Bonjour à tous!

Voici mon premier blog. Je ne sais pas vraiment quoi écrire, mais je commençais par dire je m’appelle Caitlin et je suis une étudiante du secondaire. Je ne peux pas attends pour le voyage de les jeunes ambassadeurs a France. I wanted to begin my first post with a bit of French just to get into the habit and I may make some of these posts with the majority in French.

In this first post I wanted to talk briefly on what I plan to achieve and create with the inquiry project we have been tasked with. In my local community in Wellington there was a huge military history with both the First and Second World Wars. Like almost every community in the country ,Wellington and more specifically my neighbourhood/area of Ngaio, was impacted greatly on a human level. Whether it be with family members dying, or the constant fear associated with war. I guess my overarching question was; How were the lives of those in my community impacted by the War? What was the legacy created and how has it been preserved?

What I wanted to do with my inquiry was to take two men, brothers in fact, from the Roll of Honour in my town hall and trace their journey. I chose Julian and Percy Radcliffe, two brothers who went to the same Primary school I did. I plan over the course of the year to find out about their lives, family and role in our armed forces in WWI. I plan to make a documentary tracing my progress and screen it at a presentation night, to promote the importance of commemoration of the men and families from Ngaio and the wider Wellington area.

There are many sources available to me here in Wellington. From Archives New Zealand to local historians and connections within the community, I hope to be able to gain a large amount of information that would help me tackle my issue and project.

This project would allow me to explore a wide scope of issues, many of the connected to the upcoming trip to France and Belgium. As both of these men died on the Western Front at different points in the war, it will allow me to talk about the connection between France and local communities with mothers losing their sons fighting essentially for the freedom of France. We will be visiting many of the places that these brothers would have fought in, and even, where one of them is buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery Belgium.

I want to be able to use this presentation night to educate and inform, even inspire people to commemorate the war and to perhaps understand how it affected the local community. I hope by choosing two local soldiers it will allow people to think of the war on a human scale.

I have already pulled their service records from the Auckland Cenotaph database and have pictures and service numbers. The next step is to begin my research in a more in depth manner.