Remembering those who died in service
April 25th, 2010 at 11:51 am by David FarrarI don’t think today’s generation can ever truly grasp the sacrifices made by previous generations. Today a single solider getting wounded in combat is a front page story.
How would we have coped with wars when the dead numbered not in single figures but in the tens of thousands. When not only did everyone lose someone they knew – everyone lost multiple friends and family.
So today I think of the following New Zealanders:
- The 6,500 who served and 229 who died in the Second Boer War
- The 103,000 who served (over 10% of our population) and 16,697 who died in WWI – the highest casualty rate of any country
- The 204,000 who served in WWII, and 11,625 killed – the highest casualty rate in the commonwealth
- The 1,300 who served in the Malayan conflict, and the 15 who died
- Those who served in the Indonesia-Malaysia conflict
- The 5,094 who served in Korea, and 33 who died
- The 3,890 who served in Vietnam, and 37 who died
- All others who have served
It is hard to comprehend having 42% of service age males, fighting overseas in a war, but that is what happened in WWI.
April 25th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
These people represent our nation, our pride and our heritage. So, what was their banner one must ask. It was nationalism, pride in their country and our flag. Pride in our country was foremost and confidence that the world needed to be free.
They were known everywhere and forever as Kiwi’s.
So when I hear socialists passing laws to restrict us as Kiwi’s then see those same socialists standing up and posturing about Kiwi’s at war , the hypocrisy becomes self evident.
When we debate about our flag and the various modern day attempts to create something branded it really becomes an insult to those that fought, died or returned in order that we can have a free country with personal freedoms.
Its a matter of pride and Nationalism and that flag should carry the Kiwi as its defining signature.
This from a family of war veterans and a VC winner in WW1 at Gallipoli. (albeit an Australian VC.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
I was at Boogie Wonderland club last night with mates till early morning (that was the only bar that opened late) and we went straight from there to Auckland Domain for the ANZAC service which is something that I commit to every year (ie, attending). Its always something that brings tears to my eyes when you attend a service to remember those who had fallen for the reason to protect my freedom as I enjoy today.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Viking, I assume you are referring to the National Socialist John Key and his posturing about ANZAC while
- Reducing democracy in Auckland
- Destroying democracy in Canterbury
- Turning NZ into a quasi plice state with his Search and
DestroySurveillance BillAre these the freedoms to which you refer?
PS – no one “wins” a VC. It is not a competition. It is awarded.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Today a single solider getting wounded in combat is a front page story. How would we have coped with wars when the dead numbered not in single figures but in the tens of thousands
Most governments coped by preventing the public from finding out about such losses through massive campaigns of propaganda and censorship. I’m not too familair with New Zealand media during wartime, but the Churchill-Atlee government’s control of the press was Orwellian in the literal sense that it inspired Eric Blair to write 1984 – I assume it was a similar deal back here.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Ours was much worse.
Let’s not forget that the Radio NZ news bulletin was approved in M.J. Savage’s office – and this was before the war.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Danyl the Dislecktic, the Dzliktk, or is it Derelict, posted at 12.30, in a digression from Anzac Day discussion:
Wikipedia points out this from Orwell’s (Blair’s) Collected essays :
Not a bad message for Anzac Day,eh?
Incidentally Danyl, apropos Orwell’s Animal Farm you might find interesting the following link to a Christopher Hitchens piece on Denis Dutton’s brilliant (what else would you expect from an ACT supporter) web site Arts and Letters Daily . The Hitchens article includes this:.
The link given by Arts and Letters Daily :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/christopher-hitchens-re-reads-animal-farm
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
dpf>It is hard to comprehend having 42% of service age males, fighting overseas in a war, but that is what happened in WWI.
If that was in todays terms that would be nearly 2 million service age males..
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
The most astonishing thing to me is the vast numbers who volunteered for WWII only 20 years after the carnage of WWI.
My dad, now 90, was one of them.
He and his mates enlisted for the adventure and the chance to see the world, even though his own uncle had been killed at Gallipoli after embarking on his own adventure 25 years earlier.
It’s hard to fathom that sort of attitude now. Either the reflexive patriotism, or the risking all in search of overseas travel.
But we must all be extremely grateful that they did it, and to the much-derided Americans, without whom New Zealand would now be a Japanese colony.
Dad spent the war in the Pacific. Although he’s the mildest-mannered of people, it was many years before he could bring himself to buy a Japanese car, such was the cruelty of the Japanese Army.
In the 1970s, towards the end of his career, he went to Japan on business and found his hosts to be charming.
Just last month we introduced him to our third Japanese exchange student, who again could not have been more pleasant.
It seems to be a characteristic of the most warlike nations that they morph into the most peaceloving – the Vikings became the Swedes, the Romans the Italians, the Mongols the Mongolians, the Egyptians and Greeks the… Egyptians and Greeks.
It makes you realise that if such cultured races as the Japanese and Germans can be whipped up into a state of frenzied savagery, the human race remains very much at risk from politico-religious brainwashing.
The Japanese and Germans may no longer be a threat, but the Islamic demagogues certainly are.
It seems to me there’s only one cure for the ongoing cycle of war, and that’s education.
For this, forums like this deserve huge credit.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
in today terms that would be 2 million men and 2 million women.
Vote:21 percent of each?
April 25th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
John Ansell said…
Dad spent the war in the Pacific. Although he’s the mildest-mannered of people, it was many years before he could bring himself to buy a Japanese car, such was the cruelty of the Japanese Army.
John, my grandad was involved in the campaign in the Solomon Isles. The small Tongan contingent that he was in at the time was attached to the US Marines, so they (Tongans) were fighting alongside the US Marines. Before the US setup army bases (to support the war supply in the Pacific) in the Isles (Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, etc…), NZ & Aussie officers were responsible for training the Islanders. When the US got involved in the war (after 2 years when it started), then they took over the training of the Islanders.
Jst curious, did you take your dad to the service at the domain this morning? Today is a day that belongs to them (ie, soldiers like your dad).
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
2 million men, 2 million women, and half a million feminists, who would put Al Qaeda right off their coming sexathon in heaven.
But what about all the oldies we are supposed to have in NZ? We might have 2 million males in NZ, but surely well under that number are of service age. Then of course there may be quarter of a million pacifists.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Kiwiblog poster John Masters, MC (” Colonel Masters”) is a featured guest on Maori TV’s Anzac Day programme. I think it’s at 8.30pm and is about the colonel’s reunion with the Gurkha NCO he saved during the confrontation with Indonesia.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
John A>it was many years before he could bring himself to buy a Japanese car, such was the cruelty of the Japanese Army
An ex of mine used to manage a backpackers in the UK and one of our regulars was a guy who had blown Lancasters in WW2. He was fine with Germans who he believed had only been doing their jobs trying to shoot him down. He could even joke with them… a young German asked him if he’d ever visited German and his response was “only to bomb the place” with a grin on his face. But he wouldn’t have anything to do with Americans, because they’d once landed at a US base after suffering some damage and the American ground staff had refused to help them unload the casualties because “they were on strike” apparently.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Cha and Brian
Thank you for sharing those stories on the GD thread. To me, they are the way to truly commemorate this day.
I have no such citations to share regarding my father’s service in WWII. His medals demonstrate where he served but no more. One year of combat in North Africa, ending on the barren ground of Sidi Rezigh in Libya. At that place his Bren Carrier was shot to pieces by a German Mark IV – how he escaped that even he could not say – and he was taken prisoner. His group, 24 Battalion, was wiped out and had to be completely rebuilt later.
Dad would not see any of that. Over the next four years he wended his way through Italian and German POW camps, escaping several times. One escape was by hiding in a truck-mounted water tank and he hid with Italian peasants, finding notices offering rewards for the capture of he and other escapees. His last escape came when he and other men found themselves being sent by train to Germany as Italy surrendered. They used a single spoon to unscrew part of the wagons’ side, and then simply dived out into the darkness as guards on top sprayed them with machine gun fire. Decades later I would still find him digging bits of gravel out of his hands. They joined up with Tito’s partisan groups in Yugoslavia, winding their way through deep snow in the mountains (he hated snow to his dying day – one reason I only went skiing in my 20′s), while German fighter planes hunted them. It was the stories from that time that held more horror for him than anything he saw in the desert.
He was recaptured when a hole in his back became too large and septic to allow him to go on. Somehow he avoided being shot outright, and recovered from blood poisoning in a German hospital before spending the last year of the war in Stalag IVB.
One of his letters to Mum from this camp contains a section in which he tries to explain what life might be like if he returns to marry her. Of all that he wrote and told me, it is the following few words that truly convey what had happened to him, but even so I cannot really imagine what it took to reduce my father to write of himself thus: I am not much of a man now……..
At that point he weighed 7stone, 5 pounds (103 pounds / 47kg’s) – down from his normal 12 stone 7 pounds (175 pounds / 79kgs).
The Red Army reached the camp in April 1945 but that was not liberation enough for Dad. Before they hit the place he broke into the commandants’ office (the Germans having run a day earlier) to pull his files. Before the war he had followed the show trials of Stalin and was under no illusions about the NKVD. He found the German filing system was the same used in the Detective Office where he had served before the war. He may not have been paranoid – after the war Stalag VIIB was used as a prison by the Soviets.
After riding with the Soviets for a while he and a mate listened, on a T34 command tank’s radio, to Churchill announcing VE day. They gleefuly informed the Russian commander that “War is over”, only to be chastened by the man’s response that “War is not over until Stalin says so”. My dad’s quiet response to his mate was: “We’re getting the hell out of this war before we find ourselves in another”.
They left that night, walking across 20 miles of countryside – still brimming with nervous, wary soldiers – to arrive in US lines the next morning. He arrived back in NZ two months later, filled with – as my Mum described it – ‘puppy fat’, from all the food and especially pineapple juice he had gorged on in England. He never left NZ again and had no desire to do so.
Dad was not one of those reticent soldiers; he told me many stories of the war (not the worst I’m sure), and he did not seem ‘wounded’. But he never attended, nor took me to, a single Anzac Day service.
In my case at least he probably did not need to – for I will remember.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
We should rightly remember those who died for today’s freedoms. We should also remember the horrors of war so that we think hard before entering new ones.
On the numbers who served, a combination of patriotism, a sense of adventure and a desire to see the world. On the death rate, something we can learn from. We let our armed services run down in peacetime, spending a lower percentage of GDP on defence than our allies. In wartime we pay for that in blood. I know we like to think of ourselves as pacifists, but the reality is that when the shit hits the fan nz will be there to do our bit. Our penny pinching in peace time is therefore stupid.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Imagine the world in the days off WWI & WWII, Going off to fight would be like the kids of today going to the moon. Very few people went on an OE for fun in those days. It was a mammoth task to travel to the other side of the world. Just imagine if the same thing happened today. Hell we can not even get an Air Force aeroplane to do a fly by for ANZAC day!!
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
We remember and pay tribute to those who served and especially those who died.
But we are unable to put their actions into context; let alone the reasons for their actions. Nor should we. It was a different time. The jingo-istic stuff that we cannot understand today was only one aspect – the great OE was another. Every time I attend a dawn service (and I did again today) I am reminded about that jingo-ism that remains just below the surface.
But today our communications are instantaneous and more difficult to control. In small skirmishes this means we have lower losses than in small skirmishes years ago. A small skirmish like the British Afghan invasion of 1839-42 is almost impossible (one person from 18,000 returned from that). But in another major war, public support would allow tight control again – may it never happen.
And could it happen again – certainly -history confirms it.
Lest we forget.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Sooty – we had a RNZAF Hercules do a fly past this morning right on day-break. I hope it didn’t disturb your sleep.
I suspect a lot of other centres also had one.
Also condolences to the families of those RNZAF staff that were killed this morning in the helicopter accident.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Died in Service.
The helicopter went down near Porirua and now four expired doing their service. Also in Melbourne an accident on the Parade.
Vote:Sad Anzac day. Condolences to the families here and Australia.
But in some ways good, lots of noise at Whenuapai this morning, usually they piss me off but today they woke me up at 0400 for a brilliant day. Slow old sluggers C130 Hercules but they do the job.
Good turnout at our local Glenfield Hall, families with all the kids. Navy, Scouts, Girl Guides and Pippins, Peanuts.
Small on a national standard but still they were there, and not a white poppy in sight.
I’ve been looking for white poppies and those selling them, they must have got the messege
April 25th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
There are some extremely interesting stories about family members in this thread, thanks to those who have posted.
My own memories are of my grandfather who came to NZ from the UK before WW2, when war was declared he signed up with the NZ army.
As kids always do we often asked him what he did during the war, he would only reply “I was a cook”, the other question often asked of returned service men by youngsters is “did you kill any Germans”, I can still vividly remember that my Grandfather never answered that one, he would remain silent, my grandmother would always usher us out of the house to play in the garden or find some other way of changing the subject if she heard us asking him about the war.
It was only years later, well after his death that we found out what he really did in the war, it seems that he was an infantry man, he signed up with four mates from his local football club, he was the only one of that group to return.
My own father tells me that he never spoke about it, the subject was taboo in his house when he was growing up, apparently grandfather would never make mention of it, in fact the only time they ever knew he had been in the war was when he dressed up for ANZAC day, my late Grandmother told me that he never missed a parade and (being a true Scotsman) never missed having a “wee dram” or two after the service, it was the only time any of his kids can remember him drinking.
Lest we forget…..
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
RIP for all those that fought so we could enjoy the freedoms we have today.
Vote:RIP also to the three young people from the Air Force who died today, such a tragedy…
April 25th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
My father was a horse breeder. In 1971 he went to England to buy a new stallion. The vendor (a Pom) had been a prisoner of the Japanese. The price of the horse was GBP50,000, but if he went to N.Z. it was GBP12,500, but the old man had to agree to pay the extra GBP37,500 if the horse ever went to Japan. That loathing for the Japanese was well ingrained on those English that had been on the Burma railroad.
Vote:The horse sired a Melbourne Cup winner in about 1979. Hyperno.
April 25th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
We still go where Britain goes
We will still fight for queen and country
We will always remember.
If they take the throne away, won’t we always fight with Britain
If they take the flag away, won’t we always fight with Britain
If they take the commonwealth away, won’t we always fight with Britain.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Another story. My grandfather fought in WW1 in Palestine. He was in the Waikato Mounted Rifles that was one of the units that battled there way from Suez to Damascus. Many of the units were Australian or New Zealand and comprised farm boys who were used to riding horses. He was involved in the last cavalry charge by the British with the charge on Beersheba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29 although I am not sure to what extent as the main component of this was Australian. I have his war record which also shows he was wounded three times and invalided once back to Cairo and twice back to Gaza. He died when I was 4 so I do not really remember him, but my grandmother and father told me some of his stories about floating/swimming in the Dead Sea, hating camels (they spit) etc. In WW2 he served as a Captain of the Home Guard.
His brother fought in Gallipoli and when that was over went to France. He was a trench digger which meant digging trenches in advance of the main lines – dangerous stuff. He was killed in France in 1917.
In the stories I can see both the adventure and reality of war.
Lest we forget.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
But he wouldn’t have anything to do with Americans, because they’d once landed at a US base after suffering some damage and the American ground staff had refused to help them unload the casualties because “they were on strike” apparently.
B U L L S H I T !!!!!
They would all have been shot if that was the case!
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
wikiriwhis business
It was Disraeli that said “Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.”
In today’s context that might mean that while we are “independent” we do retain our loyalties and traditions. Our ability to retain our multiple strands of tradition is what will stand us out as a nation. We are getting better at it.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Falufalu Fisi: No he didn’t. He doesn’t dwell on the war now, except to tell stories about the lighter side – swimming across a river then learning it was infested with crocodiles, pinching American beer, dodging American bombs (a bigger threat to life and limb than the Japanese apparently).
He’s mainly just grateful to be healthy at 90 when so many others didn’t make it to 25.
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
A fireman in London
Vote:Then Burma..
A survivor of Kohima. ( less than 200 )
Died in Starcross Mental Institute. ( In his 50′s )
Never did really know him.
April 25th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
We still go where Britain goes
We will still fight for queen and country
No.
We already choose our fights for ourselves, it’s got nothing to do with the queen or the flag.
Vote:We didn’t fight with Britain in Iraq. We didn’t follow them into WW II. We didn’t fight for them in Ireland.
April 25th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Shit, what a day! 3 services – 0400 start – too many bottles of port And whiskey- several thousand salutes! Off to
Vote:bed now, a shame ANZAC day was on a Sunday this year.
April 25th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
We didn’t follow them into WW II.
Um Pete – are you sure about that?
Vote:April 25th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
With gratitude for the past and confidence in the future we range ourselves without fear beside Britain. Where she goes, we go; where she stands, we stand. We are only a small and young nation, but we march with a union of hearts and souls to a common destiny.
Michael Joseph Savage two days after the official declaration of war on Germany by NZ – which coincidentally was only three hours after Britain!
Vote:April 26th, 2010 at 7:49 am
Its the 25th here in the US so apologies for late posting on this thread.
My grandfather served as a padre in the British Army (he was an Orangeman from Ulster). He decided to stay with the troops that held the perimeter at Dunkirk in France as the British desperately evacuated the bulk of their Expeditionary Force that had fought in France. He was captured and spent the duration of the war in German POW camps including the famous Stalag Luft III site of the two famous escapes that became classic films “The Great Escape” and “The Wooden Horse”. Grandpa was invited to be part of the first 100 escapees (only 76 made it out of the tunnel) but opted to stay behind as he was the sole camp padre/chaplain. He is also mentioned by name in Eric Wiliams book “The Wooden Horse”. Being in an airman’s prison he came to closely know a number of famous British fliers and when we lived in England for a year as children, I recall him going to London regularly for former RAF aces funerals. He befriended Airey Neave as they were captured at the same time in France and he attended his state funeral (Neave went on to be a Conservative MP and was killed in an IRA car bomb in 1979). Neave was one of only 3 British officers to successfully return to Britain after escaping from the notorious Colditz castle.
I honour his and so many others service and give grateful thanks for all who were and are willing to give their lives for freedom and democracy.
Vote:April 26th, 2010 at 8:30 am
Notice how thge socialist can’t take their hand for even one day. thats why you didn’t get to soil a memorial post on my side leftrightout. You people can;t show the slightest elementary degree of respoect for better people than you will ever be.
You couldn;t take out flag, you couldn’t take out monarch and you couldn’t make us buy white poppies. ANZAC Day is why and there is more of us than there is of you.
You are free to be what you want to be, what you’ve done with that freedom is pretty sad.
Vote:April 26th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Another (albeit belated) WWII story.
Grandad Was a bandmaster in the Royal Marines, based in portsmouth he was eventually assigned in 1939 to HMS Exeter. The war was something that Grandad never spoke of, but a few years before his passing, my uncle convinced him to pen what would eventually become his memoirs. We all knew He was on the Exeter in the battle of the river plate, but I never knew what exactly he did, or really even the significance of the battle.
Being a bandmaster, he had two Vital roles on the Exeter, First and foremost, he and his fellow musicians were deep in the ship, inputting data to the weapons control systems, ensuring that during engagement, Exeters 8″ Guns hit their target of the Admiral Graf Spee. Grandad mentions that at one point when they recieved a direct hit, The rivets holding the walls of the room together expanded, showering them with oil which was surrounding the room.
His next role was that of first aid. Grandad remarks that as they limped away from battle, he looked at his watch and it was 7am. The next time he had a chance to look at his watch it was 7pm, and they still had many wounded and dead to care for. Broken limbs, flesh wounds, you name it. The order of the day was carnage.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_River_Plate):
Exeter limped off to the falklands for repairs to both the ship and the ships wounded. It was here that Grandad Met a Lovely young lady who would follow him to the other side of the world and become his Wife. My Grandmother. Which makes me a direct product of War.
For me, Apr 25th and Dec 13th are days of remembrance of the sacrifice and hell these boys went through for us, their Children, Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren.
Vote: