ANZAC day has taken on a whole new meaning for Sergeant Mark Anderson since he joined the NZ Defence Force and served in East Timor.
Currently serving as senior medic in command of the Royal New Zealand Army Medical Corps in Timor-Leste - as the country is officially known - the former Tauranga man told the Bay of Plenty Times that Anzac day was a very important day to him and his colleagues.
"It is a very special day to us for very good reasons."
Sergeant Anderson, 37, was a territorial with the 6th Hauraki [Tauranga] regiment from 1989 to 1991 before joining the Army in 1991. He transferred to the Royal NZ Army Medical Corps in 2001.
Anzac day was not just about remembering those who fought and died for their countries.
"It is a very special way to celebrate the meaning of what we are doing today and remembering those who went before us and what they have done.
"To me it's also the way to make sure we remember what happened so we don't make the same mistakes."
This is not the first time Sergeant Anderson will celebrate Anzac day in East Timor, having began another six months rotation in November after being posted from Burnham Camp, in Christchurch, to Dili.
In 1999 and 2000, the then Corporal Anderson, with the Corps of Royal NZ Military Police, spent nine months working as a war-crimes investigator, first as a member of an international team and then with UN forces.
He was part of a team that investigated a report of bodies found in a village 9km west of Liquica. Most of the 11 bodies found in a well were victims of brutal machete slayings by the Besi Merah Putih militia that laid waste to Liquica.
More bodies may have been in the well but were not able to be excavated.
It was his work as a war-crimes investigator that saw him decorated as Member of the NZ Order of Merit in the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Sergeant Anderson said every day he leaves the Kiwi camp in East Timor to go to work, he drives past the area where bodies and gravesites were found, something which reminds him why Anzac Day was so important.
"It was hard work but at the same time very rewarding and coming back after 10 years absence it's overwhelming to see the changes and the progress this country has made with the help of our ground forces."
He said it was on Anzac Day 2000 that the New Zealand Defence Force contingent also lost one of its own in East Timor, when Linton-based Staff Sergeant Billy White died after the Unimog utility truck i he was in rolled down a 30m bank.
He hoped to be able to attend a special Anzac Day memorial celebration in Sergeant White's honour.
This Anzac Day Sergeant Anderson's thoughts will also be with his family in New Zealand. His wife Marian, who is also a senior medic with the NZ Army Medical Corps based in Burnham, served in East Timor in 2008.
"Half of my family still lives in Tauranga," he said.
His parents, Jim and Helen Anderson, live in Otumoetai, while his sister, Lisa, and her husband, Matthew Horne, reside in Brookfield.
Today, more than 600 New Zealand Defence Force personnel are deployed on 14 peacekeeping operations, UN missions, and defence exercises
in places such as Afghanistan, Timor Leste, the Solomon Islands, the Middle East, South Korea and Sudan. The Defence Force is encouraging the public to send a message to Kiwi Defence personnel stationed overseas on Anzac Day via its website, www.nzdf.mil.nz/news/events/ANZAC/
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