North African Campaign
Related Book
Megan Hutching (ed.), The Desert Road: New Zealanders Remember the North African Campaign, Auckland, HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 1-86950-511-5 RRP $44.99
This exhibition is based on the book which contains sixteen interviews recorded with men and women who served in North Africa between 1940 and 1943. They come from a range of units:
- 21 Infantry Battalion
- 23 Infantry Battalion
- 25 Infantry Battalion
- 27 Machine Gun Battalion
- 28 Maori Battalion
- Women's War Service Auxiliary
- 6 Field Regiment
- 16 Railway Operating Company
- Divisional Cavalry
- Divisional Signals
- Medical Corps
- Royal Air Force
- Royal New Zealand Navy Volunteer Reserve
Each chapter of the book is one person's story based on interviews which range between two and six hours. The interviews have been deposited at the Oral History Centre, Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington () where they are available to researchers, subject to any conditions placed on them by the interviewee. The interviews covered everything from pre-war experiences to enlistment to training to being in action to being on leave, along with reflections on the experience of being at war.
The book has an introduction by Ian McGibbon which gives an overview of the campaign and sets the individual stories in context. I have left in some of the questions asked each person to remind the reader that the text is a product of an exchange between two people, and so differs from written or spoken autobiography.
Megan Hutching May 2005
Megan Hutching is senior Oral Historian with the History Group, Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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