<\/p>\n
From the Series Producer Dave Homewood<\/strong><\/p>\n Hi everyone, and welcome to Courage and Valour: New Zealanders in the Italian Campaign. \u00a0<\/em>I’m Dave Homewood, the series creator and producer. I’d like\u00a0to give you an introduction to the Courage and Valour series, before you start listening.<\/p>\n As the title suggests, this\u00a0a series of interviews with New Zealanders who are veterans of the Italian Campaign in World War Two. Their stories have been compiled into an audio podcast that will be released month by month, giving the listener a detailed picture of life at war in Italy, from those who were there and lived through it.<\/p>\n The first recordings for this series began back in April 2010, and it is thanks to my good friend Peter Lee that it all kicked off. Peter was the Deputy Mayor of Waipa District, here in the Waikato region of New Zealand – \u00a0an area that takes in Cambridge where I live, and Te Awamutu.<\/p>\n Peter had previously been instrumental in twinning Cambridge with the town of Le Quesnoy in France, where\u00a0the last battle the New Zealand Division fought in the First World War had taken place. The walled town of Le Quesnoy was spared having a destructive barrage brought upon it, and instead the kiwi soldiers scaled the walls with ladders and took the town off the German occupiers with hand to hand fighting. That had formed a special bond between that town and New Zealand that continues to this day.<\/p>\n In 2010 Peter was now keen to try to twin Waipa’s other major town, Te Awamutu, with a site significant in New Zealand’s World War Two history. He hoped to set up that same sort of special relationship with Cassino, in Italy.<\/p>\n While he worked on that plan he attended a Probus meeting in Te Awamutu where he happened to see a veteran, Mr Colin Murray, speak about his time at Cassino. Peter was enthralled by the stories and he came to me to ask if I’d be interested in filming interviews with Colin and other veterans. I was already filming interviews with WWII veterans at that time and so I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n Peter and I set about planning to film the Te Awamutu Cassino veterans’ memories and place clips from the interviews online in a proposed website that would raise interest in his town-twinning plans, both here in New Zealand and in Italy.<\/p>\n So we arranged a meeting with Colin Murray at the Te Awamutu RSA (Returned and Services Association clubrooms). Colin had kindly rallied his mates Norm Harris, Bob O’Brien and Peter Brown to also come along.<\/p>\n So I had the amazing pleasure to film interviews with them all that day. We did not just concentrate on Cassino, but covered each of their stories right through their Army careers as best we could, and as much as they dared to tell.<\/p>\n I have to admit that despite being someone who has always had an interest in New Zealand’s WWII history, I quickly realised listening to them talking that I really had very little knowledge at all about New Zealand’s campaign in Italy.<\/p>\n Looking back now this is not really a surprise, because for pretty much most of my lifetime \u00a0the popular media has really only concentrated upon and commemorated the kiwis who had fought at Cassino – a three month battle in a two year campaign! – and that even more so the media focuses largely on the efforts of one unit, 28 (Maori) Battalion.<\/p>\n These men I was filming were from 24 Battalion, apart from one who was in the Artillery. So their stories were all new to me.<\/p>\n I soon realised that day that there were many other battalions, brigades, batteries and units also involved from New Zealand and that 28 (Maori) Battalion were just one small part of what the huge 2nd NZ Division did. It’s sad to think that one unit has had far more publicity over the years than all the others combined who experienced and achieved the same thing.<\/p>\n I also learned just how many other major battles the kiwis were involved in throughout the Italian campaign – Cassino was significant indeed but was just part of the whole campaign.<\/p>\n I had a whole new appreciation for this campaign now, and the men who were in it. \u00a0Peter Lee felt the same way. I decided that it was worth seeking out more stories from the Italy veterans. I knew that my Great Uncle Ted had fought there, so I went to see him in Whangarei and recorded his recollections. Over time I have also visited veterans in other parts of New Zealand including, Auckland, Rotorua, Christchurch, Blenheim, Taupo, Cambridge, Hamilton, another three sessions at Te Awamutu, Putaruru, and wherever I could find veterans willing to talk.<\/p>\n So I have been building up a great archive of stories of New Zealand Army and Royal New Zealand Air Force veterans who served.<\/p>\n The project took a huge knock however in 2011 when Peter became ill and sadly died after a battle with cancer. I continued the filming of interviews where I could but overall plans were put on hold, the twin towns idea seemed to evaporate and I have not heard of it since, and without Peter’s enthusiasm and support, the project to get the stories up online stalled.<\/p>\n To find out how the project was reignited please click to the next page:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n From the Series Producer Dave Homewood<\/p>\n Hi everyone, and welcome to Courage and Valour: New Zealanders in the Italian Campaign. I’m Dave Homewood, the series creator and producer. I’d like to give you an introduction to the Courage and Valour series, before you start listening.<\/p>\n As the title suggests, this a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14,16,15,29,25,34,30,13,6,38,24,21,31,22,5,8,9,39,20,17,7,26,36,23,28,18,19,32,27,33,35,37,10,12,11],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-productionlog","tag-2-nz-division","tag-air-force","tag-army","tag-auckland","tag-audio","tag-blenheim","tag-cambridge","tag-cassino","tag-courage-and-valour","tag-dave-homewood","tag-episodes-2","tag-fleet-air-arm","tag-hamilton","tag-interviews","tag-introduction","tag-italian-campaign","tag-italy","tag-italy-star-association","tag-merchant-navy","tag-navy","tag-new-zealanders","tag-podcast","tag-putaruru","tag-recordings","tag-returned-services-association","tag-rnzaf","tag-rnzn","tag-rotorua","tag-rsa","tag-taupo","tag-te-awamutu","tag-whangarei","tag-world-war-two","tag-ww2","tag-wwii","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newzealandersatwar.com\/Couarage_And_Valour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}