'Brilliant' list honours our WWII vets

Dale Calder spent eight years searching embarkation rolls, databases and public libraries and museums to find 4976 army people with links to Northland.

Frank Wilson's name is among a rare list of nearly 5000 Northlanders who served in the army in World War II.

The list, compiled by Whangarei man Dale Calder over eight years, memorialises and acknowledges almost 5000 men and women who served their country.

Mr Wilson, 94, served in Italy and Egypt with the 25th Infantry Battalion.

"I was in Italy when the Cassino bombs were in full roar and planes bombed the place so tanks couldn't move. The night of intervention I sprained my ankle so that kept me out of there, otherwise I might not have been here," he said.

Although he didn't think the names of World War II survivors needed to be included on a physical memorial, the list was a great resource.

"It's good to find out about family history and to find people," he said.

Mr Calder spent eight years searching embarkation rolls, databases and public libraries and museums to find 4976 army people with links to Northland who served overseas during the war.

The project started when Mr Calder wanted to find out about friends and extended family. Mr Calder's father was a World War II veteran who served in the Pacific and Italy; he knew a lot about his dad but wondered about his dad's friends.

"These other guys - were they in the army, the navy? And there was nowhere I could go to get there - that was the first thing."

Mr Calder started searching online where he found a few memorials.

"A lot of them were incomplete, a lot of them were downright wrong, and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be neat to be able to put up an online resource."

"It was to memorialise these people - they put their life on the line for us - but also to have a fantastic genealogical whakapapa and research tool for anyone to research."

The list includes names of people with links to Northland, whether they lived here, enrolled here, or had their next of kin living here, who served overseas in the Royal New Zealand Army during World War II - including J-Force, nurses, sisters and woman soldiers.

Whangarei RSA president Chris Harold said the list was "very rare".

"The war memorial museum, even they don't have that. So for this guy to find 5000 names - it's brilliant."

•The list can be downloaded here.