11 May 2005

NZers found in Australian ANZACs of the Great War Database

THE AIF PROJECT at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA) has developed a database, ‘Australian Anzacs in the Great War 1914-1918’. Drawing on a wide range of sources (Embarkation Rolls, Nominal Rolls, Roll of Honour circulars, medals and awards details, and cemetery records etc), the database holds information on more than 330,000 men and women who served overseas with the (1st) Australian Imperial Force.

"It is little known fact that over 2,000 New Zealanders served in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War", according to RSA Historian Dr Stephen Clarke, who is well aware of this valuable research project from his time at the Australian Defence Force Academy in the late 1990s. There are also the Australian family connections as a result of the free-flow of migrants across the Tasman. For example, Dr Clarke's own ancestors migrated to New Zealand from Tasmania and a great great uncle who remained in Tasmania enlisted in the AIF and was killed in action on 12 October 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial.

The database is searchable by name – full or partial – and/or by regimental/service number.

Public access to the database is now available at no cost to individual enquirers at www.aif.adfa.edu.au