An Impressive Silence
The gallery exhibition was on display from 11 November 2008 to 29 May 2009 and has now closed.
Material in this online version of the exhibition may be disturbing for some people.
On November 11th at 11.00am firing ceased along the whole front of the Allied armies. An impressive silence followed upon fifty-three months of battle. The nations could now look forward to seeing a world once more restored to peace.
The Memoirs of Marshal Ferdinand Foch (Supreme Commander Allied Forces, 1918)
The First World War raged for just over four years and caused the deaths of an estimated 20 million soldiers and civilians. It saw the collapse of three empires and their monarchies - Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. It was the first industrial war that saw major technological advance coupled with mass production and mobilisation of human, economic and mechanical resources. Its victims came from every nationality and background, and from the uttermost ends of the earth. It was a war fought on levels previously unimaginable with unprecedented levels of death and destruction.
New Zealand fully committed her support to Britain and the war and from a population of just one million, 124,000 were mobilised, 100,000 serving overseas. The cost was 18,166 dead and 41,000 wounded, with many returning home physically and mentally scarred for life.
Official histories reviewed battle campaigns and tactics, neglecting statistics about the dead and wounded, while official photographs, film, and works of art were heavily controlled and censored. Depictions of death and desolation were rare and the official war artists were instructed not to include the dead in their work. Coming home to resume civilian life, few soldiers were willing to talk of their wartime experiences.
How did returning servicemen and women, their families, and communities deal with the loss and grief generated by the killing fields of World War One? How did the country mourn the unprecedented loss of life? With no bodies to bury what became the objects of mourning? Memorials to the 'Fallen' erected in communities all across the country referred to the 'supreme sacrifice' made for 'King and Country', ‘the empire', or freedom. But were these sentiments universal, or were differing attitudes visible during and after the war?
Did a grateful nation acknowledge and look after its returning heroes or simply cloak their actual experiences in the mantle of glory?
2008 marked the 90th anniversary of the signing of the armistice to end World War One. Archives New Zealand’s exhibition, An Impressive Silence, was part of "COMING HOME, TE HOKINGA MAI", an official programme of government events to commemorate this anniversary. The online version of the exhibition can be viewed here.
An Impressive Silence gives voice to New Zealand's Great War experience and memory through the official and unofficial representations of the war and coming home, along with some of the personal realities of the grief and loss faced by individuals, families, and communities across the nation.
An Impressive Silence is now presented online through the website of Archives New Zealand. The exhibition showcases the public memory and personal experience of the Great War through documents, artefacts, film, objects and memorabilia, along with some fantastic audio clips of interviews with veterans of the Great War made in the 1970s. Visitors to the exhibition website can learn about the experiences of those who came home from World War One and the memory of those who didn’t.
He kokonga whare e kitea, he kokonga ngakau e kore e kitea.
The corners of a house are visible, not so the corners of the mind.
