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Shellfire during Battle of the Somme
Shellfire blighted everything it touched.
Patients crossing English Channel on the Marama
Patients crowded onto the Marama on the way back to England during the post-Somme period
Somme battles 1916 map
Map showing objectives and movements of British forces in the Somme battles of September-October 1916
The Western Front 1916-1917 map
Map showing the Western Front and major battles along it in 1916-17
Hēnāre Kōhere
More than 2500 Māori and Pacific Islanders served overseas with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during the First World War. More than 700 were wounded and 336 killed. One of these casualties was Second Lieutenant Hēnare Mōkena Kōhere, a highly respected officer of the Ngāti Porou tribe, who died of wounds on 16 September 1916.
Section post on the Somme
New Zealand machine gun post on the Somme in 1918
French artillery at the Somme
French soldiers handling the new 145mm naval gun at Ravin d'Hardecourt aux Bois on the Somme, 1916.
Decorations and medals of Lieutenant-General Alexander Godley
Victorian and World War One orders, decorations and medals of Lieutenant-General Alexander Godley on display at the National Army Museum in Waiouru.
Soldier's identity disc returned after 92 years
More than 90 years after the Battle of the Somme it is still possible to find the physical traces of the hundreds of thousands of men who fought and died there in 1916. In 2007 a French family unearthed the identity disc of New Zealand soldier Richard Kemp, and in 2008 the disc was returned home.
Alex McColl's letter
Alexander McColl was one of 222 old boys of Wellington College killed during the First World War. A talented sportsman, he had been a member of the school’s First XV rugby team in 1909 and a champion rower.
Film: fighting at the Somme and Messines
This film shows action at the Battle of the Somme in September 1916 and the Battle of Messines in June 1917.
Funeral of Henry Nicholas
Following his death, Henry Nicholas was buried in the French cemetery at Beaudignies. However, as the battalion wished to show greater respect, his body was exhumed and reinterred, with full military honours, in the Vertigneul churchyard in northern France.
Henry Nicholas VC
Henry Nicholas earned a Victoria Cross when he single-handedly rushed the enemy, shot the officer and charged the remaining Germans with his bayonet.
On the Western Front - Maori and the First World War
The New Zealand Pioneer Battalion arrived in France in April 1916. It was the first unit of the New Zealand Division to move on to the bloody battlefield of the Somme.
Map showing daily gains during Battle of the Somme
Each great attack on the Somme in 1916 brought gains of only a mile or two, and these were at enormous human cost.
Somme bell at the Carillon
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.
Aerial image of Battle of the Somme
Intensive shelling produced a lunar-like landscape, especially in the No Man's Land between the Allied and German front lines.
Tanks at the Battle of the Somme
Tanks were used in battle for the first time, by the British, on 15 September. Still mechanically unreliable, the tanks were rushed into action in small groups. Many broke down, and the Germans soon devised ways to stop them.
The ruins of Verdun, 1916
The Somme attack eased the pressure on the beleaguered French defenders of the ruined medieval city of Verdun.
Dead troops by barbed wire, Battle of the Somme
Troops were sitting ducks when they were delayed by barbed wire that their artillery had failed to cut during the Battle of the Somme.

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