Anzac Day feature - April 2021

APRIL 2021 We Will Remember Them’ Those powerful words ‘we will remember them’ will be spoken many times on ANZAC day as we remember and honour those who made the ultimate sacrifice in laying down their lives for us.

As we gather for ANZAC Day we are reminded of the reality of death and especially death in tragic circumstances. We gain comfort from our ability to gather together and share our hurt and remembrance. We can express ourselves in the safety of the remembrance service, comforted in the knowledge that those around us understand our collective feelings of sorrow.

Above all our act of remembrance of those tragic and painful events so many years ago, brings us hope for the future and reconciliation with the past. Like a remembrance service for those gone years before, a meaningful funeral service for the newly bereaved provides many of the same elements; helping us to accept the reality of death, providing a safe environment to express our feelings and giving us support through the gathering together of family and friends.

A meaningful farewell provides us with the opportunity to remember the life of a loved one, saying hello to them through our shared memories before we finally say goodbye. It is through the telling and sharing of those memories that our love ones live on within our hearts.

‘We Will Remember Them’

ANZAC DAY 2021

Army service takes veterans around the world

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By Donna Russell

nzac Day continues to have special meaning for veterans from every era.

For World War Two veteran Rex Hood Smith, who is 97, his part in the war took him overseas at such a young age that his parents had to give consent.

And for Sergeant Arihi Reihana, modern Army life has also involved travel all around the world including tours to Afghanistan, Sinai Peninsula and East Timor as well as training with US Marines in Alaska and twice working with the US Army in Hawaii.

Both veterans talk of the camaraderie of life in the Army, and how special the people are who serve their country.

Rex recalls turning 21 on a ship travelling between Egypt and Italy and being given a ship’s rum by a crew member as well as sleeping in hammocks on board.

He was fascinated by the ships which seemed to float through the desert along the Suez Canal near the Anzac base of Maadi Camp.

With the German army retreating through Italy and destroying bridges behind them, river crossings were often restored by building portable Bailey bridges. He was particularly fond of his time in Italy where they got to know the local families in the community.

He became a driver for an Army doctor and once the war had finished in Europe he was allowed to take a three-week tour of Venice and got to be a tourist.

The Division shifted to Florence for three months and then boarded a liner for a six-week journey to Japan.

As they crossed a Bailey bridge over the river at Hiroshima, Rex said he could clearly see the

imprint of the original bridge vaporized by the atomic bomb. The only building left standing was the huge city council building that was split fully down the centre.

As a former butcher, he was collared as butcher-cook for the company, which meant he missed out on visiting Tokyo. After six months of occupation, they were released to sail home with a cyclone “giving us a rather bumpy time”.

“We arrived home in the South Island at Lyttelton to let the southern boys home first in mid winter of 1945.”

Arihi followed her father into the Army after becoming fascinated by his medals from his tour to Malaya in the 1950s.

■ Rex Hood Smith is one of the few remaining World War Two veterans. PHOTO / supplied

■ Sgt Arihi Reihana, currently recruiting for the Army in Northland. Photo / Donna Russell

ANZAC DAY SUNDAY 25 APRIL DAWN PARADE ASSEMBLY & SERVICE TIMES 0400: 0530: 0530: 0540: 0545: 0605: 0635: 0930: 1000:

Roads will be closed Veterans who require transport are to muster at the Bayley’s Real Estate carpark corner of Walton/Hannah Street Parade Fall In - Hannah Street Transport will depart from Lauri Hall Park Parad Steps off under the command of a single Parade Commander Service Commences Return March to Hannah Street Bus will depart HQRSA for Maunu Maunu Cemetery Service

She determined that one day she would earn her own medals.

The former Bay of Islands College student from Kawakawa is of Ngati Hine and Ngati Whatua descent.

She is a sergeant in the Artillery Corps and, when in operation, runs the command systems post collating information gleaned from observers and deciding when the large guns will be deployed.

However, artillery has not been needed for New Zealand Army operations so her overseas tours have been with infantry and have involved security patrols and community rebuilding work.

On her tour of the Bamyan Province in Afghanistan in 2007, they were able to wear baseball caps. “The next deployment needed to wear helmets as it got a bit strange after that”.

For the past year she has been working in Northland as a recruitment officer and is enjoying inspiring new recruits, especially young women, when they see her impressive rack of medals and woven officer’s sash decorated with the black, white and red Maori design.

Of her sergeant’s stripes, she says each stripe represents about four years of work.

This year the Army aims to recruit five groups of basic corps, with 160 soldiers in each.

Arihi, now 37, says she is used to managing soldiers and “blessing them with Army discipline” but has to be a bit more circumspect with new recruits.

She has never felt any disadvantage as a woman and says the Army has given her more than she ever expected.

“Our biggest asset is our people,’’ she says.

ANZAC DAY SUNDAY 25 APRIL 2021 ORDER OF MARCH Police Escort Whangarei District Brass Band Flags: Merchant - NZ - AUS - UK - RNZN - RNZAF RSA President - War Veteran - HW The Mayor - Escort - NZDF Guest - Escort

CONTINGENT 1 - 5

1: Veterans (Women at the front) 2: Family of Ex Service Personnel 3: RNZN, NZ Army, RNZAF, NZ Police 4: New Zealand Cadet Forces 5: Fire & Emergncy New Zealand, St John New Zealand Northland Caledonian Pipe Band

CONTINGENT 6 - 9

6: Whangarei RSA Associate Members and Adjuncts 7: Community Service Organisations 8: Uniformed Youth Organisations 9: District Schools Police Escort

ANZAC DAY 2021

Spirit of the Anzac

Public enthusiasm for Anzac Day waxed and waned during the 1920s and 1930s – but another war brought much more interest

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he outbreak of World War II in 1939 gave a new meaning to Anzac Day. The commemorations predictably focused on the current war. Speeches appealed for people to follow the ‘spirit of Anzac’. Links between the first Anzacs and women and men serving overseas were stressed.

During the six war years (1939-1945), public interest soared although security concerns meant large crowds were not encouraged.

The events of World War II made Anzac Day a commemoration of all wars in which New Zealanders had taken part. Veterans from both world wars now paraded together. Maori veterans were more in evidence too.

The day seemed to reflect the ideal of New Zealand as a united community. Attendance at the ceremonies increased - 6000 people attended the dawn service in Auckland in 1957. For some years, crowds flocked to Anzac Day. It was a time to express grief and to show that loved ones had not died in vain.

Important changes occurred after the

war. In 1949, legislation protected the holiday from becoming ‘Monday-ised’ (being held on the Monday closest to the actual anniversary). This meant that Anzac Day would always be held on April 25, no matter which day of the week was involved.

The commemoration itself changed. The afternoon citizens’ service was gradually moved to mid-morning, and the popularity of the dawn service increased. Time, too, had changed the nature of the day, from one of mourning to one of commemoration.

Hotels had long been closed on Anzac Day but Returned Services’ Association (RSA) clubrooms were open.

In the 1960s, people complained about the apparent double standard. Returned servicemen and women could enjoy their traditional Anzac Day drinking – but the public was denied entertainment in hotels or cinemas.

In 1965, the RSA recommended liberalising Anzac Day afternoon. From 1967 hotels and, later, shops could open after noon.

Religious aspects were also at issue. The RSA wanted to remove religion from the ceremonies altogether. Catholics were prevented by their own rules from attending such ecumenical services, and many Catholic and Jewish returned service personnel

had not attended Anzac Day ceremonies.

Protestant churches complained the day was already too secular but, in 1965, churches finally resolved their differences.

- nzhistory.govt.nz

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ANZAC DAY 2021

We will remember them EMILY HENDERSON – MP FOR WHANGĀREI’

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ast week, I visited Whangarei Boys’ High School in their Anzac ceremony commemorating past students and teachers lost in the two world wars. Standing with boys not much younger than those who fell brings the tragedy very close, especially when there are so many familiar Whangarei names in the rollcall.

Since I became a mum, each ANZAC Day also reminds me almost unbearably of the mums and dads and the families behind each lost boy. This Anzac Day I have been asked, as the first woman MP of Whangarei, to focus on women’s service in the Wars, and for me that starts with the bravery of the women left behind to work, wait and, in so many cases, grieve.

Let’s remember and honour the more than two hundred thousand women and girls of the Women War Service Auxiliary who stepped into the gaps left in our workforce by soldiers and took on unaccustomed roles in the factories, mills, farms and as transport workers. After the wars, often these women returned to their homes without much by way of recognition or acknowledgement, but they played a vital part in supporting NZ over those hard war years.

Let us also remember the 8,000 women who went overseas as nurses or in administrative roles in the armed forces.

From Whangarei, for example, Iris Frazer served as a nurse with the NZ Army during WWII, in Jayforce and in regular military service, serving in hospitals in Italy and, as the War ended, in the Yamaguchi prefecture in Kiwa, witnessing the aftermath of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. For her service she received the Associate Royal Red Cross (ARRC), the War Medal 1939-1945 and the New Zealand War Service Medal.

My own grandmothers in some ways exemplify both ends of women’s war service.

My Grandma, Betty Henderson, was a young wife and mother stationed with her aircraft engineer husband in Onerahi, while my Granny, Marjorie Collins, an Australian, was in Britain when war broke out on an early version of OE. She signed up for the WAAF in the very first days of the War, becoming only the second ever woman radar operator, fighting the Battle of Britain from secret locations all over England. When they talked about it, they emphasized the funny moments, such as my Granny daring to climb the radio tower. It took me until I was older and able to read the letters and poems of the young men and women who went through the wars to realise the full horror of what they in fact lived through.

So let me end this with the words of a young woman poet and first world war nurse, Vera Brittain, who served on the front line and lost her fiancé, brother and friends in the mud of France. She wrote: Perhaps some day the sun will shine again, And I will see that still the skies are blue, And feel once more I do not live in vain, Although I feel bereft of you.

L EST WE E FO O R G ET T Dr Emily Henderson MP for Whangārei

Office: 66 6a Bank St, Whangārei Emily.HendersonMP@paarliament.govt.nz Authorised by Dr Emily Hendeerson MP, Parliament Buildings, Wellingt gton t

The shadow on Vera was such that years later her daughter wrote that she was always aware of a sadness in her mother. As I stood beside those young men last week, and as I think about the young men and young

women in my own whanau, I pray that they will never know that sadness and that the families of Whangarei never suffer their loss.

Let the greatest lesson of war be that we must keep the peace.

ANZAC DAY 2021

THE ANZAC POPPY Symbol of remembrance

The fascinating origins of the red poppy – Anzac Day’s most enduring symbol.

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he red poppy has become a symbol of war remembrance the world over.

People in many countries wear the poppy to remember those who died in war or who still serve.

In many countries, the poppy is worn around Armistice Day (November 11) but in New Zealand it is most commonly seen around Anzac Day, April 25.

The red or Flanders poppy has been linked with battlefield deaths since World War I (1914-18). The plant was one of the first to grow and bloom in the mud and soil of Flanders. The connection was made, most famously, by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields.

McCrae was a Canadian medical officer

who, in May 1915, had conducted the funeral service of a friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres. In a cemetery nearby, red poppies blew in the breeze - a symbol of regeneration and growth in a landscape of blood and destruction.

Distressed at the death and suffering around him, McCrae scribbled the verse in his notebook.

McCrae threw away the poem but a fellow officer rescued it and sent it on to the English magazine Punch; it was published on December 8, 1915. Three years later, on January 28, 1918, McCrae was dead.

As he lay dying, he is reported to have said: “Tell them this, if ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep.”

WHANGAREI DISTRICT ANZAC DAY SERVICES LOCALE Whangarei RSA Fall in Whangarei Dawn Service Ngunguru/Tutukaka Service Hukerenui Maungatapere Motatau Community Pehiaweri Marae RSA Lawn Cemetery Kamo Memorial Hall Takahiwai Marae Whananaki School Hikurangi School Maungakaramea Sports Hall Waipu RSA

LOCATION Hannah Street Laurie Hall Park Ngunguru Monument Road, Tapuhi Maungatapere Hall Takapuna Cemetery Glenbervie Maunu Cemetery Boswell Street, Kamo Takahiwai Whananaki North Hikurangi Maungakaramea Waipu Monument

TIME 0530hrs 0605hrs 0615hrs 0900hrs 0900hrs 1000hrs 1000hrs 1000hrs 1000hrs 1000hrs 1030hrs 1030hrs 1100hrs 1100hrs

The first Poppy Day

One of Guérin’s representatives, Colonel Alfred Moffatt, suggested the poppy idea to the New Zealand Returned Soldiers’ Association (as the Returned Services’ Association or RSA was originally known) in September 1921. The association placed an order for 350,000 small and 16,000 large silk poppies, all made by Madame Guérin’s French Children’s League.

The association planned to hold its first Poppy Day appeal around the time of Armistice Day 1921, as other countries were doing. However, the ship carrying the poppies from France arrived in New Zealand too late for the scheme to be properly publicised. The association decided to wait until the next Anzac Day,

1922.

The poppies went on sale the day before Anzac Day. This first Poppy Day appeal was a huge success. Many centres sold out early in the day. In all, 245,059 small and 15,157 large poppies were sold.

Of the £13,166 raised (a large sum in those days), £3695 went to the French Children’s League to help relieve suffering in the war-ravaged areas of northern France. The association used the remainder to assist needy, unemployed returned soldiers and their families; that tradition has continued.

The popularity of Poppy Day quickly grew. There were record collections during World War II. By 1945, 750,000 poppies were being distributed nationwide.

APRIL 2021

Ka maumahara tonu tatou i a ratou.

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APRIL 2021 We shall remember.

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