The Big Show: New Zealanders, D-Day and the War in Europe

by Alison Parr (Editor), Helen Clark (Foreword), Hamlaoui Mekachera (Foreword)

An expansive oral-history project recently undertaken by the New Zealand government provides these 13 eyewitness accounts of World War II. More than 10,000 New Zealand servicemen were on active duty with the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy at the time of the D-Day landings in June 1944, and these stories bring the crucial role that New Zealanders played in providing air cover on D-Day, aiding the French resistance, undertaking missions deep into enemy territory, and liberating the Belsen concentration camp in Germany into focus.

152 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2006

About the author

Alison Parr is Senior Oral Historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Wellington, New Zealand. A former award-winning broadcasting journalist and interviewer, she worked for more than 25 years in radio and television. Alison has spent most of the past decade recording the memories of war veterans and other New Zealanders, and is the author of five books based on oral history, including Home: Civilian New Zealanders Remember the Second World War, The Occupiers: New Zealand Veterans Remember Post-war Japan and Remembering Christchurch: Voices from Decades Past.