Tommy Kapai: War continues to haunt nations

Not much has changed since World War I, as we see with the Israeli assault on Gaza today. Photos / File

Right about now, 100 years ago, on the other side of the world, the "Great War" that was supposed to end all wars was declared by Britain and where the mother country went we followed, no questions asked.

Today there are many questions to ask about war as we watch it live on TV. When I look at medals awarded to our sports people I can't help but remember those who fought for us as the flag is raised, even if it does look exactly like the diggers flag across the ditch.

For me, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and their feel-good factor of Kiwi pride sidebars the madness in the Middle East.

Somehow nothing seems to have changed in the last 100 years to indicate we have changed our ways or our minds on who is to blame for the wars of today, other than the channel on our remote from Glasgow to Gaza.

It seems both surreal as it does hopeless.

What can we do as fellow citizens of the planet to will wars away, while at the same time stand in the footprints of history and never forget those who have fallen for us?

My dad went to war and like many of our dads they never really came back. I remember my first glimpse into the silent stares of returned servicemen was as a paper boy dropping off the Bay of Plenty Times to the Mount RSA. It's the same faces I am seeing on TV in Gaza.

Even as an 11-year-old I could feel the sense of sadness and loss inside their dark smoke-filled whare and it was the same sense of sadness that I knew my own father could only share with those who had walked with him in war.

War took our dads and our koro long before we buried them.

These gallant warriors of the Dinks (the nickname for the New Zealand Rifle Brigade as in Fair Dinkums), the Grunts and the B Company of the Maori Battalion all make up the whakapapa of heroes we shall never forget.

Today, 100 years on from the Great War, all we can do is remember or light a candle as they are doing tonight in the UK, where it is hoped one million candles will be lit to remember the one million lives that were lost by Britain in the Great War.

We lost 867 lives on the first morning of Passchendaele in the Great War, plus another 1800 casualties - all in one day. That's about the same number as the lives lost in Gaza thus far. Somehow I have huge reservations that when it comes to a war then and now, when both parties believe they are in the right, nothing changes but the channel on our TV and the casualty list.

We only have to look in our own back yard to see examples of this. Be it as individuals with a beef or grudge against another, or neighbours feuding over the fence, or hapu who say they are both right when it comes to who has mana whenua, the circumstances and the outcomes of conflict have the same solutions.

Keep fighting or say sorry and find ways to live together. Or change the channel.

There are no winners in war and unlike the Great War and World War II - where our dads did as they were told not really knowing why or who they were fighting - the one the world is watching live in their lounges in Gaza today bombing by bombing, gives us all the chance to make up our own minds about the rights and wrongs of war.

For me every soldier who was sent from this country to fight for us in any war deserves a medal and we as family who belong to the sadness our fathers brought home with them should wear it.

If we don't have one then perhaps a newly-minted medal of peace and honour could be promoted by our RSA?

I for one would buy one in a heartbeat and wear it in honour of my dad, like all of our fathers who grew up too quickly from young boys to saddened soldiers and never came home from war.

broblack@xtra.co.nz