New Zealand Listener - May 26, 2018

24 LISTENER MAY 26 2018

B

arely a boule-throw from

the Belgian border in north-

west France, the medieval

town of Le Quesnoy* looks

set to become home to New

Zealand’s first war memorial

museum in Europe.

Last year, a trust founded in 2011 by New

Zealand Military Historical Society president

Herb Farrant, rustled up enough money to

buy from the local council a 1ha property in

the heart of the small town, which is home

to about 5000 people.

The property,

which includes a

stately 19th-century

former gendar-

merie and nine

self-catering gîtes or

maisonettes, will be

used as a museum

dedicated to the

memory of the

almost 12,500 New

Zealand soldiers who

died on the Western

Front, including the

135 who lost their

lives liberating the

town itself from its

German occupiers

100 years ago. The

cost was a modest

$1.1 million.

“They valued the

property, then halved the valuation,”

says the treasurer of the New Zealand War

Memorial Museum Trust, Peter McKinnon

(son of former Commonwealth Secretary-

General, now trust chair, Sir Don).

The council’s offer is built on a century-

old recognition of the New Zealand forces

who rescued the garrison town from the

Germans. As the Listener has highlighted

in a series of articles over the past few

years, stressing the need for a museum,

this was no ordinary wartime endeavour.

On November 4, 1918, just a week before

the Armistice, members of the New Zea-

land Rifle Brigade stormed the town’s 27m

medieval ramparts using ladders and ropes,

liberating the town without endangering

the lives of inhabitants or destroying the

historic causeways, walls and tunnels. By

the end of the battle, no civilians had been

killed. It was, Farrant told the Listener, “a

totally New Zealand thing”.

A memorial in the town rec-

ognises “the men of New Zealand, through

whose valour the town of Le Quesnoy was

restored to France”. There is a New Zealand

gate of honour, an inscription on a marble

balustrade acknowledging those who came

from “the Uttermost Ends of the Earth” and

a memorial garden. The town’s street names

include Avenue des Néo-Zélandais and Rue

Aotearoa. Every Anzac and Armistice Day,

locals stand with visiting New Zealanders to

commemorate the wartime rescue.

IN FOREIGN FIELDS

Unlike other countries, New Zealand has

no specific site dedicated to the contribu-

tion of its forces on the Western Front in

World War I. Half the New Zealanders who

died in active service in the 20th century

are buried “in the foreign fields of Europe”;

their legacy is scattered across memorials

and graves in the Somme, Messines Ridge,

Passchendaele and Amiens.

In the Waikato town of Cambridge, sister

town of Le Quesnoy, St Andrew’s Anglican

Church still boasts a stained-glass window

depicting New

Zealand soldiers

scaling the French

town’s walls. Mike

Pettit, who chairs

the Cambridge-Le

Quesnoy Friend-

ship Association,

says the new

museum will give

descendants of

those who served

in the war a place

in Europe to go.

“There’s noth-

ing else of any

significance

anywhere over

there. It’s bizarre.

There are plenty

of graves, but no

tangible home where New Zealanders can

go and hear their story told.”

Over the 16 years that Farrant has been

leading tours of New Zealand Expedition-

ary Force battle sites in France and Belgium,

he has nurtured the hope of seeing a per-

manent museum to mark the liberation

of Le Quesnoy and to honour the legacy

of those who fought in both world wars.

This dream took a leap forward last year

when, after months of discussions with

ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY; ROBERT HANSON local authorities in Le Quesnoy and the

FALLEN HEROES

* Pronounced Le Ken-wah

LES KIWIS

A museum in memory of New Zealand soldiers who died saving

a small French town will be a special place. by SALLY BLUNDELL

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