The military alliance that fought against the Central Powers was known as the Allies. Initially this alliance was based around the four great powers of Russia, France, Japan and the British Empire, along with the smaller states of Serbia, Montenegro and Belgium that also went to war in 1914.
The British invasion of Ottoman-held Palestine in 1917-18 was the third - and last - campaign launched by the Allies against the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East during the First World War.
The Sinai campaign is less well known than other First World War campaigns like Gallipoli and those on the Western Front. But it was here, in the harsh, arid desert, that the Allies took the first major step towards their ultimate victory over the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East.
The Imperial Camel Corps, which included two New Zealand companies,
played a vital role in the Sinai and Palestine campaigns during the First World War. Between 400
and 450 New Zealanders fought in the Corps, and 41 died
before the two New Zealand companies were disbanded in mid-1918.
When
war broke out in Europe in August 1914, Britain
asked New Zealand
to seize German Samoa as a ‘great and urgent Imperial service’. Although the tiny German garrison offered no opposition, at the time
it was regarded as a potentially risky action.
After four terrible years the First World War finally came to a close with the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918. Parades were held throughout the country, though the spread of the influenza pandemic and a general war weariness dampened celebrations at home and abroad
During the First World War the men of the New Zealand Tunnelling Company, many of them hardbitten
West Coast miners, helped create a vast network of military tunnels
under the French town of Arras.
Ever since 1917 Passchendaele has been a byword for the horror of the First World War. The assault on this tiny Belgian village cost the lives of thousands of New Zealand soldiers. But its impact reached far beyond the battlefield, leaving deep scars on many New Zealand communities and families.
The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 remains a landmark event in New Zealand history. Although it was a grievous failure for the Allies and did not have a significant impact on the war's outcome, the campaign fostered an emerging New Zealand identity, and its effects continue to resonate.
There are always supporters and opponents of a country fighting a war. Over 2500 conscientious objectors lost their civil rights in New Zealand for refusing to serve in the First World War.
It was a truly nightmarish world that greeted the New Zealand Division when it joined the Battle of the Somme in mid September 1916. Fifteen thousand 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.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie were assassinated in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo. This was a key event in sparking the Great War of 1914–18.
It was the New Zealand Division's final action of the First World War. On 4 November 1918, just a week before the Armistice was signed, New Zealand troops stormed the walled French town of Le Quesnoy. The 90 men killed were among the last of the 12,483 who fell on the Western Front.
Cook Islanders, Niueans, Fijians and Gilbert Islanders all took their place in the ranks of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during the First World War. As well as the dangers of war, Pacific soldiers faced language difficulties, an unfamiliar army diet and European diseases.
