When reports first surfaced of North Korean troops being sent to the Russian front, it was assumed they lacked battle experience and were ill-equipped for modern warfare.
Their first forays on the battlefield in December were in large groups without support from artillery, drones, or armoured vehicles, making them easy targets for Ukrainian defenders.
But the Wall Street Journal last week reported that decisive battles in the Kursk region, from which Ukraine’s army has now largely retreated, showed how North Korean forces adapted with lightning speed their once outdated tactics for Europe’s biggest war since World War II.
Christopher Pugsley.
“By February, their large numbers, physical endurance, and willingness to advance under fire were combined with improved tactical awareness, such as moving in small groups, as well as support from the full Russian arsenal of weapons, from glide bombs to artillery and explosive drones,” the Journal reported.
“They became more integrated with Russian forces and, when the North Koreans finished their assaults, Russians would typically take over their positions.”
This report could easily have come from the pages of Christopher Pugsley’s military history classic The Anzac Experience, first published in 2004. It has since been through subsequent editions, with an updated 2025 version issued to coincide with the 110th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign and, of course, Anzac Day.
Pugsley is retired after a distinguished career that included lecturing for 12 years at Sandhurst, Britain’s top military academy, before returning to New Zealand where he was adviser on Gallipoli and other historical exhibits and films as well as holding academic positions. His long list of publications includes Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story (1984, sixth edition 2022), Te Hokowhitu A Tu (1995, third edition 2015), Kiwis in Conflict (2008 and 2024), and A Bloody Road Home (2014).
Test of time
Bookshelves in most New Zealand and Australian homes are likely to have at least one Anzac-themed title, if not several of the many military books usually published at this time of the year. Pugsley’s have stood the test of time because they avoid the pitfalls of official histories and personalised accounts by tackling big-picture issues.
‘Hard men’ of New Zealand Mounted Rifles in Middle East. National Army Museum, Waiouru Collection.
In The Anzac Experience, he buries the myth of the Anzac soldier as a naturally gifted amateur and examines the differing origins of the New Zealand, Australian, and Canadian colonial forces, and how they evolved through warfare to create distinct forms of nationhood.
It’s a tall ask, as the reader also expects full details of military engagements in South Africa (1899-1902), the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of 1915, and two other major theatres of World War I: Egypt and the Middle East (1916-18); and the Western Front (1915-18).
“Ostensibly part of the British armies, they represented and were sustained by the hopes and fears of their populations at home, with the political fortunes of the governments that sent them riding on their achievement,” Pusgley states.
Conscription was a key difference for New Zealand from the first overseas expedition to South Africa. Australia depended on volunteers throughout both wars, while Canada did not introduce conscription until 1918.
“[T]he Boer war marked the birth of their military reputation, the courage and initiative of the mounted riflemen marking them out from their British counterparts,” Pugsley writes of the colonial forces, but they were no match for the professionals of the ‘home’ country's British Army.
Public praise “shielded the colonies from the reality of indifferent leadership, untrained soldiery, and poor administration”. These were continuing themes as the demands of World War I tested the ability of the dominions to provide a continuing supply of battle-ready troops.
More costly
While New Zealand’s conscripted force was better prepared than Australia or Canada for the outbreak of war in 1914, the eight months’ commitment to the Gallipoli invasion was much more costly than expected. The campaign had highlights for the New Zealanders, such as the brief capture of the heights of Chunuk Bair, but poor decisions by commanders led to the overall campaign’s failure.
Destroyed German blockhouses at Messines after New Zealanders’ raid. National Army Museum, Waiouru Collection.
Pugsley backed up his verdict on a visit to Chunuk Bair: “It is the last major range before the Dardanelles and its taking would have seen the possibility of major advance.” He also casts judgment on the differences between the New Zealanders and the Australians.
“Enthusiasm was no substitute for careful planning and preparation under capable leadership, matched by thorough training and detailed administration including, most importantly of all, the regular supply of trained reinforcements.”
These lessons were carried on to the Western Front, where the British Army applied tactics using small groups learned from the Boers rather than the traditional mass attacks associated with European warfare. Pugsley demurs from historians who attributed artillery as the main reasons for advances. Instead, he gives credit to “fire and movement” infantry tactics at platoon level employed with excellence by the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
Late arrival
The late arrival of “doughboy” Americans – untested in any conflict since the Civil War – during the war’s declining months recall the Wall Street Journal’s description of the North Koreans at Kursk.
Fighting continued on the Western Front right up to the Armistice on November 11, 1918. One of the New Zealanders’ best-known exploits, the capture of the fortified town of Messines, was completed just days beforehand.
Major-General Sir Andrew Russell, centre, talking to subalterns of Second NZ Infantry Brigade. National Army Museum, Waiouru Collection.
Pugsley devotes several chapters to a detailed analysis of leadership, comparing New Zealand’s Major-General Sir Andrew Russell with his Australian equivalent, Major-General Sir John Monash. Russell, a Hawke’s Bay farmer, was a practised horseman who believed in well-trained troops. The more aloof Monash was a superb planner and tactician but, after Gallipoli, was seldom seen at the front line.
Russell and Monash both served in the ANZAC Corps under General Sir Alexander Godley but went their separate ways after it was disbanded on January 1, 1918, with the creation of the Australian Imperial Force. Godley cops some flak from Pugsley for a “lazy headquarters with sloppy procedures that lacked the skill and drive to mount effective attacks in the mud of Passchendaele” in October 1918.
The end of the ANZAC Corps as a combined military force was the start of a new tradition, the Anzac experience, which both countries mark on April 25. While they join in a common bond of nationhood, the Anzac experience has had different outcomes. For Australians, it is a day to remember all volunteers who served, while for New Zealand, it is reserved only for those sacrificed their lives.
The fiction experience
The fictional side of New Zealand war literature is thin to almost non-existent. This may be due to the welter of memoirs based on the notion that truth is stranger than fiction. One exception is Maurice Shadbolt’s play Once of Chunuk Bair (1982), based on eye witness accounts. Novelists such as Gordon Slatter and John Mulgan published real-life experiences of war, while Dan Davin (For the Rest of Our Lives, 1947) and MK Joseph (I’ll Soldier No More, 1958, and A Soldier’s Tale, 1976) produced the most celebrated novels.
World War II has featured in some recent fiction by women, but male voices are missing in action. Stephen Daisley’s A Better Place (2024) was a finalist in last year’s Ockham Awards but only Christopher Worth has made a stab at bringing World War II into focus with a series based on a fictional hero, Neil Rankin, the ‘rabbit hunter’.
Christopher Worth.
A third volume, Crete: The Aftermath, follows The Rabbit Hunter (2023) and The Battle of Crete (2024). After leading his platoon to the bottom of Greece and the escape to Crete in May 1941, Second Lieutenant Rankin is stranded in western Crete as German troops complete their mop-up after an invasion featuring paratroopers.
At the end of the second part, Rankin was sent on a mission to rescue some important RAF technicians, whom he is ordered to kill rather than allow to fall into enemy hands.
These survivors missed the final evacuation to Egypt and are left to their own devices. They must find the means to avoid capture or death as Crete is reduced to rubble under a full-scale occupation. The Germans have control of the towns but, by night, the rugged countryside is open slather for an under-powered resistance.
Worth has his hit his stride as a narrator of action scenes and attention to physical detail in describing soldiers' experiences. His aim is to tell "what did you do in the war" stories for later generations. While The Rabbit Hunter is billed as a trilogy (spoiler alert), a future episode in Rankin's war looks likely.
The books are self-published with Worth telling me half of the sales are online. A $5 donation goes to the RSA for every purchase until the end of April.
The Anzac Experience: New Zealand, Australia and Empire in the First World War, by Christopher Pugsley (Oratia Books, 2025 edition).
The Rabbit Hunter III: Crete: The aftermath, by Christopher Worth (Renaissance Publishing).
Nevil Gibson is a former editor-at-large for NBR. He has contributed film and book reviews to various publications.
This is supplied content and not commissioned or paid for by NBR.
