The machines of war

The machines of war
Once upon a time nearly every town in New Zealand had a bloody great piece of artillery on display, often a field gun.
No, each town was not arming themselves. They were trophy guns and it was common for towns to celebrate and memorialise their war dead by requesting and putting up a huge war weapon.
In fact, after the First World War there was a huge demand with towns competing over how much they deserved them, often by trumpetting how many dead they had.
The guns were captured goods, taken from battlefields as the spoils of war and they were sent all over the world - and a great many to Australia and New Zealand.
They were handed out - and sometimes bought - by towns and cities - and put on display. It was so common that in some places individual suburbs and schools had their own piece of artillery.
Although it is unlikely it was done regularly, the big guns were sometimes fired as a salute to those who had died.
Wellingtonian and librarian Peter Henry McColl could see what the demand would be like, and while he was serving in France tried to send a trench mortar to a government minister - as a memorial.
Wellington City Council chose to display four machine guns which arrived by October 1918 in the Town Hall’s first floor landing and the Newtown Museum.
Very few are left now. We became disenchanted with the horrors of war and it was no longer fashionable to have the machines of destruction in every town.
Many had war memorials built alongside them at places like Arrowtown, Mt Roskill, Cromwell, Dannevirke, Waiouru, Whanganui and Waipawa - where our photo comes from. The Waipawa 105mm German field gun is still there, having fallen into disrepair and then being restored in 1981.
A few have ended up in museums but a great many were scrapped, destroyed
Peter McColl never got that mortar home but back then it would have been a popular souvenir.
McColl would have been uniquely placed to recognise the contribution something like a mortar would have made. Born June 21, 1880, he had gone on to be a librarian with the General Assembly Library in Wellington.
He had sailed as reinforcement for 2nd Battalion NZ Rifle Brigade in June 1916, and returned home in 1919.
The husband of Bertha Alice McColl of Northland, Wellington he died in 1956 aged 77 and is buried at Karori Cemetery.