Poster image reading "War Hero by Michael Galvin"

War Hero: The Story of Archibald Baxter Brought to Life

Alice Houston-Page6 minute read

Wellington Heritage Festival is interested in the people, places, and stories that shape our region. In advance of the new play War Hero premiering in Wellington at the Gryphon Theatre on 6 May and running until 16 May, it seems an appropriate time to turn our minds to Aotearoa New Zealand’s history of conscientious objection.

During WWI, conscripted men who refused military service were known as conscientious objectors. Around 600 men in Aotearoa New Zealand declared conscientious objections, roughly 286 of whom were imprisoned. Over half of these imprisoned men were driven by religious causes: many were members of small sects that fell outside the exemption criteria of the Military Service Act 1916, while others had interpreted biblical passages to mean that military conflict was against God’s will.

Socialism was another driving factor, with roughly one quarter of the imprisoned objectors professing socialist beliefs and seeking class war instead of world war. A number of Irish nationalists refused to fight for the British Empire, as it continued to forcibly occupy their homeland, while several Waikato Māori conscripts objected on much the same grounds as they held a similarly disillusioned view of the New Zealand government.

Archibald Baxter is arguably Aotearoa New Zealand’s most famous conscientious objector. Baxter saw WWI as a ‘family scrap among the crowned heads of Europe’ – a war in which working men were forced to perpetuate violence in the name of a distant mother country that was ignorant of the damage that war could truly do. He wrote, ‘I wonder that any sane person who knows the destruction, the degradation, the misery and the sorrow caused by war, can regard it as anything else than diabolical in the extreme … passive resistance to evil is the power that will yet conquer the world.’ He is remembered for his steadfast and enduring resolve.

Many of the most significant sites in the history of conscientious objection in WWI are found in the greater Wellington region, according to a Heritage New Zealand magazine article from 2014. Trentham Military Camp, about thirty minutes out of Wellington, was where most dissenters were imprisoned and court martialled before being formally sentenced to jail terms of between eleven months and two years. As well as Trentham, both Baxter and Mark Briggs spent time at Alexandra Barracks in Mount Cook, The Terrace Gaol, and Mount Cook Prison – where the pair actually met for the first time.

In July 1917, fourteen particularly staunch objectors including Baxter and Briggs were led onto the troopship Waitemata, bound for Britain. Aboard the Waitemata, in Britain, and later in Étaples, France, the men were subjected to physical and emotional abuse, starvation, and beatings. Baxter and his fellow objectors endured the unique agony of field punishment no. 1 once overseas. This involved being tied to a tilted post in the open, in all weathers. The men were suspended just above ground level to put intense strain on their muscles, with their hands, knees and feet tightly bound. The men were held in this position for up to four hours a day, with the stiff ropes cutting into their flesh and preventing blood circulation and the cold undoubtedly reaching their bones. It was colloquially known as ‘the crucifixion’.

Conscientious objectors were widely and vocally condemned as ‘shirkers’ and ‘cowards’ for the better part of the twentieth century. At the State level, it was decided that they were undeserving of citizenship. Approximately 2,320 ‘military defaulters’ – including conscientious objectors, deserters, and men who failed to report for service – were denied the right to vote in Aotearoa New Zealand for ten years following WWI. This treatment overseas and at home has been described by historian David Grant as ‘the most astonishing recorded instance of State-sanctioned cruelty which New Zealanders have ever inflicted upon fellow New Zealanders’.

Conscientious objectors faced much hostility from their communities and the public. The Thames Star declared in November 1917: ‘No man has a right to be a thief, but the man who profits by the sufferings of others while at the same time he refuses to share in those sufferings is morally a thief of the worst kind.’ It goes on to state, ‘... the conscientious objector will not die … nor will he suffer one hour of agony nor endure a pin-prick’ – although this was evidently not the case. Similarly, the Observer described in May 1916 ‘that peculiar animal and utterly detestable person the “conscientious objector.” He is a product of modern softness…’.

Grant writes that ironically these dissenters – particularly Baxter and Briggs – showed personal characteristics ‘which most New Zealanders hold dear: humility, determination, idealism, strength of character, sacrifice’. Needless to say, the public at the time was largely blind to these attributes.

Given the prevailing perception of the twentieth century, it is unsurprising that Aotearoa New Zealand had no formal memorial acknowledging the efforts of conscientious objectors until very recently. The Archibald Baxter Peace Garden in Ōtepoti Dunedin, opened in late 2021, was designed to commemorate all Aotearoa New Zealand’s conscientious objectors in all wars. The garden is also the country’s national peace memorial. The central sculpture, designed by Arrowtown artist Shane Woolridge, is a bold and moving representation of field punishment no. 1, entitled We Will Bend but not be Broken.

And, indeed, Baxter’s resolve was never broken. Despite the agonising treatment they received, both Baxter and Briggs remained defiant until the end. The pair were eventually discharged on medical grounds and returned to Aotearoa New Zealand – the only two from the Waitemata who never took on military service. In a letter to his parents dated 5 March 1918, from somewhere in France, Baxter wrote: ‘I have suffered to the limit of my endurance, but I will never in my sane senses surrender to the evil power that has fixed its roots like a cancer on the world.’

War Hero, written by Michael Galvin, is inspired by Archibald Baxter’s timeless memoir We Will Not Cease and will bring Baxter’s experiences to life in a raw and poignant way. It runs from 6-16 May at the Gryphon Theatre on Ghuznee Street.

Sources / Further Reading

Alice Houston-Page

Alice volunteered for the Wellington Heritage Festival team in 2026, helping our kaupapa to share some of the incredible stories of Aotearoa's history.

Email: alice.hp@wellingtonheritagefestival.nz