April 25 is ANZAC day when servicemen & women are remembered.
All starting 1915 from the disaster at Gallipoli where so many were lost in an attempt to make landfall on Turkey during WWI.
During the intervening years, ANZAC Day commemorates, remembers and honours the fallen, the wounded, the returned of all conflicts that New Zealand has been involved in. The day also recalls the involvement of the whole country and the sacrifices made during those conflicts.
I was born late in 1943 and it is glib to say, 'at the tail end of the war' because there was a lot of death and destruction before it was all over.
In my early years, I have no memory of the war or the shortages it create in family life. I do remember sharing some dried fruit with a mate, being found out and receiving a swat from my mother! She was probably saving the fruit for a special cake, and no doubt she had difficulty in replacing it - maybe she couldn't.
I recall talk of 'coupons' for food and other goods that were short - sugar. And especially my father referring to England as 'the old country' or simply 'home' even though he was never there.
At the age of eight, I joined Cubs and progressed through to Scouts. Lord Baden Powell based the organization on the military and we saluted the Union Jack as well as the New Zealand flag.
Prior to ANZAC day we would go door-knocking throughout the district with poppies to sell. It was almost an offense to return with unsold poppies!
Of course we would parade for the dawn service on ANZAC Day with the two flags. Always it seemed to be a frosty morning!
In those early days radio seemed to play sombre music but later interviewed veterans in the homes and hospital where they waited for God.
I found the military style of Scouts to be a joy, but at secondary school - Straven Academy for Young Gentlemen : ok, Christchurch Boy's High School - I found Cadets to somewhat more harsh! We dressed in 'sandpaper suits' and at the height of summer for a week, we learned parade drill and rifle drills.
We did not understand the wider implication of this - post war, the nation's youth needed to be prepared for another conflict and who could predict where the Korean War was headed?
So there was wisdom in the training we were given. And it did us more good than harm!
Then on to the New Zealand Forest Service in 1962, and thinking back, a lot of the equipment was ex-army (or military) even myself, I would go to ex-army stores to buy my clothes!
I have retained a military compass and abney level - in leather bound cases - and a survey chain. Also a pair on non-focusing binoculars with the government broad arrow on them - the arrow is dulled white maybe ivory.
We used ex-army .303 rifles for 'deer culling' and I have seen what those ex-army bullets do to meat and bone! This to me is the real horror of war! But it was not only bullets there were bayonets, grenades, mines, artillery and bombs!
I felt empathy when I shot a deer! How would I react to my mates being shot or blown up?
I have always maintained that politics is a dirty business, and politically, to get people to fight, you have to dispense propaganda, but once in the line, seeing your mates being shot/blown up brings out a hatred that propaganda cannot hope to engender, of course at the end of conflict it takes a long time for those emotions to fade away.
We had a good diet of war movies that, in a way were propaganda to encourage nationalism and I guess we remembered the actors more than the heroes - Kenneth Moore, Alan Ladd.
Home from the movie, we acted them out as kids do.
But with age, and sitting on a tractor, or planting a tree, the mind works and I wonder of the pain and suffering through countless wars over the years. How and why various leaders brought their populations to the brink of war. And certainly some of them needed to be halted.
The two main combatants that New Zealand has confronted are Germany and Japan. Both nations are small dots on the globe, yet they thought they could defeat the rest.
And it goes on - and it seems, sanity does not prevail.
But ANZAC's? We will remember them!
I was born late in 1943 and it is glib to say, 'at the tail end of the war' because there was a lot of death and destruction before it was all over.
In my early years, I have no memory of the war or the shortages it create in family life. I do remember sharing some dried fruit with a mate, being found out and receiving a swat from my mother! She was probably saving the fruit for a special cake, and no doubt she had difficulty in replacing it - maybe she couldn't.
I recall talk of 'coupons' for food and other goods that were short - sugar. And especially my father referring to England as 'the old country' or simply 'home' even though he was never there.
At the age of eight, I joined Cubs and progressed through to Scouts. Lord Baden Powell based the organization on the military and we saluted the Union Jack as well as the New Zealand flag.
Prior to ANZAC day we would go door-knocking throughout the district with poppies to sell. It was almost an offense to return with unsold poppies!
Of course we would parade for the dawn service on ANZAC Day with the two flags. Always it seemed to be a frosty morning!
In those early days radio seemed to play sombre music but later interviewed veterans in the homes and hospital where they waited for God.
I found the military style of Scouts to be a joy, but at secondary school - Straven Academy for Young Gentlemen : ok, Christchurch Boy's High School - I found Cadets to somewhat more harsh! We dressed in 'sandpaper suits' and at the height of summer for a week, we learned parade drill and rifle drills.
We did not understand the wider implication of this - post war, the nation's youth needed to be prepared for another conflict and who could predict where the Korean War was headed?
So there was wisdom in the training we were given. And it did us more good than harm!
Then on to the New Zealand Forest Service in 1962, and thinking back, a lot of the equipment was ex-army (or military) even myself, I would go to ex-army stores to buy my clothes!
I have retained a military compass and abney level - in leather bound cases - and a survey chain. Also a pair on non-focusing binoculars with the government broad arrow on them - the arrow is dulled white maybe ivory.
We used ex-army .303 rifles for 'deer culling' and I have seen what those ex-army bullets do to meat and bone! This to me is the real horror of war! But it was not only bullets there were bayonets, grenades, mines, artillery and bombs!
I felt empathy when I shot a deer! How would I react to my mates being shot or blown up?
I have always maintained that politics is a dirty business, and politically, to get people to fight, you have to dispense propaganda, but once in the line, seeing your mates being shot/blown up brings out a hatred that propaganda cannot hope to engender, of course at the end of conflict it takes a long time for those emotions to fade away.
We had a good diet of war movies that, in a way were propaganda to encourage nationalism and I guess we remembered the actors more than the heroes - Kenneth Moore, Alan Ladd.
Home from the movie, we acted them out as kids do.
But with age, and sitting on a tractor, or planting a tree, the mind works and I wonder of the pain and suffering through countless wars over the years. How and why various leaders brought their populations to the brink of war. And certainly some of them needed to be halted.
The two main combatants that New Zealand has confronted are Germany and Japan. Both nations are small dots on the globe, yet they thought they could defeat the rest.
And it goes on - and it seems, sanity does not prevail.
But ANZAC's? We will remember them!
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