Passchendaele Society

the Queen of New Zealand has been pleased on the occasion of the celebration of Her Majesty’s Birthday and Diamond Jubilee, to award The Queen’s Service Medal to Professor Glyn John Harper, of Palmerston North for “services to historical research”.

Professor Harper is a member of the Passchendaele Society and is the Society’s Historical Advisor. This award is not only well deserved but reflects very positively on the work he is doing to achieve public recognition for the coming anniversaries of the Battle of Passchendaele, the Western Front and the Great War of 1914-1918.

Glyn Harper is Professor of War Studies at Massey University and was Director of its Centre for Defence and Security Studies for eight years. He is now General Editor of the Centenary History of New Zealand and the First World War. A former teacher, he joined the Australian Army in 1988 and after eight years transferred to the New Zealand Army, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was the army’s official historian of the deployment to East Timor, and is the author of 19 books, many of which have achieved best seller status. Seven of these are children’s books. Some of his books include: ’Massacre at Passchendaele: the New Zealand story’ ; ’Spring Offensive: New Zealand and the Second Battle of the Somme’; ‘Dark Journey’; ‘Letters from Gallipoli: New Zealand Soldiers Write Home’ and his latest (a children’s book) ‘Le Quesnoy: The story of the town New Zealand saved’.