a reputation for being much more active and aggressive soldiers than many of the surrounding British units. Of course, this came at a cost: many New Zealanders are buried near Armentières.
After Gallipoli most NZ troops were sent to Europe, but the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade stayed in the Middle East as part of the British-led Egyptian Expeditionary Force, fighting the Turks in Sinai and Palestine from 1916-18. 543 NZ soldiers died in this tough campaign and about 1,200 were wounded. 10,000 horses were sent there from New Zealand. Only one is known to have returned.
The battle of the Somme began in July 1, 1916, with a disastrous attack by British forces in which 20,000 men died. The New Zealand Division joined the battle in mid-September 1916, as part of the second big “push”. 15,000 members of the division went into action. Nearly 6000 were wounded and 2000 lost their lives. Over half the New Zealand Somme dead have no known grave. By the end of the campaign in November 1916, the Allies had advanced, at most, 12 kilometres into German-held territory. Over a million men had died on both sides.
The battle of Messines was a prelude to the much larger battle of Passchendaele – an attempt by the Allies to break out of the salient (bulge in the line) around the ancient Belgian city of Ypres. The carefully prepared attack on Messines was a striking military success. Early on the morning of 7 June, 1917, huge mines were detonated in tunnels under the German lines. In the confusion, New Zealand troops advanced and captured their target, the low ridge on which lay the ruins of Messines village. But the New Zealanders paid a heavy price: 6,500 killed or wounded.
The battle of Passchendaele was New Zealand’s worst-ever military disaster. Like the battle of Messines, it was part of the failed Allied attempt to break out Ypres salient in late 1917. A successful assault by the New Zealanders on Gravenstafel Spur on 4 October was followed by a devastating defeat at Bellevue Spur on the 12th, in which 846 men died in a few hours. In total the division suffered 7,500 killed or wounded in these battles, and a further 3,000 in the same sector in the winter of 1917-18. Three New Zealanders won Victoria Crosses for bravery at Passchendaele.
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/passchendaele-the-battle-for-belgium
Germany appeared to be winning the war at the beginning of 1918. After Russia withdrew from the war following the revolution of 1917, Germany transferred more than 30 divisions from the east to the Western Front and launched a huge attack in March. The New Zealand Division was rushed to the Somme region to plug a gaping hole in the British line, and played a vital role in halting the German attack, at the cost of 5,000 killed and wounded.
The Hundred Days was the last phase of the war on the Western Front. The Allies launched a series of offensives in August, and the New Zealanders, as one of the crack divisions of the British Army, were in the thick of the action from the battle of Bapaume until the German surrender. Unlike the battles of 1916 and 1917, this was mobile warfare: but it was also very deadly, with 9,000 New Zealanders killed or wounded by the time the war ended.