My favourite public holiday

Anzac Day, to me, is the one day off that has remained true to what it is meant to be. Photo / Alan Gibson

I'd have to say, if push came to shove came to world war, that of all the public holidays we get to enjoy in this splendid country, Anzac Day is the one I would pick as my favourite - should ever I get into the weird situation where I was forced, for some inexplicable reason, to choose my favourite New Zealand public holiday.

Anzac Day, to me, is the one day off that has remained true to what it is meant to be, and hasn't become something we take for granted or, even worse, been overtaken by consumerism. Sure you can now buy Anzac Day chocolates in the shape of helmets (which is kinda like eating a chocolate head, when you think about it), but I think for the foreseeable future we're still a long way off the sugary mash up of religion and confectionaries that is Easter.

But I guess the main reason I have such respect for Anzac Day is that it is the one government-sanctioned public holiday to which I truly feel some kind of direct connection.

Like many men of his generation who went off to fight a world war (in this case WWII), my father never really talked much about his wartime experiences. He was clearly proud of having served and had a bunch of medals to prove that he did. But the whole experience was simply something he never, ever dwelled upon. As a Commando comic-obsessed boy I remember I made the mistake of asking him if he'd ever shot anyone. I learnt, there and then, that this was a door to the past that was most definitely closed.

What I did learn, in dribs and drabs, with the occasional photographic evidence to back it up, was that my father was in the air force during World War II. But as a man who was deemed unfit to fly and as someone had worked for over 10 years in the building trade, he ended up spending much of his wartime attached to the American Seabees, the construction battalions who built the air-strips as the US forces hopped from island to island, across the Pacific, towards Japan. The troops would take the island, then the Seabees would come in and build the infrastructure needed for them to launch the assault on the next island in the chain. I'm pretty sure they never worried about things like resource consents or waited upon environmental impact reports.

When Dad did speak about his stint on islands like Guadalcanal, he talked about
being part of this little Kiwi contingent, working within the great American war machine. The stories he told were of No.8 wire technology and lateral thinking, solving problems while the Americans were using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. My favourite story was of the jeep, gifted to my father by a departing American officer; and the resolve within the Kiwi unit to somehow get that jeep back to New Zealand for after the war, even if it meant shipping it back piece by piece. I'm pretty sure the exact same story later turned up in an episode of M*A*S*H.

But if I were writing the movie of my father's wartime experiences, I'd pick on a couple of other things I remember him telling me about. One of his jobs was to censor the letters home, to make sure there wasn't any information that might aid the enemy should they fall into the wrong hands. As part of this duty, Dad, of course, became a silent party to one-half of some pretty awkward conversations - especially those Dear John letters that involved some guy's wife/girlfriend and an American soldier; over-paid, over-sexed and over in New Zealand.

Then there were the occasional incursions by those Japanese soldiers, left behind, either by chance or design. Every now and then one of them would take a few shots from the jungle and a squad would have to go out in search of the sniper. I love the idea of my Dad-character being on one of these missions, along with a bunch of brash Americans and a couple of Kiwis he knows have chips on their shoulders the size of a large kumara. It'd be one of those stories where the enemy you seek is secondary to the enemy in your midst.

These are stories for other times, however, because the fact remains that Anzac Day - not just this year but any year - is the day off worth taking the time to think about. I probably won't get up at dawn, but I'm still acutely aware that my father lived through something I hope my kids never have to.

Thanks, Dad.