Related Book - The Battle for Crete
'A Unique Sort of Battle': New Zealanders remember Crete
Apart from deciding who to interview, the major issue that I had to consider when doing this project was how to convert the sound recordings into text in such a way that the print still conveyed the nuances of the spoken word.
I had about 4000 words in which to allow each person to tell their story and so had to edit the transcripts heavily. (The interviews ranged from two to four hours in length.) In order to balance the book, I wanted to include experiences which ranged from reasons for enlistment to getting to Egypt, from the fighting in Greece to the battle on Crete and then to the person's experiences after the battle, either as a prisoner of war or as a combatant. While the interviews all covered this material, it would have been monotonous to have had each story in the book covering the same ground, so the published stories usually include only some of these topics.
Other than the content, though, I had to decide how to try and convey the way in which the people spoke about their experiences. This included retaining such things as slang, but also the short sentences and repetition which were often the result of talking about their experiences with some emotion.
I was determined that at least some of my questions would also be retained. In some instances this was so the answers made sense (although that could have been solved with some editing or editorial comment), but mostly it was because I wished to remind the reader that the words they were reading came from an interview. An interview means that two people—the interviewer and the interviewee—are involved in the production of the information, and so the results will differ from that written or recorded solely by the person whose memories they are. By including the questions, I also wanted to remind the reader that the people who were being interviewed were remembering back 60 years to the events which had happened to them.
As can be seen from this exhibition, the sound files convey much more than the written transcripts which accompany them, but if the edited stories had not been published in the book then these people's experiences of the Second World War would only have been available to a much smaller number of people. So, while the recording will always be the primary source, the edited and published transcript of the interview is an important aid in making the material available.
The interviews will be lodged at the Oral History Centre, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (NZ) and will be available to researchers, subject to any restrictions placed by each interviewee.
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