A profile of the Returned Services’ Association on its fiftieth anniversary, taken from 1960s current affairs show Compass. The RSA’s varied roles include welfare, watchdog, and keeper of the flame. The Taumaranui RSA bar makes a good return in a town that is officially dry; meanwhile in Wellington we watch two retired army officers describing an RSA fact-finding trip to South East Asia. The brief Anzac day footage includes a lively Dawn Parade gathering that packs Wellington railway station.

This collection brings together over 60 titles covering Kiwis at war. Iconic documentaries and films tell stories of terrible cost, heroism and kinship. There are also background pieces by historians Chris Pugsley and Jock Phillips, and broadcaster Ian Johnstone. Pugsley muses, "It is sobering to think that in the first half of the 20th Century the big OE for most New Zealanders was going to war."

Keen to preserve the stories of those who went to war, filmmaker David Blyth (Our Oldest Soldier) teamed up with RSA historian Patricia Stroud. The result is Memories of Service, a series of interviews with veterans from World War II, Vietnam and Korea. They recall comradeship, high risk bombing runs over Europe, blackmailing guards at prisoner of war camps (Ernest Davenport), and 16-hour days working the infamous Burma Railway (James Easton). Inbetween arranging further interviews, Blyth also put together compilation reels, culled from the conversations. 

Memories of Service captures the war experiences of Kiwi veterans who served in campaigns from World War II to Korea, Vietnam and beyond. Director David Blyth (Our Oldest Soldier) and Silverdale RSA museum curator Patricia Stroud wanted to make the series of interviews as an “archival/educational treasure for all New Zealanders.” In this selection of stories compiled from the first nine interviews, the returned servicemen recall training, survival, imprisonment, parachuting from crashing planes, lighter moments, and bonds of brotherhood.

Paul Henry and Pippa Wetzell introduce a live broadcast of the Anzac Day dawn service at Waikumete Cemetery in Auckland. This is New Zealand's largest war cemetery and a service is held here each year. This service commemorates all service personnel who have served overseas for New Zealand. Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey speaks, Returned Services Association members, politicians and the public lay tributes. Miriama Kamo provides a commentary. The programme excerpted here marked the beginning of TV ONE's Anzac Day coverage, which ran all day.

This documentary explores resurgent interest in Anzac Day and examines the Kiwi desire to “remember them” (those who served in war) — ranging from patriotism to protest to burgeoning dawn services. The doco is framed around the return of the Unknown Warrior to a Wellington tomb in 2004; and a trip to Trieste, Italy, for Gordon and Luciana Johnston and their 24-year-old granddaughter Kushla. Gordon was a World War II gunner and Luciana an Italian nurse. Kushla learns of their war experience, and the early Cold War stand-off in Trieste following Nazi surrender.

Directed by Tony Williams, this documentary is a strong example of how to make engaging television out of a brief that might easily have been overly earnest. Nominally “a history of service clubs in New Zealand”, the footloose film explores a rich variety of organisations created to bring people together: from accordion players and air hostesses to flying saucer believers and Rotarians. The film celebrates a fundamental human need to ‘get together’. Poet Denis Glover provides sardonic commentary. It won the best programme of year Feltex Award.

This song is taken from the only new album released in the 1990s by Kiwi music legends Hello Sailor. In an AudioCulture profile of the band, writer Murray Cammick praised the Dave McArtney-penned track as one of two strong additions to the Hello Sailor canon (alongside song 'New Tattoo', also from 1994). The music video features the band playing (on a Ponsonby street, in a derelict building) intercut with archive clips (famous sporting moments, returned servicemen, Edmund Hillary, hikoi, the Beatles tour), echoing the song’s lyrical themes of waning memories and nostalgia.

After a long flight in a C-130 Hercules, Dez Harrison arrived in Vietnam on the fifth of May 1967. As he puts it, when you’re young and green it’s all an adventure. Serving in 161 Field battery, Harrison says he was blessed with good leadership from non-commissioned officers who were mainly veterans of Korea and Malaya. As the memories rattle off, he has plenty of praise for the Americans in Vietnam, but less so for his Australian comrades. Stories of leave in Saigon and Singapore provide fond memories, but the reception back in New Zealand at the end of his service is less happy.

The highlight of this instalment of the NFU’s weekly newsreels is a report on a motorcycle grand prix, held at Cust in Canterbury, where speeds in excess of 100mph were reached in the 152 mile race — with 1,000 gallons of sump oil sprayed on roads to prepare the racing surface. From the Wellington waterfront, there is coverage of the arrival of a delegation of Australian ex-servicemen to meet their NZ counterparts; and an emotional United Nations appeal asks viewers to donate one day’s pay, profits, work or produce to help the world’s needy children.