War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

A half-century after the end of World War II, seven now-elderly New Zealand women, placed simply against a dark backdrop and filmed, relate their wartime experiences and how the conflict affected their lives. As they talk, vintage documentary footage and family photographs vividly illustrate their reminiscences. The result is touching and, almost universally, heartbreaking, a stunning revelation of the impact of a worldwide conflagration on a handful of then-young women.

Mostly dry-eyed, but still speaking with pride and, often, passion, the seven subjects let their tales unfold. Two were widowed and left with infants; one rushed into a hasty marriage when she discovered she was pregnant, then fell in love while her infantryman husband was a prisoner of war, but resigned herself to a loveless marriage when he returned so that she would not lose her son; another was married to a conscientious objector, was treated as a pariah while her husband was interned during...