Peter Carr
On Tuesday of last week, I forewent my annual warm-coated pre-dawn visit to the Cambridge cenotaph to take part in a very simple yet moving gathering at our village in Lauriston Park. It was at the more reasonable time of 8.30am and a cooked breakfast followed for all attendees.
Simple, in that the organiser, in concise terms, explained the rationale of Anazac memories and how it means different things to different people. Those who travelled and fought (or not) prior to 1950 have possibly a different memory to those who made the journeys to Korea, Vietnam, East Timor and Afghanistan. Yet their input is just as important – even if the perceived risk to New Zealand was possibly less than the two world wars. Nevertheless the (mainly) men and latterly women deserve our gratitude just as much as those of earlier conflicts.
At our village service, complete with the sweet notes of the cornet, I had the role of reciting The Ode – one of the verses of which commences with “They shall not grow old….”. In rehearsing this important and poignant poem I researched the two verses that I was asked to enunciate clearly into the microphone. In doing so I undertook some research of the original stanzas that were written in 1914 – with the author sitting on Cornish cliffs staring out onto the often-wild western ocean Atlantic waters.
The writer was Laurence Binyon and his meaningful rhyme was first published in The Times during September 1914. When the first trench warfare in France was building up but before Winston Churchill condemned many fine young New Zealand and Australian soldiers to attempt to take the impossibly steep and barren cliffs of Gallipoli away from the resident Turks. All this to provide a side show to attract the Turks from guarding the narrow water strip of the Dardanelles as the British wished to take their fleet into the Black Sea.
Back to Binyon – he first wrote the “They shall not” verse before preceding and succeeding those lines with three other verses. And it was verses three and four that I was asked to deliver. The whole poem is well worth reading and parts of it are uttered daily at the Menin Gate in Belgium and at RSAs. Stand To is a very important time of the day for RSA members – many of whom have lost the use of their regular and owned premises as their numbers dwindle and finances become strained. Poppies made in Christchurch this year numbered 1.3 million and it was a pleasure to see the loyal and helpful services provided by the poppy sellers in Victoria Street on the Friday before Anzac Day.
Larger services – especially at main city centres – are still well supported (and rightly so). However, it is interesting to note the swelling ranks of younger people who have never felt the terror or angst of war first hand. For the first three years of my life, I spent most nights in the damp and chilly concrete bunker of the next-door neighbour listening to the bombers overhead as they transited from and back to Germany. And then later witnessed the glowing tail exhausts of the V1 and V2 rockets – but with a mind that had no comprehension of what was really happening. Except that my father was absent overseas on national naval duty until I was three years old.
