ANZAC day
We have ANZAC day coming up on Tuesday, a day that has been important to many New Zealanders. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and commemorates the anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli, Turkey, on April 25, 1915. The soldiers in those forces became known as the ANZACs.
On this day, we remember all soldiers from all the wars that New Zealanders fought in. There won’t be any World War 1 veterans still alive and even Second World War veterans will be thin on numbers as it is nearly 80 years since that war ended.
However, my generation, who were born after the war, still remember our parents’ gratitude to those men who fought to keep our country free. Many of us had parents who fought in these wars too. My own father, who was an older man when he got married, fought in the First World War. He wasn’t in Gallipoli, rather, in other parts of Europe. He sustained two injuries, the first being a bullet to his head. He was shipped off to England to recuperate. They never removed that bullet and my father had a lump on his head for the rest of his life. Once well, he was sent back fighting and this time received a more severe injury when a bullet went through both of his thighs, sending him to the ground, unable to walk. He was lucky, in that a fellow soldier pulled him to safety. These were the physical scars but I am sure there would have been mental ones as well, perhaps a reason my father was so late in marrying.
When we were children, I used one of dad’s great coats, a big heavy woollen coat that was worn by the First World War soldiers, to keep warm. This hung on a hook at the bach we had, along with two others. Dad used to talk about life in the trenches now and again, although I know that other people never mentioned their time in the army.
My grandfather served in Gallipoli and wrote regular letters home, some of which are now in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington and a couple have even made it into a book, Letters from Gallipoli, edited by Glyn Harper.
Both of these men were kind and loving people. I was fortunate to have such wonderful male role models in my life. Whatever had gone down for them during those war years, didn’t affect their relationships with others or perhaps it enhanced them. I am sure these men, more than others, would have understood the fragility of life and the importance of family relationships.
My biggest memory of all of this, was accompanying dad to the dawn ANZAC day services as a child. I loved the hymn Abide With Me, which was sung at each service. I remember holding back the tears each year, caught up both with the beauty of this hymn and the emotion that was emanating from those around me. I don’t attend every service these days, but that does not take away my respect and memories for those who served our country.
During the one-hundred-year commemorations in 2015, of the landing at Gallipoli, they say many young people were present and there has been a resurgence of interest in this generation. I know my thoughts on this. I suspect many of these people would be the reincarnation of those fallen soldiers. My own son, Daniel, had memories as a small boy, of being shot out of a plane and drowning, which I assume would have been during World War Two. One of the things I don’t know about reincarnation is how long between lives, but I would suspect that there is no hard and fast rule, that sometimes we incarnate quickly, at other times, more slowly, depending on what our soul’s needs are. But regardless, I do believe that many of those soldiers are amongst us now.