Four stories our mothers (and grandfathers) never told us

`We will remember them.'
We say it every year, on April 25. Anzac Day. We remember the old soldiers, sailors, airmen, the fathers, the grandfathers, now the great-grandfathers. Even though we might never have known them.
On the eve of Anzac Day, four 20-something journalists from The Aucklander - from four nations - think about
MY FAMILY AT WAR
Joseph Barratt New Zealand
'I remember the cold, wet and gritty mud that seemed to find its way into everything. It was a sleepless night, standing guard against would-be invaders while the metal helmet perched uncomfortably on my head.'
I had just turned 15 and this was what life was like for boys of my age back then ... Well, for one day and a night in a trench in the Hauraki Plains.
In groups of four, we had two shifts for which we had to stay awake all night to protect our flag.
It was my history teacher's idea to give his class a taste of what thousands of young men went through in the trenches during World War I.
It worked. We all paid attention to our history classes that year. But, for me, it was already my favourite subject - the Balkan powder keg that ignited with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and led to WWI.
More than 15 million people died, tens of thousands of New Zealanders and other colonials were sent from their trenches to die at the whim of our English rulers.
Eventual victory for our forces. Crippling reparations forced on Germany, leading to the unstable Weimar Republic. The rise of the brown shirts, Mein Kampf, the Nazi Party and World War II. This time, more than 70 million people died.
The history drew me in. I felt strangely connected to it despite having no family ties. The closest was my Papa who was injured while on duty after WWII. He was hurt by a stingray. He had sneaked down to the beach while he was on guard duty and was punished by being dishonourably discharged.
The Last Post and the dawn parade always bring up emotions. When I was in my teens, the only thing I wanted to do was join the army. Just turned 17, I went for officer selection and spent a week waking before sunrise, carrying logs and planning ways to cross rivers.
I loved it. But they said I was too young. They told me to come back next year.
So I went to university and started studying, among other things, for a history degree.
I learned about so many of the other forces driving war: civilian casualties, the economic and political drives. It changed my opinion, turning me against war, big and small, other than in extreme circumstances like, perhaps, when forces such as Nazi Germany take hold.
Today, the thought of joining the armed forces fills me with dread.
I would have senselessly gone off and done the bidding, without question, of whichever Government was in power.
War is something to be avoided whenever possible. However, strangely, I still feel that same pull of admiration for those young men and women who served their nation for what they believed.
I will be at the dawn parade and I will still feel the emotion. But it is with a genuine, perhaps naive, hope that ``never again' really is never again.
Joanna Davies Wales
`All of my grandparents are dead, gone without official recognition. I will remember them until the day when they are named on honour lists. I hope that this Anzac Day, some words will be said for the men and women who played their part while waiting for soldiers to return'
None of my close family died at war, and none received medals.
I'm Welsh and I don't have relatives who fought at Gallipoli, or on the front lines of any other conflict.
But all my grandparents helped the war effort and Anzac Day disappoints me because it commemorates only those who fought in battles.
Few mention those who stayed at home to look after farms and knit socks for soldiers. I believe these are the unsung heroes and heroines.
I grew up in Bridgend, a market town in South Wales. During World War II it was a war town, surrounded by air bases and prison camps. It was the home of the biggest munitions factory in Great Britain, ROF Bridgend.
At its peak, the factory employed 40,000 people, including my grandparents, Mervyn and Margaret Davies. The photo is of them, on their wedding day. He made bombs and filled shells on the production line. My grandmother worked in the canteen. It seems an unlikely place for two people to meet and fall in love, but after the war, they married.
Of those 40,000 people, none has been recognised for their service.
In Britain, there is a campaign for munitions workers to be awarded medals, but many of these people, including my grandparents, have already died and any formal recognition of them will be too late.
My mother's father, John Llewellyn, was a fireman in the National Fire Service. During the Three Night Blitz of Swansea, his convoy of four fire engines was hit by the Luftwaffe. The first and third trucks were destroyed as my grandfather driving the second rescued people from burning buildings.
My grandmother, Glenys Llewellyn, waited at home near Bridgend for news. Like many women in country areas, she helped around the farm and looked after children evacuated from big cities.
After the war, she wrote to these children, the bonds of their shared war too strong to break.
I remember marching with St John's Ambulance Brigade on Remembrance Sunday [November 11] when I was eight.
The whole town gathered in the main square to remember loved ones, and every child knew what was being commemorated because the war was still with their families.
We remembered because in some way or another, our grandparents all took part in war efforts, whether they were formally recognised for it or not.
But if you're a kid in New Zealand, and unless you're related to someone who fought on a battlefield, Anzac Day is just another day off until you learn about the conflicts in high school, like I did after my family migrated here.
All my grandparents are dead, and gone without official recognition.
I will remember them until a day when they will be named on honour lists.
I hope that this Anzac Day, some words will be said for the men and women here who played their part while waiting for soldiers to return.
Debrin Foxcroft South Africa
`Before World War II, my family owned a rubber plantation on the island of Borneo. By the end of the conflict, the plantation had been burned and my great-grandfather was injured. He was angry and raised a daughter on stories of brutal torture at the hands of the Japanese'
I remember the old man. His trousers were brown and he wore a green woollen sweater. His shoulders were rounded. He was carrying the weight of a tray of poppies, and the burden of a painful history.
The people of Dargaville walked past him, occasionally stopping to say something, to buy a piece of red felt. His skin was brittle, the lines carved deep. Every single blood-red flower looked tiny in his big, knotted hand. But he still lifted each poppy gently, with dignity and only a slight shake.
I watched. I didn't understand the meaning behind the flowers, behind the man's sorrow. I was five and not from around here.
I am South African. I had arrived from Johannesburg three months earlier to find that Dargaville was not only in a different country, it was in a different world. Anzac Day was simply more proof of this.
During World War I, South Africa fought on the Allied side. But it is not a conflict etched on the nation's soul. That came 20 years later. World War II was closer to home and South Africa was more established as a country.
Sitting on my grandparents' knees, I didn't hear stories of brave soldiers storming the beaches of Gallipoli. I heard whispers of torture in the Pacific. Before the outbreak of World War II, my family owned a rubber plantation on the island of Borneo. By the end of the conflict, the plantation had been burned to the ground and my great-grandfather was injured. He was angry and raised a daughter on stories of brutal torture at the hands of the Japanese.
This had a lasting impact on my grandmother: she never forgave the Japanese. My mother heard the same stories but they were quieter, thanks to the distance of time. Decades later, when the stories were repeated to me, they were nothing more than a soft murmur, background in the drama of our family and the history of our country.
Over the past 22 years, I have read quite a bit about the Anzacs. About the men who died, and the lives they left behind here. I have to admit: I have never been to a dawn ceremony. Maybe this year I might set the alarm early to make it.
But when I think about the water stained red on the shores of Gallipoli, I am angry. Angry at the waste of life, at the struggle for power that leads men and now women to face the barrel of a gun.
I have heard it said, ``We will remember them'. But the names and faces fade away and so, it seems, do the lessons. Nations keep going to war, soldiers and civilians keep dying.
So, let us not forget Jimmy Carter's words: ``War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.'
Valerie Schuler Germany
`I never met my grandfather. He died over a decade before I was born. I found out recently that he was a prominent general in Hitler's army during World War II'
I am German. My granddad was a Nazi and my mother a Polish orphan. I grew up in France.
Anzac Day? After 14 years living in New Zealand, I still know little of what it actually means. A dawn parade, public holiday, something to do with New Zealand and Australian soldiers in Turkey. I guess ``zee Germans' were the villains.
I've never bought a red poppy. I never knew what it symbolised. Poppies make me think of fields of wildflowers in the South of France.
My family moved from Germany to France when I was five. Kids at school called my sister and I ``les boches', a hostile World War I term used to describe the Germans. You'd think moving 20,000km away from Europe would dilute the stigma, but no. Ten years on we arrived in Auckland and became ``the krauts'.
I never met my grandfather. He died more than a decade before I was born. The closest I got to his cropped moustache and starched SS uniform is an old black and white photograph that sat on my grandma's mahogany closet, surrounded by Rosenthal porcelain and peacock feathers.
He worked for Deutsche Bank and was away from home a lot. I found out recently that he was a prominent general in Hitler's army during World War II. This might explain my father's dislike of all things German and the fact he's spent his entire life running from his homeland.
My father dodged his two years of compulsory military service by joining a Catholic monastery in the Swiss Alps. He often made a point of telling me his mother was Jewish. I would love to ask him more, but I can't. He went awol in the Brazilian jungle about 10 years ago.
My mother's grandparents were Polish farmers. Both died when my mother was a teenager and I know little about them. The part of Poland they came from was invaded by Germany during the war. My mother, an only child, grew up speaking both German and Polish.
We Germans don't talk about the war. I learned more about German war history growing up in France and going to high school in New Zealand than I did at any German schools.
The war is no laughing matter. Germans don't understand the sarcastic jokes often made by others. They look puzzled. Shake their heads.
I visited Auschwitz once as a child and remember thinking it odd when dad told me they made soap from people's bones. Everyone was awfully quiet as they passed through the gas chambers.
We will remember them? I don't have anything to remember, except a photograph of a man I never knew and the part he might have played. But we won't mention that.
Perhaps I will buy a red poppy this year.
23 04 2009