Safe Haven: The Untold Story of New Zealand’s Largest Ever Military Camp: Featherston: 1916-1919

The Untold Story of New Zealand’s Largest Ever Military Camp Featherston: 1916-1919 NEW ENLARGED EDITION

The building of Featherston Military Camp in late 1915 transformed a stony paddock east of Featherston township in south Wairarapa into a ready-made barrack town housing up to 8,000 raw soldiers at a time.

Volunteers and conscripts from all parts of the country came to Featherston, spending two to four months in training, our largest military base their temporary home before they left the safety of New Zealand to endure the heaviest wartime casualties this country has suffered.

They lived in barracks and tents, enduring the good and bad of camp life and Featherston’s variable climate. The infantry then marched over the Rimutaka Range to Trentham Camp before taking ship for the Western Front. In total about 55,000 men trained at the Featherston Military Camp between 1916-19.

Three editions of Safe Haven sold out between 2012-16. Since then interest in and activities associated with the camp have taken on a life of their own. These have included the Paul Dibble sculpture in Featherston, the Rimutaka Crossing monument erected at the Remutaka Road Summit in 2015, the 2016 Aratoi Featherston Camp exhibition, and March On, a 2017 documentary about the camp

The updated edition, with its additional chapter and 29 photographs, includes new information about camp commandant Lieutenant Colonel Noel Adams, the camp baths, surviving buildings, the 2015 Rimutaka/Remutaka Re-enactment March and Aratoi’s 2016 centennial exhibition.

The Author: Neil Frances, now an established military historian, also wrote Ketchil ( Vic Bargh’s remarkable World War Two career flying 17 different aircraft in the Far East and Pacific), Things Have Been Pretty Lively (Merv King on the Western Front in World War One), A long, Long Trail, marching over the Rimutaka Hill, 1915-18, A rifle & a camera: Wairarapa soldiers photograph the Great War, and On the move again: a New Zealand gunner’s Italian campaign in World War Two.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
Imprint: FRASER BOOKS, NZ
Publication date: 01/04/2024