Museum hunts for wooden-spoked wheels

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 1, 28 May 1985, Page 29

Museum hunts for wooden-spoked wheels

The Waiouru Army Museum's director, Major Peter Nelson, has asked the Ruapehu region's farmers to search their barns and workshops as part of a nationwide search for woodenspoked wheels. The search is part of a major effort being undertaken to acquire exhibits for a permanent museum display about World War One. The new display will be opened on November 1 1th this year — the 67th anniversary of the armistice of the 'war to end all wars'. Part of the display will feature an 18-pounder field gun. However, the gun currently owned by the museum has steel wheels, which were

designed after the First World War. And it is in a bid to find the more historically accurate wooden-spoked wheels which were used on the Western Front that the museum has asked the Ruapehu region's farmers to search their barns. The wooden wheels were standard to all British Army field guns, ammunition limbers and horse-drawn waggons — some of which were brought to New Zealand during and after World War One. So there is a chance that a set of hubs, or even the complete wheels, might still be sitting unused in the back of a workshop or on a farm here in the Ruapehu region. If so, Major Nelson would like to know.

In fact Major Nelson is keen to include as wide a variety of authentic artifacts in the World War One display as possible. He would welcome any donations of items which relate to World War One. Over 100,000 New Zealand soldiers saw action overseas between 1914 and 1 9 1 8 . But fo r every five men who left this country, one was destined to die and two would be wounded. The number of New Zealanders killed during the First World War was 16,697. A futher 41,317 were wounded, many of whom had to live with physical and mental disabilities for the rest of their lives. New Zealand's dead and wounded in the First World War were more than double the total casualties sustained

during all the other wars New Zealand soldiers have fought in since 1843. With this appalling fact in mind the Army Museum is designing a display which should be a sobering experience to those who see it. And, as with all the museum's displays, the aim will be to 'show it as it was' — an objective which leaves no room for the glorification of war. The campaigns of Gallipoli and Palestine are to form an important part of the new display. But the full horror of war will be depicted as it was on the * Western Front between 1916 and 1918, where the majority of New Zealand's casualties were sustained.