On Active Service features 26 episodes of a radio feature which covers stories from New Zealand at war during WWI and WWII. The episodes include interviews, recollections and descriptions from many ex-servicemen. They were recorded and broadcast in 1959 and 1960.
The sub-titles are:
- Dick Travis VC [WWI]
- The Ghost Train [WWII, Italy, 1945]
- Emergency In Malaya
- Kiwi Doctor
- The Long Range Desert Group [WWII]
- Sergeant Bruce Crowley [WWII POW escape from Germany]
- Korea
- Athens
- The Soapy One [WWII Special Service, Greece]
- Colonel Nixon [New Zealand Wars, Waikato]
- M.L.310 [WWII, Evacuation of Singapore]
- Black Friday
- Dare To Be Free
- Hupeh and the Pirates [1951 New Zealand Navy]
- The Hororata [WWII]
- Italian Flight
- Midget Sub XE-3 [WWII, Sub-Lieutenant J. L. Smith of Christchurch]
- Colin Grey and A. C. Deere [WWII RAF]
- P. G. Jameson [WWII RAF]
- J. A. Ward VC [WWII RAF]
- Landing On Mono Island [WWII]
- Mine Disposal [WWII]
- F/O L. A. Trigg VC [WWII RAF]
- Kiwi And Moa
- Prisoner Of The Japanese (digitised)
- Point 175 [WWII]
First Episode: Dick Travis V.C. 1959.
Opens with music theme and folk song [Tim Doolan?]. Description and dramatisation of life at the Travis family home, at Melrose Farm, Opotiki. His father, originally from Ireland, had been a Scout in the Armed Constabulary during the New Zealand Wars. As a young man Travis moved to Gisborne and then to Invercargill.
Then is a dramatisation of Travis winning a riding competition in Southland, and a function to farewell men joining the Otago Mounted Rifles. By November 1917 Sergeant Travis, DCM, MM was at Ypres.
Dramatisation of an officer explaining why Travis was an exception to many military formalities, and Travis scouting German positions. Travis was virtually given a roving commission on the front to go where he pleased and do what he liked. Newspaper headlines began to appear about him. When the Otago Mounted Rifles moved back from the frontline he would attach himself to another unit to stay near the front.
His citation for the Victoria Cross is then read and the events of the encounter are re-enacted. He was killed the next day at Rossignol Wood by a shell. The whole battalion attended his funeral. Digger Charles Darling describes the funeral [read from a letter].