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Hassett Gallery

The last 100 days - victory & home

The New Zealand Division on the Western Front 1918

This exhibition marks the recent 90th anniversary of the New Zealand Division's efforts on the Western Front in 1918 will focus on the march to Le Quesnoy, a town the New Zealanders liberated in November 1918 only seven days before the end of World War One.

"One of the New Zealand Division's most outstanding feats was the storming of the medieval fortress of Le Quesnoy in October 1918, climbing the 60 foot high outer ramparts with ladders. A defiant German garrison commander refused to surrender, and the town was finally forced to submit. The New Zealand Herald of Friday 8 November 1918 reported that Le Quesnoy was taken in 'old-fashioned style', using ladders, and it was only 'new-fashioned' machine guns that prevented the New Zealanders from storming the keep of the fortress. They fought with 'resistless speed and achieved one of the most outstanding feats in the war', and it was claimed to be the first occasion a beseiged town had been formally summoned to surrender to British troops. One New Zealander who took part in the liberation, Lawrence Morris 'Curly' Blyth, was awarded France's highest military decoration, the Legion of Honour, and in 2000 he also had the distinction of having a street in the village of Beaudignies, near Le Quesnoy named after him."

(Excerpt from With Honour: Our Army, Our Nation, Our History by Richard Wolfe)

To say thanks, the French town of Le Quesnoy presented the New Zealand Rifle Brigade a special banner along with autographed letter of thanks for the deliverance of their town. This banner is housed within the Army Museum's collection and will be on display for the first time since restoration in this new exhibition.