Editorial: Crowds gather as one

The dawn service at Mount Maunganui.

It was surreal to meet rows of traffic snaking over Hewletts Bridge on Saturday at 5.30am. Work utes with just one driver in. Cars packed with families and prams. An elderly couple supping from a Thermos. As we neared Mount Maunganui, cars double parked but no one minded. There were no angry beeps. As thousands padded their way on foot towards the Mount Maunganui cenotaph bathed in red light, highlighting the colour of the poppy, it felt like we all knew each other.

As dawn broke, all we saw was a sea of people - lining the roadside, Mount Drury, the beach and the grass dunes. I shivered as two Harvard bombers soared overhead.

War is not glorious. It is not romantic. It's blood, fear and a horrific hell. But as Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae said in his Anzac address in Wellington, gatherings like the dawn service in the Mount were not to glorify war, "but rather to remember the men and women who served their country, and especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice".

With the remains of so many young men lying in unmarked graves on the other side of the world, he said, "Our memorials were, and remain, shrines for the nation's grief, erected as places where bereaved families and communities could go to pay their respects."

In the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend's commemorative issue were stories of the terrible loss to our communities. The sister of Frederick Hugh Dodson - Tauranga's first Gallipoli casualty - never got over his death. Tauranga local Jessica Hawken shared a poignant letter, from her great grandfather Eric Collier to his mother. Writing from the French front, he told her he was nearing the firing line, "Don't worry over me mum any more than you can help as I am allright."

I couldn't imagine receiving a more heart-breaking letter from my son. Mr Collier made it back and lived a long life. Many didn't.

At the end of the Mount service, young and old spilled on to the beach, the sound of laughter and chatter against the backdrop of crashing waves and a beautiful sunrise. How lucky we are.

We owe so much. The least we can do is always remember. The most we can do is make the world a better place, where conflict does not rip sisters and brothers apart, and does not leave mothers crying for sons in far off lands.