Five members of the Upper Clutha Historical Society and Wanaka Genealogical Group have spent the past two years researching the stories behind the names on Upper Clutha’s World War 1 memorials.
Courageous and Free will be officially launched today to mark Armistice Day. Researcher Ken Allan said the group had discovered cases of soldiers being completely missed or misidentified on memorials.
In one case, a man’s name was added to a memorial after he died aged 60 long after he had returned to New Zealand, Mr Allan said.
The group discovered 47 soldiers and one nurse from the Upper Clutha were killed in the war and when they started only 33 were remembered on the memorials.
Part of the appeal of writing and researching the book was discovering the stories of the families, he said. ‘‘Going through the stories of these guys and what happened is a bit of a microcosm of what was happening during that time,’’ he said.
The research had also unearthed lost relatives.
"There was one family over in Haast which didn’t know they had another uncle until one of the group discovered him."
Not all the stories found were positive, he said.
"There’s one guy who seemed to spend most of the time he was in Dunedin in prison and bashed his mother up."
At the time war broke out in 1914 only about 1000 people lived in the Upper Clutha, and about 200 men went to war.
"That’s a fairly big percentage, so it had quite an impact on those what were at the time small semi-isolated communities,’’ he said.
Not everybody would be happy with what had been found, but researchers wanted the book to reflect society at the time.
"Just like today, people had affairs and children were born out of wedlock, so there will be some things people might not be so happy to have out in public."
● The official launch of the book will be held today at 4.30pm in the Wanaka Public Library.
