Many reading this today will have family members, forebears, who still lie in foreign lands. They served so we could live in peace.
Waitangi Day marks the formal occasion of the founding of our nation but I always regard Anzac Day as the day we truly became one nation, the day our nation was forged in steel and blood. The day Māori and Pākehā stepped ashore as part of an invading force in Turkey, far from their beautiful islands.
Gallipoli, a disastrous campaign, the brainchild of Winston Churchill, took the lives of 2779 New Zealand men and 5212 men were wounded. New Zealand’s initial force was around 10,000 men but later reinforcements took this total to around 17,000 men. New Zealand’s casualty rate was grim to say the least, with just under 8000 casualties out of a force of 17,000.
That does not include the psychological damage to many of the men who survived, most of whom went on to the horrors of the Western Front in Belgium.
In total more than 130,000 men died in the Gallipoli campaign, both the Turkish troops and the Allies. Turkey lost 86,692 men on that windblown barren strip of land, defending their country from an invading force.
Even today it is personal to many of us who had forebears there.
I had at least two at Gallipoli - great-uncles, young single men.
One was Charles Michael Hennessey, a barber born in Blenheim to Irish immigrants in 1887. Uncle Charlie died at Gallipoli and is remembered with the Aussies at Lone Pine Cemetery. He left behind a recently-widowed mother and siblings, some still quite young. An ordinary man but a hero.
The other, George Frederick Bertrand, was a teacher from Urenui, a young Māori soldier. Uncle George survived the campaign, wounded, and went on to the Western Front. He ended the war as a Lieutenant, gaining later fame as one of the two senior officers who formed the 28th Māori Battalion in 1940 and commanding the 2nd Māori Battalion from 1942 to 1944 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Both men joined the Wellington Regiment in 1914 so it is possible their paths crossed.
Uncle Charlie’s life was cut short and Uncle George’s was marked by wounds. To this day, both men are remembered with pride by their families. Photos of both are in our homes, young fresh-faced New Zealanders, a barber and a teacher. A boy who had a basic country education and a boy who attended Te Aute College; different in many ways but they are ours.
Gallipoli was not the first overseas war New Zealand sent troops to - the Boer War claims that dubious honour.
New Zealand sent 98,950 troops overseas between 1914 and 1918; 18,058 died and 41,315 were wounded or sent home sick. A casualty list of close to 60,000, not accounting for other damage those surviving young men suffered and had to live with upon their return.
New Zealanders owe a debt to all our serving men and women, in the past and today. They served and serve for us every day so that we can live in freedom and enjoy the rights of democracy and free speech.
We must never forget that the price of freedom can be very grim.
Tomorrow I will rise and watch the memorial services on the telly. Later in the day, I will watch the dawn parades from around New Zealand. I will feel a quiet pride in the people who served, especially the people in my family - great-uncles, a grandfather, uncles, my father, my father-in-law and my son all went to war. My brothers and I missed military service: just born at that time I suppose.
I was called up for National Service in 1971 but I was already in Trentham Military Camp training to be a police officer, an exempt occupation.
Lest we forget.
