The quintessential Anzac Day experience

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, May 6.)

Drive east from Masterton toward the Wairarapa coast and you come across a charming country village called Tinui. It was here that my wife and I attended an Anzac Day service on the centenary of the Gallipoli landings.

The April 25 pilgrimage to Tinui has become an annual ritual for us, not because of any deep personal connection, but because in many ways it’s the quintessential Anzac Day experience.

It also has historical significance. The Rev Basil Ashcroft held a service in Tinui’s pretty little Anglican church (still in use) at 7.30am on August 25, 1916 in honour of seven young local men who had lost their lives at Gallipoli. It’s claimed to have been the first-ever Anzac Day commemoration.

So here we are in brilliant autumn sunshine, several hundred of us – the crowd gets bigger every year – filling the road outside the Tinui hall. Many others take up vantage points on a tree-shaded bank opposite.

A pipe band leads a small parade up the quiet country road from where the Tinui pub, now downsized to a café, used to stand at the turnoff to Castlepoint.

Local schoolchildren stand in front of the war memorial and recite the names of the 48 men from the surrounding district who died in the two world wars – 36 in World War I and 12 in the 1939-45 war.

Among those killed in the 1914-18 war were two lots of three men with the same surnames, which gives some insight into the devastating impact the war must have had on what was then an isolated farming community.

One of those named is Private J R (Jack) Dunn, who was sentenced to be shot at Gallipoli for falling asleep on sentry duty. By modern standards it seems unthinkable, but a different military ethos applied then. (To its credit, Australia refused to let its soldiers be executed by the British, but New Zealand deferred to its former colonial masters.)

Dunn was subsequently reprieved by British general Sir Ian Hamilton but died anyway in the bloody assault on Chunuk Bair only three days later. His body was never recovered.

Someone from the military always gives a speech at Tinui and this year it’s retired sergeant major Bob Davies, a Vietnam veteran who rose to become the New Zealand army’s top non-commissioned officer.

An imposing man of classic military bearing, Davies gives an authoritative account of New Zealand’s involvement in foreign conflicts. It’s not a political speech but in passing, he makes a significant point.

One of the reasons New Zealand had a disproportionately high casualty rate in World War II, Davies says, was that the defence forces had been run down after World War I and we were unprepared. I couldn’t help wondering whether we’re in a similar predicament today.

We sing the national anthem in Maori and English and listen to a Bible reading in which St Paul enjoined the Ephesians to put on the full armour of God so that when the day of evil came, they would be able to stand their ground.

“Stand firm then,” Paul wrote, “with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,  and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”

Paul has always struck me as a bit of a prig, but he could string words together -- you have to give him that.

The stirring hymn How Great Thou Art follows, after which we recite the time-honoured words from Laurence Binyon’s poem For the Fallen. Then we’re introduced to a song that’s new to me. Called Honour the Dead, it’s sung to the tune of Abide with Me and includes a verse honouring conscientious objectors – something that would have been inconceivable a generation ago.

I applaud the gesture of respect to the “conchies”, many of whom were men of great moral courage, but the words – written by the prolific New Zealand hymn writer Shirley Murray – are too hand-wringingly mawkish for my taste.

The crowd watches in solemn silence as wreaths are laid. Then the Last Post is played and right on cue, three vintage World War I aircraft from Sir Peter Jackson’s collection at Hood Aerodrome in Masterton come into view over a nearby hilltop and fly overhead.

All this is accompanied by the warbling of tuis in the trees above the road. It’s lump-in-the-throat stuff, and all the more so because of the idyllic setting. The men who left this peaceful valley in 1914 could have had little idea of the bloody maelstrom awaiting them.

Afterwards everyone gathers in the hall for a superb Kiwi morning tea (mince savouries, club sandwiches, asparagus rolls) prepared by the local Women’s Institute. Those feeling energetic can then climb to the top of nearby Mt Maunsell, where a small party led by the Rev Ashcroft installed an Anzac memorial cross in 1916. A cross still stands there, on a rocky outcrop high above the valley, though it’s not the original one.

They’re expecting a big crowd next year for Tinui’s 100^th Anzac Day service. Needless to say, I intend to be there.

Did we overlook something on Anzac Day?

(First published in The Dominion Post, May 1.)

Something was missing amid the outpouring of sentiment surrounding the Gallipoli centenary.

Go back 30 years, and Anzac Day was often an occasion for debate about the state of the armed forces.

The Returned Services Association was then still an influential voice. Its leaders were men who had served in World War II. They consistently sounded warnings about the dangers of running down our defence capability.

My generation – the generation that marched against the Vietnam War – dismissed them as crusty old reactionaries. But the veterans in the RSA had personally experienced the consequences of being thrust into war ill-prepared.

Defence spending had been greatly reduced after World War I, the so-called war to end all wars. It’s now widely accepted among military historians that our lack of preparedness was one reason why New Zealand forces had such a high casualty rate – twice that of Australia – in World War II. So how’s our preparedness today?

We got rid of our combat aircraft in the early 2000s. The mainstays of our air force, the Orion and Hercules aircraft, date from the 1960s; they’re contemporaries of the Morris 1100.

Admittedly we have a relatively modern, if small, naval fleet and the army has progressively upgraded its vehicles, although the suitability of the replacements remains a subject of fierce debate.

But by world standards our defence spending is low: just 1 per cent of GDP, compared with Australia (1.6 per cent), Britain (2.2) and the United States (3.8). All four countries have cut defence spending in recent years, but New Zealand’s commitment has consistently been far weaker than that of its friends.

Combat has become a disreputable word, as opposition to the current Iraqi deployment shows.

As long as it’s safely distanced by history, as with Gallipoli, war seems acceptable, even noble, but we prefer our modern defence force to be cuddly and non-threatening. It exists chiefly to monitor truces, conduct fisheries patrols and occasionally locate lost Tokelauan fishermen.

New Zealand defence personnel are internationally acclaimed for the work they do, but no one should kid themselves that they’re capable of defending us against attack. For that we would have to rely on our friends, principally Australia and the United States.

How has this come about? For one thing, there has been a generational change in politics. The baton passed from politicians with first-hand experience of war – men like Jack Marshall and Robert Muldoon – to the idealists of the protest generation.

The RSA has lost its clout as its numbers have thinned, so there’s no one to harass the government on defence issues.

In any case, spending on defence has never been a vote winner. It becomes important only when the country’s security is at risk.

It doesn’t help that defence equipment is eye-wateringly expensive. A single Boeing Globemaster, one of the planes being touted as a replacement for the venerable Hercules, costs $300 million.

The government spent $650 million buying 105 light armoured vehicles in 2001 – a crazy decision – and only 11 have been deployed in combat (in Afghanistan, where they proved unsuitable).

Politicians find it hard to justify that sort of expense, especially when vociferous lobby groups are clamouring for more spending on health, education and welfare.

But defence spending has been compared with buying an insurance policy. It’s something you do even when you hope it won’t be necessary. And if we expect other countries to help us in a crisis, they’re surely entitled to expect that we’ll pull our weight proportionately.

A symbolic turning point was the Labour government’s decision in 2001 to scrap the air force’s combat wing. Justifying that decision, Helen Clark famously said that we lived in an “incredibly benign strategic environment”.

Five months later, al-Qaeda launched its attacks on the United States and the world was spectacularly destabilised overnight.

How does Clark’s assessment stack up today? The Middle East is a seething cauldron. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is back to its aggressive Cold War ways, flexing its muscles over the North Sea as well as in Ukraine.

Tension between China and a nationalistic, militarily resurgent Japan has risen to dangerous levels and the North Korean despot Kim Jong-un has nuclear missiles that he may just be mad enough to use.

Benign? Hardly. But Anzac Day has come and gone, and with it an opportunity for a useful discussion about defence. Clearly, we're more comfortable wallowing in sentiment over the conflicts of the past than with the troublesome realities of the here and now.

 

 

Ordinary men who did extraordinary things

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, April 22.)

I recently watched several episodes of the National Geographic documentary series Last War Heroes. The programmes covered the decisive period of World War II from the D-Day invasion of Normandy to the arrival of Allied forces in Berlin, the black heart of the Third Reich.

The title might give the impression that the series glorified war, but no. It was unflinchingly honest in its depiction of what war was really like.

In addition to the terror and tension of combat, soldiers had to endure bitter cold, hunger and even boredom. We tend to think of the Allied advance into Germany in 1944 as a triumphant, unstoppable roll, almost a jaunt, but it was nothing of the sort.

German resistance was fierce and GIs, soldiers in the best-equipped and technologically most advanced army in history, sometimes lacked adequate food, ammunition and clothing.

Then there were the unspeakable sights that nothing could have prepared these men for, such as the heaps of pitifully emaciated bodies in the concentration camps they liberated. One piece of stomach-churning footage showed a bulldozer pushing a jumble of naked corpses into a mass grave – proof that, at its worst, war is about the shredding of the last vestige of human dignity.

The series followed a familiar format: interviews with former soldiers and airmen, interspersed with film footage from the war. But it was the interviews that made far the greater impression.

There was a quiet dignity about these men – Americans, Canadians and British – as they recalled their wartime experiences. There were no big egos, no wallowing in glory. If anything, the tone of the interviews was one of sorrow and melancholy.

These were ordinary men who had experienced unimaginably awful things and been left deeply affected. The contrast with the crass heroics of Hollywood war movies couldn’t have been more marked.

I have noticed the same quality in documentaries featuring New Zealand veterans, including those of the Maori Battalion; softly-spoken men whose quiet humility gave no clue to their formidable reputation as soldiers. To see these noble old men shedding unashamed tears over the graves of former comrades in faraway countries is profoundly moving.

With every year, fewer of these veterans survive. It can’t be long before the last one goes. But throughout New Zealand, thousands will turn out on Anzac Day to solemnly honour them.

This is an extraordinary turnaround after the 1960s and 70s, when people of my generation – the Vietnam War protest generation – were inclined to view the Returned Services’ Association and all its members as crusty, reactionary old warmongers.

Anti-war sentiment was so strong then that soldiers who served in Vietnam almost had to skulk back into the country in secret for fear of ostracism and abuse.

Shamefully, they got very little support from the government that had sent them to fight. It wasn’t until decades later that those Vietnam veterans felt confident enough to march in the streets and reclaim their history.

Now, even people who were active in the anti-Vietnam protest movement are likely to turn up at Anzac Day commemorations with their grandkids. We’ve mellowed with age and become a bit less judgmental in our understanding of the past.

What we can probably never fully understand is what impelled men to enlist for military service in the two world wars, knowing their lives might be placed at risk. It’s harder still to grasp what inspired ordinary New Zealanders – bank tellers, farmers, labourers, clerks – to behave with extraordinary bravery on the battlefield, as many thousands did; to face enemy fire knowing their next breath could be their last.

I have never entirely bought the idea that they went to war to preserve freedom and democracy. That seems a convenient modern spin to put on it.

I suspect that to many soldiers, especially in World War I, freedom and democracy were probably abstract concepts. More likely they were fighting for king and country out of a simple sense of patriotic duty.

Very few in World War I were likely to have understood the complex dynamics and power plays that precipitated the war. But what soldiers in both world wars would have comprehended was that the British Empire, of which they were part, was under threat.

No doubt a desire for adventure and travel, opportunities not widely available in the first half of the 20^th century, would have been an additional incentive to enlist. But their sense of duty and loyalty, values which sound quaintly anachronistic now, would have been the crucial motivator.

That leaves the other question that probably only men who served can answer. What gave them the courage, resilience and determination not only to endure the trauma of the battlefield, but to face death with apparent equanimity when every instinct must have screamed at them to cower in a foxhole or turn and run?

An American veteran in Last War Heroes may have supplied the answer. “The greatest fear for me,” he said, “was to let my friends down.”

In other words, they drew strength and courage from each other. It’s something known as esprit de corps, and probably the only men who really know what it means are those who depended on each other for their lives.

Tiny Tinui paid a high price for patriotism

(First published in The Dominion Post, May 3.)

SHORT OF Gallipoli itself, or perhaps the famous Menin Gate in  Ypres, there can be no better place to observe Anzac Day than the charming rural settlement of Tinui, in the Wairarapa.

Several things make Tinui perfect. First, it’s an enchanting little place, tucked away in a pretty valley and proudly preserved to look much as it would have decades ago. Even the original village jail is still intact.

Second, Tinui has profound historical significance. It was there that the world's first Anzac Day ceremony was held in 1916, when Anglican vicar the Rev Basil Ashcroft held a service in the tiny Church of the Good Shepherd (still in use) before leading a procession up nearby Mt Maunsell to erect a permanent memorial.

A cross stands on the hilltop still, though the original wooden one had to be replaced in 1965 after being battered once too often by the wind. It has become traditional for people to climb the steep track to the cross after attending the Anzac Day service at the Tinui Memorial Hall, where the local women’s institute provides a classic country morning tea: asparagus rolls, bacon and egg pie, club sandwiches and, naturally, Anzac biscuits.

But perhaps the most striking thing about Anzac Day at Tinui is that it brings home, in a way few other places can, the human impact that the two world wars had on small communities.

As part of the service, schoolchildren stand in front of the war memorial and recite the names of the men who went away and never came back. Thirty-six locals died in World War One, including seven at Gallipoli, and 12 in World War Two.

It’s hard to imagine the impact those losses must have had in a small, isolated rural community. Among those killed in the 1914-18 war were two lots of three brothers.

Masterton mayor Garry Daniell told me after last week’s service that many farms in the Tinui district were run by strong, matriarchal women who, when the menfolk failed to come home, rolled up their sleeves and took over.

He also recalled that as a boy aged about 10, he met a local spinster who mentioned that her husband had died in the war. When the inquisitive young Daniell asked his name, she answered: “I don’t know. I never met him” – a poignant way of explaining that marriage was denied her because the war took the lives of so many eligible local men.

* * *

ONCE AGAIN, Radio New Zealand has debased the word “debate”.

It’s currently broadcasting what it calls a series of “debates” on the current review of New Zealand’s constitution. But they are nothing of the sort. 

They are cosy consensus sessions featuring safe speakers who can be counted on to agree broadly on the key issues. While the participants are learned and articulate, it’s dishonest to pretend these affairs are a genuine contest of ideas.

They are a sham, creating the misleading impression that the highly contentious issues under discussion – such as the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our constitutional arrangements – are largely settled.

The only hint of dissent comes in the few minutes allocated for questions at the end, when one or two brave souls have the temerity to ask pointed questions – such as whether the speakers favour a society in which rights are allocated on the basis of race.

Even my left-wing fellow columnist Chris Trotter is appalled, pointing out that there are plenty of people willing and able to challenge the politically correct orthodoxy of the “debaters”. (Ironically, the same Chris Trotter recently denounced me for suggesting some Radio New Zealand programmes were biased. Perhaps he has had a change of heart.)

This charade closely follows a series of pretend “debates” on the Treaty, also broadcast by Radio New Zealand, to which I referred in an earlier column. The state broadcaster and Victoria University, whose Centre for Public Law organised the events (and stacked the panels with its own academics), should be ashamed. It is a misuse of power – nothing less.

* * *

FASHION, both female and male, is a source of endless amusement.

I keep a close eye on the fashion pages and can pronounce that for women, the frumpy look is "in" this winter. Shapeless clothes designed to disguise the female form are big, along with colour combinations that appear to have been thrown together in the dark.

Stick-thin models continue to predominate, with the added requirement that they must now be pigeon-toed.

For men, the desired look this season is suits that appear at least one size too small, making the wearers look like schoolboys who have put on a sudden growth spurt.  Designers have gone the American way, opting for trousers that end at least an inch above the ankles.

And as always, the most ludicrous examples are the most expensive.

 

ANZAC DAY AT TINUI

It’s hard to imagine a more pleasant or appropriate place to observe Anzac Day than the charming little village of Tinui.

It was here, 40 minutes’ drive east of Masterton on the Castlepoint road, that the world's first Anzac Day ceremony was held in 1916, when Anglican vicar the Rev Basil Ashcroft held a service in the tiny Church of the Good Shepherd (still in use) before leading a procession up nearby Mt Maunsell to erect a permanent memorial.

But that’s not the only quality that makes Tinui a special place in which to remember New Zealand’s war dead. The picture-book setting also provides an idyllic backdrop, since the little settlement has been proudly preserved largely as it might have looked 90 years ago.

Tinui was then the centre of a prosperous farming area, and it must be a very long time since it last experienced the sort of crowd that gathered in front of the war memorial hall yesterday. I estimated the number (very roughly) at about 1000, ranging from small children – there were lots of family groups – to gnarled old veterans in blazers and berets.

The service was simple but moving. We stood in brilliant sunshine as local schoolchildren recited the names displayed on the small memorial in front of the hall. Thirty-six locals died in the First World War and 12 in the Second.

It’s hard to imagine the impact these deaths must have had in what was then a remote, sparsely populated area. Among those killed in the 1914-18 war were two lots of three men with the same surnames – cousins if not brothers.

Emily Wellbrock of Tinui led the crowd in the singing of the national anthem, in Maori and English. A chorus of tuis in a clump of kanuka trees across the road obligingly chimed in.

We sang a couple of hymns too, accompanied by Mrs Val Mellish on a piano that had been wheeled out into the sunshine.

Colonel Paul Curry of the Royal New Zealand Engineers delivered a thoughtful speech in which he reminded us that Gallipoli, although not a military victory, was a triumph of valour. He acknowledged that the Turks had made an immense sacrifice too, and pointed out that Gallipoli formed part of the national identities of three countries: Turkey, New Zealand and Australia.

Col Curry went on to quote the Greek general and orator Pericles, who said (and I hope I took this down correctly) that freedom is the possession only of those prepared to defend it.

Several prayers were recited and then, as we stood in silence, we heard the distant rumbling of aircraft engines. Right on cue, three First World War biplanes – I presume they were replicas built by the Vintage Aviator, which is based at Masterton’s Hood aerodrome – appeared over the hills to the south and flew low overhead. I don’t mind admitting that the combination of the glorious autumn morning, the historical significance of the place, the reverence of the crowd – and yes, the tuis too, just to remind us that this was a uniquely New Zealand experience – produced one of those lump-in-the-throat moments.

Afterwards we all trooped into the hall where the local Women’s Institute had produced a classic Kiwi morning tea: club sandwiches, bacon and egg pie, mince savouries, asparagus rolls and (of course) Anzac biscuits. I’m delighted to report that Tinui is a panini-free zone.   

But wait, there’s more. A large number of us then drove or walked the kilometre or so to where a 4WD farm track leads three kilometres up to the summit of Mt Maunsell, 300 metres above Tinui. Many walked the track; others took advantage of the farm quad bikes that were on hand to shuttle pilgrims to and from the top.

It’s a steep climb, and boggy in places, through farmland, pines and regenerating bush to where a cross of jarrah hardwood was erected in 1916 – the first memorial of its type. It stood until 1965, when it was replaced by one made of more permanent materials. Schoolchildren helped erect the new cross by carrying small bags of cement up the track.

The cross, 3.6 metres high and stoutly braced to protect it from the fierce winds that can batter the hilltop, is now officially registered with the Historic Places Trust as a Category 1 historic site. Though the track is on private land and open to the public only on Anzac Day, it’s hoped that it may become a public walkway.

I can see Tinui becoming something of a national institution as the significance of this exquisite little place becomes more widely known. I have mixed feelings about this. The size of the crowd yesterday was about right; anything bigger and the settlement might have been overwhelmed. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Tinui Parish Anzac Trust, which organises the event, will be to ensure it retains its unique ambiance.