The New Zealand war memorials of the First World War have become part of the common fabric of our lives, like stop signs or lamp-posts. Virtually every township in the country has one, usually in the main street.
Passchendaele was a star of the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition, and it hauled the Prince of Wales's royal train in 1920 and the Duke and Duchess of York’s in 1927.
Most memorials to New zealand's war dead were ornamental, but in the 1920s utilitarian memorials, such as community halls, libraries and bridges were built.
This is the Somme bell in the Carillon at the National War Memorial in Wellington, New Zealand. The inscription reads: To the Glorious Memory of The New Zealand Division, 1916–18. Its Record does honour to the land from which it came and to the Empire for which it fought.
During the second half of the 19th century a tradition developed in Britain to erect war memorials to those who had died in foreign wars and had no grave at home.
Marjorie Joyce Davis, representing New Zealand wives and fiancees of US servicemen, lays a wreath at the Wellington cenotaph on America's Memorial Day, 30 May 1944