By Roselyn Fauth
If you are new to Timaru, it can feel surprising at first how present remembrance is here... We once had an English family come to visit. They were curious, asking questions about the place. At one point, a reliative asked, quite genuinely, why we marked the war here. It was not confrontational. Just puzzled. I was a little puzzled myself, I assumed it was obvious and coming from the UK, they would know our kiwi contribution to the World Wars. It was in that moment, I realised how little New Zealand’s wartime story is sometimes understood beyond our shores. From the other side of the world, our contribution can feel distant. Small. Easy to overlook. But the wars were not distant here.
New Zealand sent more than 100,000 people overseas during the First World War alone, from a population barely over a million. The scale of loss was enormous. Small towns emptied. Schools lost teachers. Farms lost sons. Names left and did not return. The impact was not felt on battlefields, but in kitchens, classrooms, and streets.
That is why we mark the war here...
In South Canterbury, remembrance is scattered through everyday life. Some memorials are immediately recognisable. The Timaru War Memorial and the Caroline Bay Memorial Wall are places people gather on Anzac Day, a aspace filled with temporary white crosses, soundshell service, a regular event held for ceremony and collective memory.
Others monuments are easier to miss. A clock tower in Waimate. A stone monument in Fairlie or Temuka. Gates at a country school. An honour board inside a hall you might only enter once a year. These memorials were placed where life continued, so remembrance would continue too.
I suspect almost every community has one. Geraldine, Cave, Pleasant Point, Orari, Woodbury, Southburn, Hakataramea, Otaio. Some commemorate the First World War. Some the Second. Others reach back to the South African War. Many grew over time, with additional names added as history unfolded rather than starting again.
I was a Waimataitai girl, and I remember the 66 names that were listed on the memorial board in our school hall. Schools like my old primary school play a particularly powerful role. Memorials at Timaru Boys’ High School, Timaru Main School, South School, Waimataitai, and small rural schools speak not only of service, but of youth interrupted. They mark the moment when classrooms emptied and futures changed. In places like this, the distance between a name and a family was often only a few streets.
One of the most moving Anzac services I have ever attended was not in a large city or at a grand memorial, but in a small place called Alma, south of Oamaru. We gathered at dawn, in the dark, the freezing air. When the bugle sounded, the notes pushed through the frost, carrying those familiar bars of music we know so well, the Anzac anthem The Last Post. It reached straight past words, and was deeply moving.
Older men stood in uniform, medals worn proudly on their chests. Decendants of others wearing their handed down medals with pride. By the time the words We will remember them were spoken, most of us were welling with tears. In that moment, the distance between past and present disappeared. We felt the weight of loss, service, and sacrifice, and how deeply it still shapes who we are today.
More recently, my husband and I were in Christchurch to see the Banksy exhibition. Crossing Cathedral Square afterwards, we stopped at the Christchurch Citizens’ War Memorial. It has a very different presence, but no less impact. Sculpted by William Trethewey and unveiled in 1937, it was his most ambitious work. A First World War memorial had been proposed as early as 1919, but it was only completed on the eve of the Second World War, a timing that gives it an added poignancy.
The memorial is monumental in both scale and symbolism. At its centre stands Sacrifice, flanked by Youth holding a torch, a blindfolded Justice with scales, Peace carrying a dove and olive branch, and Valour dressed in the armour of St George. Towering above them all is a winged figure of Victory, breaking the sword of battle. Opinions about the sculpture have always varied, but standing before it, there is no denying the power of its conception or the ambition of its message.
Showing visitors around memorials and reconnecting with some ourselves, has also made me realise something else. We do not all see the war in the same way. Not because the facts are disputed, but because the lenses we look through are different. Propaganda, family recollections, films, documentaries, culture, and what is emphasised in school all shape how each country understands its role. The dates and outcomes may be solid, but the emotional weight and sense of connection I now realise vary.
I was reminded of this when I saw a Facebook post shared by the Auschwitz Memorial. Someone had referred to people in the war as monsters. And the response wrote about how perpetrators were not monsters set apart from humanity, but ordinary people who accepted and followed an ideology that taught them to see others as less than human. That, it argued, is the real warning. Not that evil is inhuman, but that it can be frighteningly human. The worries of war, and the balance of peace is frequently challenged. I was speaking to my jewish family, who explained how tricky it could be at school where there were a majority of muslim people, and lots of conversation around Palestine. It was better for my family to stay quiet, and to not reveal their birth history, than to engage and challenge conversations. Sad, after all these years many of us are unable to live as our authentic selves and must hide part of ourselves.
This is where I think remembrance connects to the present.
Our memorials are not only about honouring those who served or those who were lost. They are also quiet reminders of where unexamined beliefs, propaganda, and dehumanisation can lead. They ask us to remember not just what happened, but how it happened. To recognise that wars do not begin with battles, but with ideas. To make us aware of what conversations we are prepared to enter and endorse.
Remembrance here is also about remembering how close the war once felt. During the Second World War, after Japan entered the conflict, New Zealand suddenly looked to its own shores. Caroline Bay became, for a time, less a place to play and more a place to defend. Concrete cylinders were laid across the sand. A gun was positioned on the Smithfield freezing works headland. An army camp occupied the Showgrounds. An air raid shelter was dug into the Station Street clay bank. Anti-tank gates were installed beneath the Virtue Ave railway bridge, their hinges still visible if you know where to look.
This was not because invasion was certain. It was because it was not unthinkable. Sadly very possible.
Across the South Island, defence worked as a connected system. Major ports such as Lyttelton and Dunedin were protected with coastal artillery and observation posts, while places like Timaru focused on denying access and protecting infrastructure. Heavy guns guarded harbours. Concrete blocked beaches. Shelters were dug for civilians. Each place played a role shaped by its geography.
Māori communities also served, carrying their own reasons for enlistment and their own experiences of loss back to whenua already marked by earlier conflicts. Their names sit alongside others on memorials that reflect both shared sacrifice and complex histories.
Not all markers of war are of epic proportions or dramatic beauty. Many are modest. Small obelisks. Simple stones. Bronze plaques weathered by time. Yet they all count the cost. They all mark moments in the lives of men and women who went to war, or who served in quieter but no less vital ways. Those who kept things running at home. Those who prepared for a war that threatened our shores. Those whose service never made headlines, but shaped communities all the same.
Communities chose where to place them, what to record, and how publicly grief would be carried. Here, remembrance was woven into ordinary life. Not hidden away in cemeteries. Not confined to one grand monument. But set beside playgrounds, farms, shops, main roads, schools and beaches.
My own reflection has also shifted over time. It once focused almost entirely on the men who served and died. Now it stretches further, to the aftermath. To the women whose stories sat in the margins for a long time. To the families who had to rebuild lives alongside trauma and loss.
If you have the chance to venture to Maungati, seek out the small sculpture by Margriet Windhausen, the same artist who created the Face of Peace at Caroline Bay. A minute woman stands with her dog, looking out across the land. It honours the land girls, the women who worked farms to keep paddocks productive and food moving from field to plate. It is modest in scale, but deeply powerful. A reminder that service took many forms.
With hindsight, it is easy to see New Zealand as far from the fighting. At the time, distance offered little comfort. The war reshaped communities long before it ever felt close to our shores, and for a brief period, it felt close enough to reshape the coastline itself.
So when visitors ask why we mark the war here, the answer is not about battles or borders. It is about people. About absence carried home. About names that belong to these places, even if the deaths occurred far away.
Next time you pass a memorial, or walk beneath a bridge, or stand on the sand at Caroline Bay, look closely. The stories of our war past are still here in the landscape, waiting for someone to ask why, and stay long enough to reflect and better understand.
War Memorials and Monuments of South Canterbury
Timaru
Timaru War Memorial – Queen Street / Memorial Avenue area
Caroline Bay Memorial Wall and Sundial. The Face of Peace, sculpture – Caroline Bay
Troopers’ Memorial for the Boer War (South African War) King Street – Timaru
Timaru Boys’ High School War Memorial – Timaru
Timaru Main School War Memorial – Timaru
Timaru South School Memorial Plaques – Timaru
Waimataitai School War Memorial – Timaru
Fairlie and Mackenzie District
Fairlie War Memorial – Fairlie township
Fairlie Peace Avenue – Fairlie
Trooper Mackenzie Statue – Fairlie
Albury War Memorial – Albury
Ashwick Flat War Memorial – Ashwick Flat
Woodbury War Memorial – Woodbury
Temuka and Surrounds
Temuka War Memorial – Temuka
Temuka RSA Memorials – Temuka
Orari War Memorial – Orari township
Pleasant Point War Memorial – Pleasant Point
Sutherlands War Memorial – near Pleasant Point
Lower Waitohi War Memorial – Waitohi area
St Andrews School and Community Memorials – St Andrews
Geraldine District
Geraldine War Memorial – Geraldine
Cave First World War Memorial – hill above Cave township
Southburn First World War Memorial – Southburn
Southburn Second World War Memorial – Southburn
Waimate District
Waimate First World War Memorial – Waimate
Waimate Second World War Memorial Clock Tower – Waimate
Hakataramea War Memorial – Hakataramea Valley
Waituna War Memorial – Waituna
Esk Valley War Memorial – Esk Valley
Rural and Smaller Community Memorials
Arowhenua War Memorial – Arowhenua
Pareora South African War Memorial – Pareora
Pareora District Memorials – Pareora area
Otaio War Memorial – Otaio
Otipua War Memorial – Otipua
Kingsdown War Memorial – Kingsdown
Gapes Valley and Beautiful Valley Memorial – Gapes Valley / Beautiful Valley
Hook War Memorials – Hook district
Blue Cliffs School War Memorial – Blue Cliffs
Fairview School War Memorial – Fairview
Pareora East School War Memorial – Pareora East
Cannington School War Memorial Gates – Cannington
Key Facts: The World Wars and New Zealand
New Zealand and the First World War (1914–1918)
- New Zealand entered the First World War as part of the British Empire.
- Over 100,000 New Zealanders served overseas from a population of just over one million.
- Approximately 18,500 New Zealanders were killed and more than 40,000 were wounded.
- Many New Zealanders were buried overseas, particularly in Europe and at Gallipoli.
- Families often had no grave to visit, making local memorials a focal point for grief.
- The scale of loss deeply affected small towns, rural districts, and schools.
- New Zealand and the Second World War (1939–1945)
- New Zealand declared war on Germany in 1939.
- More than 140,000 New Zealanders served, including women.
- Around 12,000 New Zealanders died.
- New Zealand forces served in Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific.
- After Japan entered the war in 1941, New Zealand faced the real possibility of attack.
- Coastal defences were built, including gun emplacements, beach obstacles, air raid shelters, and military camps.
- Daily life was shaped by rationing, blackouts, labour shortages, and civil defence planning.
What Happened When People Returned From War
Returning Servicemen
- Many men returned with permanent physical injuries, including amputations and chronic illness.
- Psychological trauma was widespread but poorly understood. What is now recognised as post-traumatic stress was rarely acknowledged.
- There was strong pressure to return to work and “normal life” quickly.
- Some men struggled to work, form relationships, or reintegrate into family life.
- Alcohol misuse, social withdrawal, and long-term health issues were common.
- Families, especially women, carried much of the responsibility for care and support.
- Government support existed through pensions and rehabilitation schemes, but was often limited or inconsistent.
- The Returned Services’ Association (RSA) became an important support and advocacy network.
The Impact on Women
During the Wars
- Women took on expanded roles in:
- Farming and food production
- Nursing and medical services
- Manufacturing, transport, and clerical work
- Civil defence and voluntary organisations
- Groups such as the Women’s Land Service were essential to keeping farms productive.
- Women managed households alone, often under financial strain and uncertainty.
After the Wars
- Many women were expected to leave paid work when men returned.
- Wives and mothers became primary carers for injured or traumatised servicemen.
- Women absorbed much of the emotional labour of reintegration.
- Widows and unmarried women often faced financial insecurity and social marginalisation.
- Women’s grief, trauma, and contribution were rarely recognised publicly at the time.
- Long-Term Effects on Women
- Wartime experiences demonstrated women’s capability in roles previously denied to them.
- Some social change followed, but many gains were temporary.
Women played a major role in:
- Fundraising for war memorials
- Deciding their form and placement
- Caring for and maintaining memorials over decades
- Women’s wartime and post-war experiences were often left out of early war histories.
War Memorials in New Zealand
- Most memorials were community-driven, not government-imposed.
- Memorials acted as surrogate graves for those buried overseas.
- Names were often listed alphabetically and without rank, reflecting egalitarian values.
- Many memorials were deliberately functional, including halls, schools, gates, bridges, and clocks.
- When later wars occurred, communities often added names to existing memorials rather than building new ones.
- Memorial meanings have evolved to include women, civilians, trauma, and long-term impacts.
My key learnings...
- War did not end when fighting stopped. Its effects shaped families and communities for decades.
- Remembrance is not only about service and sacrifice, but about aftermath, care, and responsibility.
- Understanding the full story helps explain why war memorials remain important today.
- Memorials help societies reflect on the consequences of conflict and draw ethical boundaries for the future.