Opinion: Lest we forget: Rising generations helping keep Anzac memories alive

Hawke's Bay Today senior reporter Doug Laing. Photo / File

It's 15 years since Bright Williams died in Hastings just short of his 106th birthday. He was the last of the 100,400 New Zealanders who served in World War I, of whom more than 16,600 were killed.

The youngest World War II veterans are about 92, and we are within 10 to 15 years of seeing off the last of the 140,000 sent abroad in the 1939-1945 campaigns, of whom more than 11,600 failed to make it home.

Yet, with less than 5 per cent of those veterans remaining, Anzac Day commemorations are growing. And as shown yesterday with many more than 10,000 at commemorations throughout Hawke's Bay, the next generations are here. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren are starting to outnumber immediate offspring of the servicemen and women.

Let us not forget other conflicts, such as Korea, Malaya and Vietnam. The deployment and losses were nothing of the same order, but the experiences were no less grotesque.

Assuming we are not going to see such drawn-out, dehumanising conflicts again, men catching whatever sleep they can in rain-filled trenches, beside mates blown to bits, men living other quite unimaginable nightmares which stayed with them forever, the shape of Anzac Days in the future is starting to change.

May it be that we are just passing through the recovery phase, perhaps the next being to recognise the multi-generational impact on those who did return, and on their families and communities. Many still suffer recurring struggles through never being able to stand on their own two feet at the outset.

There were menfolk never able to support their families with an honest day's living again, or whose reward was to come home and find they had nothing, or nothing that resettlement could ever settle.

Small communities, where greater sense of adventure saw higher proportions of mates deceased, but where survivors had little of the support available to colleagues in the cities, where, at least, sorrows could be collectively drowned at the club.

It's only part of the story.

Lest we forget.