Jordan yesterday renewed its offer to swap a convicted terrorist for the return of its air force pilot held captive by Isis.

64: War-weary soldiers forgot their troubles when they saw the New Zealand Pierrots take to the stage.

63: Inscribed on one of the bells in the National War Memorial is a tribute to Leslie Heron Beauchamp.

62: William Clachan was made of tough stuff. The Wellington schoolteacher was wounded three times on the Western Front.

A 46-year-old Ukrainian tank commander says politicians might yet stop the conflict that grips the east of his country, but supplies of arms from the West would bring a quicker result.

61: Today we might call them special forces. When Robert Kenneth Nicol joined a top secret British Army unit in 1918, it was known as the "hush-hush brigade".

A lost documentary Alfred Hitchcock made about the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps during World War Two has finally reached screens thanks to movie mogul Brett Ratner.

60: At the outbreak of World War I, Victor Spencer joined queues of young volunteers eager to fight for king and country.

Few major institutions in Auckland's history devoted 82 per cent of their staff to a war.

57: One hundred and forty chaplains accompanied New Zealand forces to war.

57: Important chapters in Alfred Shout's life took place on both sides of the Tasman and he is remembered with pride in New Zealand and Australia.

The war is officially over, victory secured. And Afghanistan, once again, has been rebuilt. But for many, life in the restive provinces is much as it ever was.

Anton Tumanov gave up his life for his country, but his country won't say where and it won't say how.

There is a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass in which Alice meets the White Knight who is wearing full armour and riding a horse which he keeps falling off.

The father of a Jordanian pilot captured by Isis after his plane crashed pleaded for his son's release, as reports emerged that the jihadists were preparing to publicly execute him.

Captured Yazidi girls in Iraq are killing themselves to escape rape and torture at the hands of Isis (Islamic State) militants holding them prisoner.

One Christmas story above all deserves a run this year: the sound of Silent Night from the trenches in the first Christmas of the Great War.

A 15-year-old was prevented from joining Isis by British police who hauled her off a plane at Heathrow just as it was due to take off.

55: For five anxious years the troopships set sail from New Zealand, carrying her men in uniform away to war.

54: Nothing seemed to frighten Dick Travis. His turf was No Man's Land, the zone of death between enemy trenches and his regiment's frontlines.

Four surviving veterans of one of New Zealand's most famous naval battles joined nearly 600 sailors and thousands of well-wishers in a parade on Auckland's Queen St yesterday to mark the Battle of the River Plate's 75th anniversary.

"I wasn't as dead as I had first surmised." Those were the words of HMS Achilles gunnery officer, Lieutenant Richard Washbourn, in a previously unpublished letter.

US embassies have been told to prepare for violent protests ahead of a report into the CIA's use of torture.

52: To be Irish but fighting for Britain was to be conflicted.

With bells clanging, whistles screeching and hundreds of booted sailors clattering to their firing stations, boy seaman Bob Batt had every right to be scared.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters claims "large-scale" military preparations are under way at New Zealand bases in anticipation of a deployment to Iraq.

51: New Zealanders from different points on the political spectrum hated censorship.

World War II's greatest escape, which involved Kiwi officers scaling barbed wire fences instead of the previously favoured method of tunnelling, has been told for the first time.

The Iraqi army includes 50,000 "ghost soldiers" who do not exist, but their officers receive their salaries fraudulently, according to the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.