ANZAC Day 2008. One year on from the messy Valerie Morse protest, where she burnt a New Zealand flag as protest against New Zealand’s involvement in armed conflict.
Today I was at the dawn service. There were no protests. It was a solemn service of remembrance. As it should be, and as ANZAC day has always been.
I cannot think of a time, at primary school, high school or university, where I have ever been taught or told that ANZAC day glorifies war, conflict and violence in any way. I remember veterans coming to schools around ANZAC time and relating stories to us about the horrors and atrocities of war, about the friends they lost, about the physical and emotional wounds they suffered. I could not think of a better advert against war.
In my 6th form year of high school, one major thing happened to me as a person. My grandfather, Derek Hay was diagnosed with dementia. This happened after he suffered a stroke during a hip operation. One day after I returned home from school I got a call to say that Poppa had had fall, and that I should come over and help Grandma. When I got there Poppa was having a flash back from his service years. Suddenly we were transported back to some battlefield in South East Asia, I was no longer Jackson, but a brother in arms. Poppa was calling for more ammunition and that he was wounded. Whizz bangs where going off around us, and suddenly I transmogrified into a Jap…
This was the first and only time I heard anything like this from my grandfather. He didn’t talk about the experiences he had to anyone. Not my mother, uncles, or his wife Joan. He did however always instil a sense of proprietary into me that we should honour those of us who fought to keep NZ free, and that we should never ever glorify war.
I have heard one person in particular talking about how her grandfather would never go to the RSA because he didn’t want to hear all of the other vets talking about the war. I counter that if he had ever gone, and if he was to go to the RSA today, the atmosphere he would have walked into was one of underlying lament and sorrow. No NZ veteran I have ever talked to, be that my grandfathers, great uncles, the oldies they carted around to schools, old boys of my high school, has glorified war, and has only ever regretted that New Zealand continues involvement in armed conflict.
I have heard another person say that ANZAC day covers up the atrocities that New Zealand troops committed during their tours. This may be true, but then again there are 364 other days of the year that we can bring these to light. New Zealand troops were no angels; to think they were angelic soldiers doing God’s work is a misapprehension only people with the most puerile understanding of NZ history operate under. Just because those atrocities go unspoken, does not mean that they are not acknowledged. If anything the silence about them shows our shame as a nation. The point is that ANZAC day has and always will be about remembering those who died, and what they died for, as Anand Satyanand said today:
“The young men and women whose sacrifice we honour today died to preserve freedom of speech and the right to choose our representatives in free and fair elections.”
So protest ANZAC day if you are ignorant, if you are disrespectful. If you’re so wrapped up in your own parochial schema that you cannot see that you are offending the 99% of New Zealanders who do care about our shared identity, who care about the memories of our relatives, friends and neighbours.
What we should be doing is protesting against people who express thoughts like this:
“People are dying because our gutless government refuses to use the full brunt of our military to enforce peace in this world!!!!! COWARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our NATO brothers are fighting in a war we should be a part of yet all we do is send engineers, we have the military strength whgy not bloody use it!!!!! We didnt by LAVIII’s to have them drive around the country side looking pretty, our boys are chomping at the bit to go smash some Taliban ASS!!!! Hopefully John Key will have more balls!!!! “
as well as people who express thoughts like this:
“Some of us will use the commemoration it to articulate the pointlessness of all that death in the first place; we’ll use it to argue that we should work towards removing such killings.”
and:
“I have protested ANZAC day, peacefully and intelligently, many times…
We protest for the women and children who are the “collatoral [sic] damage” imposed by the US forces and their allies, civillians who did not engage in war, were not contracted to any armed forces, yet who have died in their hundreds of thousands; while the USA is up to a count of some four thousand military casualties, enough that US citizens are calling for the troops to be brought back from a war that they can’t win.”
So I say to people who sit on divergent sides of the spectrum, you are both dangerous for New Zealand. You both express views that are out of touch with the actual meaning of the day. No matter how much politics and history you read you are dislocated from our New Zealand identity, and the spirit in which we celebrate ANZAC day. You both annoy me with your petulant attitudes. You do no good to either side of your argument. You both forget one of the main messages that that is said at ANZAC day, a message that is inscribed on most cenotaphs, memorials and tombstones: “Lest we forget.”
And forget, I will not.