First Anzac Day Ceremony on Marine Parade, Napier, April 25, 1916. Photo / Collection of Hawke's Bay Museums Trust
Te Hira Henderson is curator Taonga Māori, MTG.
Ki ngā wairua a ngā whaea katoa to the spirits of all the mothers who lost their children in WWI, greetings of love upon greetings of tears.
The pain held and carried by you all made greater by being unable to have your children here to bury at home is an unforgiving sorrow of pain. May you be remembered also with each Anzac soldier that fell on foreign soil, never to come home.
To all Anzac soldiers in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps 1914–18, tēnā rā koutou katoa, hoki wairua mai, return. May the kawa/customs of the God of War Tūmatauenga subside, and only peace remain with you.
In accordance with tikanga may you all be gathered into Nukutaimemeha, the ancestral waka of Māui, and carried north to the mountain Whangatauatia, then onward to Te Oneroa-a-Tōhe/ 90 Mile Beach.
This sacred pathway, prepared by Kupe to Te Rerenga-wairua/Cape Rēinga, the Place of Departing Spirits.
There, where the waters of Waingurunguru fall before the sacred pōhutukawa tree, leap. Dive into the ocean to Whitireia and Rehia, the children of Tangaroa/God of the sea and fish, to carry you all to Manawatāwhi/Three Kings Island. From this island you will come up from the ocean through its freshwater blowhole to be gathered up by te kupenga a Taramainuku /the net of Taramainuku.
Taramainuku is the star who gathers the dead into his waka, Te Waka o te Rangi, taking you into the underworld to Hine-nui-te-pō, the Goddess of the Night.
Upon the rise of Matariki/Pleiades, Taramainuku will release you all back into Rangi-nui to become stars, kua whetūrangitia/to appear in the night sky. For this Te Waka o Te Rangi, a star constellation, will be led by the rise of Matariki at its front with Tautoru/Orions Belt at its rear.
In the night sky is Pōhutukawa/Sterope, the eldest star. It stands apart from the others with the duty of holding you all safe in the night. E moe, sleep.
Te hunga mate ki te hunga mate, the dead to the dead.
Te hunga ora ki te hunga ora, the living to the living.
Tihewa mauri ora, let there be life.
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie Chotek, the Duchess of Hohenburg, were assassinated in Sarajevo, the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by a Bosnian Serb nationalist in the belief it would liberate Bosnia from Austrian-Hungarian rule.
Four weeks later on July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, triggering WWI, and Britain entered the war on August 4, 1914 with Australia and Aotearoa.
From April 25, 1915 to January 6, 1916, invading troops from Australia and New Zealand, along with Allied forces, tried to capture Constantinople and gain control of the Dardanelles Strait.
The Ottoman forces under Mastafa Kemal Ataturk successfully defended their homeland at Gallipoli, defeating the Allied forces. The Allied forces withdrew from their failed invasion in January 1916.
Therefore, likewise in this grief, greetings of love upon greetings of tears to you, the Ottoman soldiers, the heroes who fell standing on your homeland soil in defence of it, ka tika he mihi tangi, he mihi aroha hoki kia koutou rā. As too, also to your mothers. Remain forever in peace with Allah.
On the far away home shores of Gallipoli stands the Ari Burnu Memorial inscribed with a quote from the first president of your Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to the world and its mothers. It reads:
“Those heroes who shed their blood
and lost their lives …
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
and the Mehmets to us where they lie by side
here in this country of ours …
You, the mothers
who sent their sons from far way countries
wipe away your tears;
Your sons are now lying in our bosom
and are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land they have
become our sons as well.”