Niuean and Cook Island soldiers who fought alongside New Zealanders in the First World War, will be remembered on ANZAC Day, Minister of Pacific Island Affairs Georgina te Heuheu said today.

Niueans and Rarotongans were recruited in late 1915 to serve alongside Maori in what was then known as the Maori Contingent of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. By the time the Pacific Island soldiers arrived in Egypt the Maori Contingent had been amalgamated with men from the Otago Mounted Rifles into a new unit, the New Zealand Pioneer Battalion. It was in this battalion, reorganised as the New Zealand (Maori) Pioneer Battalion in 1917 that the men of the Pacific were sent to serve on the Western Front.

By the end of the war 458 Pacific Island men had served with the unit, alongside 2,227 Maori. Of these 336 died on active service and 734 were wounded.

Mrs te Heuheu said Cook Island men also served in the New Zealand Rarotongan Company, raised in 1917 and deployed to Sinai and Palestine as a unit of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

‘Their role was to set up and maintain forward ammunition and supply depots in support of the troops on the frontline in the fight against the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East,' she said.

‘We have heard many stories about the hardship, the privations, the suffering and the sheer terror suffered by our soldiers,' Mrs te Heuheu said.

‘Anzac Day is about remembering and paying homage to that experience as epitomised at Gallipoli.

‘In doing that let us also spare a thought for our Pacific soldiers, many of whom had never before left their tropical homelands, eaten Western food, or spoken English. Some had never worn shoes.

‘Many died not of war wounds but of diseases to which they had no immunity because they had never before been exposed.

‘Historians have spoken of the Gallipoli experience as formative in giving New Zealanders a sense of national identity. In the 21st century that sense of who we are very much includes our Pacific New Zealanders,' she said.