The Big Show New Zealanders, D-Day and the War in Europe

An expansive oral-history project recently undertaken by the New Zealand government provides these 13 eyewitness accounts of World War II. More than 10,000 New Zealand servicemen were on active duty with the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy at the time of the D-Day landings in June 1944, and these stories bring the crucial role that New Zealanders played in providing air cover on D-Day, aiding the French resistance, undertaking missions deep into enemy territory, and liberating the Belsen concentration camp in Germany into focus.

Alison Parr is a broadcast journalist, an oral historian, and the author of Silent Casualties. She is the founder of the From Memory Oral History Project, under the auspices of the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which records veterans' memories of World War II.