Background to the Project :

There are 30,321 New Zealanders who died in conflict and are commemorated by burial in Commonwealth War Grave cemeteries, public cemeteries, graves in New Zealand or by inscription on memorials world wide.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, funded by all Commonwealth governments, administers the cemeteries and memorials. Administration in New Zealand is charged to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. The Commission has developed an excellent website, containing a database of servicemen and some pictures of the cemeteries in their care. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage has an informative site, giving some detail of their operation in this area.

Following renewed public interest, our project would build on this information by developing an exhaustive high-resolution photo-archive of all cemeteries, headstones and memorials of New Zealand servicemen, who died in conflict.

Whilst an internet site is the obvious and logical way for the public to access the archive at present, the main purpose of the project is to collect the images and associated information, in such a way as to form an historical text for future use.

An Overview of the Project :

Whilst the largest numbers of casualties are located in the areas of the major battles and campaigns (Gallipoli, Greece, North Africa, Western Front, Italy…), New Zealand forces have served in most of the major conflicts of the 20th Century and their graves and memorials are spread across most of the world.

Amongst these are “oddities” such as the single graves in the Faroe Islands, Falklands and Azores, the servicemen interred in the USA, Iceland and Bangladesh and those graves scattered throughout the African continent. These are of interest in New Zealand’s military history and illustrate the diverse theatres of war, numerous for a small country, where New Zealanders serverved.

In New Zealand there are the graves and memorials of 3,484 New Zealanders in service that perished both at home and overseas. Some are buried in the 127 servicemen’s cemeteries, others in local churchyards. Many are commemorated on memorials, as their remains were lost.

The United Kingdom is the last resting place of 2,105 New Zealanders serving overseas.

The scope of the project is from the South African War (Boer War) to the East Timor peacekeeping. This extends the numbers contained in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database, to include those that died subsequent to their cutoff of 1st December 1947 (Jayforce, Korea, Malaya, Vietnam etc). Numbers of war dead contained in this proposal are from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the NZ Ministry of Culture and Heritage.

There is a project, based in Australia, to identify New Zealanders and others, serving with Australian forces, but this project is “on hold” until further funding can be found.