Reflections on ANZAC Day
Yesterday my eldest and I attended the dawn service held outside the Auckland War Memorial Museum. An early start, to be sure, and cold, but there was no wind and the sky was mostly clear. The prior day had seen heavy rain all through the night and into the morning, so we were thankful the bad weather had cleared and we did not require umbrellas and raincoats.
This was the first time she had attended a commemoration on ANZAC Day, and the first time in several years that I had been, too. It was a special moment to spend that time with her, to teach her stand patiently while the crowds gathered, to help her understand the meaning behind the events and symbolism of the ceremony, and to watch the dawn break over the harbour. There was a flyover of two WW2-era fighters in formation near the conclusion of the service, and later that morning there was a flyover of the city by five planes (this time T6 Harvards out of Ardmore) which we could view from our balcony.
When I was growing up, my parents would take me to the parade at Stockade Hill, where seemingly great crowds of people would gather. The mood would be solemn, the people quiet, unlike any other gathering we attended. The weather did not change the underlying sense of the seriousness of the occasion, a fine day which should have lifted the spirits of a young boy, freed from the clutches of the classroom for a day.
On particular year sticks in my mind, and I always recall it when thinking about ANZAC Day, or the veterens who are no longer with us, my own grandparents among them. I do not remember with certainty which year was, but it could well have been 1995, the 80th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. Or it may have been an earlier year — ah the vagaries of childhood memory!
The parade began with the oldest first, those who served in the First World War. By this anniversary their ranks had been decimated by the ravages of age and disease — there were perhaps a dozen of them — and most of those required the assistance of a chair or stick. These agèd men seemed most distant from the perspective of my young mind, as none of my own family from that generation were still with us. These remnants carried with them the last personal experience of events, and indeed a world and way of life, which was soon to pass from memory into history.
Next came the veterens of the Second World War, at this time still a large contingient, of besuited men heavy with medals, still sprightly in comparison to those who had come before them. They were of the same age as my own grandfather, who had joined the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force as war broke out in 1939, and wasn't to return home for almost six years. I recall asking my parents why granpa did not participate in the commemorations as many others did, and received the response that perhaps it brough back memories he would rather not dwell on.
Following them came small groups of every younger men — the veterens of Korea, Malaya, Borneo, and finally Vietnam. This last group were still middle-aged at this time, and marched well as if they had been only yesterday drilled on the parade ground. My memory has them in a brown uniform, but I don't know if this is correct, or if I have mixed them up with a subsequent group of active service personnel.
As I have grown older, I have become more cognisant of what ANZAC Day commemorations would have meant to preceding generations whose "flower of youth" (cf. Homer, The Iliad) was cut down by the advent of mechanised warfare. When I was a young boy attending those ANZAC Day services, I could not conceive of myself as one of those old men leading the parade. In my naïvety I did not understand the depth of loss which would be experienced when a father, a son, a brother, a husband, or a comrade went to war and did not return.
In the years that have passed, reading the experiences of those who lived through wartime has given me the chance to get a small insight into the suffering of the generations who lived through the all encompassing world wars. Our personalities, our beliefs, and our understanding of our place in the arc of history, are formed not just by what we are explicitly taught as children, but also by exposure to the thoughts and experiences of others. Some writings, I believe, are so influential on the moral character of young people — and adults! — that they should be part of the required reading canon in school.
Chief amongst these works is Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. I happened upon this book when in a secondhand bookstore in Wellington on Labour weekend in 2020, and I felt like I must purchase it. I regret only that I had not read it earlier. She writes unapologetically as a pacifist in the 1930s — she never wishes to see the sacrifices required by total war to be repeated, and would convince us of the same. This book was still fresh in my mind as the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022, and I couldn't help but to draw parallels between the suffering of Brittain's generation and the people in Ukraine (and Russia) today. If you have not yet read this book, I highly recommend it.
This year I learnt that the famous stanza from Laurence Binyon was published as part of a poem only seven weeks after the beginning of the war in 1914:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Inconceivably many more were to fall before the guns fell silent.