The New Zealand Army (Maori: Ngāti Tumatauenga, "Tribe of the God of war"), is the land component of the New Zealand Defence Force and comprises around 4,500 Regular Force personnel, 2,000 Territorial Force personnel and 500 civilians. Formerly the New Zealand Military Forces, the current name was adopted around 1946. The New Zealand Army traces its history from settler militia raised in 1845.
New Zealand soldiers served with distinction in the major conflicts in the 20th Century, including South Africa 1899–1902, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, Borneo Confrontation and the Vietnam War. Since the 1970s, deployments have tended to be assistance to multilateral peacekeeping efforts. Considering the small size of the force, operational commitments have remained high since the start of the East Timor deployment in 1999. New Zealand personnel served in the First Gulf War, Iraq and are currently serving in East Timor, Afghanistan and several UN and other peacekeeping missions.
Read more about New Zealand Army: Current Deployments, Dress, Structure, Major Equipment
Famous quotes containing the words zealand and/or army:
“Teasing is universal. Anthropologists have found the same fundamental patterns of teasing among New Zealand aborigine children and inner-city kids on the playgrounds of Philadelphia.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)