I am from only the first generation in human history whose young men – teenage boys — were not forced by their country’s leaders to fight and kill the young men and teenage boys of other countries and be killed by them. My parents’ generation was the last such generation so far, and, I fervently hope, the last ever.
As a parent, scarcely a day goes by that I do not give thanks to having grown up in relative peace and that there is a good chance my children will not be forced to fight and maybe die in battle against someone else’s children.
Yes, there have been lots of conflicts in my lifetime, Vietnam being the one during my childhood that last saw conscription forced upon teenage boys in New Zealand. But there have been no massive international wars engulfing the entire globe as happened regularly until 1945. The conflicts of my lifetime have been fortunately remote in distance, and while many have affected us down here in our South Pacific haven, our country’s children have not been forced to fight in them. Even the United States has a fully volunteer army now.
It’s Anzac Day today, and like she started doing several years ago, my daughter, 15, is attending two services. She is one of a growing number of her generation who have taken a great interest in the sacrifices made in battle by her forebears and sets out to honour them by attending Anzac Day events. I asked her this morning why, and her answer was simplicity itself.
“To pay respect for the people who died in wars,” she said. “The First World War could have been avoided but if people hadn’t stood up to Hitler he would have taken over Europe, and much of the world, so we were fighting for peace, odd as that sounds.”
Despite her age, she is also well aware that it is politicians who wage wars, not the ordinary people who have to pay the awful cost in lives and misery of them.
“I don’t like it when people protest at the cenotaph. They shouldn’t be protesting at the soldiers. They were only doing what they had to. They should be protesting at the governments that started the wars.”
It brought a tear to my eye this morning to hear read out at the dawn service at Wellington’s cenotaph the lines of the inscription on the Ataturk Memorial above Wellington’s south coast, written by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, in 1934 about the Anzac troops who died at Gallipoli in 1915 fighting the young Turks defending their homeland against our British-ordered invasion.
“Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosoms and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they become our sons as well.”
We shall never forget, certainly not now that our children are ensuring that their great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents who were forced to fight and die in terrible, often futile battles long ago, will not be forgotten.
29 Comments
April 25, 2008 at 8:21 am
Hi, nice post. But are you sure conscription was forced against teenage boys in NZ? Certainly in the US they had the draft but not here.
April 25, 2008 at 8:28 am
Norman Kirk abolished conscription — what we called “the draft” in New Zealand — when he was elected in November 1972. There was a ballot for 18-year-olds until then. Though conscripts were not sent to Vietnam (unlike their counterparts in Australia and the US), conscription freed up regular soldiers to go there.
April 25, 2008 at 8:42 am
Beautiful post. Thank you Poneke.
April 25, 2008 at 9:07 am
Sad to say so but the likelihood of your children or their children being forced to go into battle against Islamofascism seems high.
April 25, 2008 at 9:36 am
Well said Poneke.
April 25, 2008 at 9:52 am
Great post. I cannot imagine how it would be as a parent seeing your kids off to a war. I can sort of see why many in the US have to believe in the Iraq war so hard – maybe it makes sending their children a little easier.
Was Korea a ‘draft war’ for us?
[Poneke says: Yes. There was a huge stink in 1949 when the Labour government reintroduced conscription, as it was peacetime. Peter Fraser, the prime minister, had been jailed in World War I for opposing conscription. He lost the 1949 election, soon after winning a pro-conscription referendum, then Korea came along and National sent our troops there.]
April 25, 2008 at 10:30 am
[...] Poneke reminds us how lucky those of our generation are: I am from only the first generation in human history whose young men – teenage boys — were not forced by their country’s leaders to fight and kill the young men and teenage boys of other countries and be killed by them. My parents’ generation was the last such generation so far, and, I fervently hope, the last ever. [...]
April 25, 2008 at 11:12 am
Yes, when I went to school on one side of the stage was the list of WWl deaths and on the other WWII one and we wondered where our generation’s one would be. The Vietnam war was hotting up and we did military training at school that was aimed at
jungle warfare
Our dads generation had done their thing as had the generation before them
So yes some of us do know how lucky we are
And a special thanks to the two relations who went ashore at Galipoli (one died the next day the other survived that and the trenches) and the special way the Turks remember them
April 25, 2008 at 11:16 am
Attaturk’s words are beautiful aren’t they? This is also inscribed on a memorial at Galipolli. I was very moved at the idea that the people of Turkey thought it fitting to allow an invading foreign power to give its own name to a part of their country.
The last post is quite possibly the saddest sound in the world. It gives me goosebumps everytime.
A day for reflection. A rememberance.
April 25, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Nice post poneke. I agree with your daughter also; protesting at such events is misguided. I’ve certainly protested against wars, but not the servicemen and women. Wars are not of their making.
April 25, 2008 at 2:00 pm
While I agree, it is always important to respect those who have gone before, your first point about being a generation free of the draft is such a timely reminder. We take so many liberties for granted now.
But I have such mixed feelings about anzac day. As much as I love history, I question some of our own blindspots. Would our boys ever have raped, pillaged or killed civilians? Did we ever choose to kill an opposing soldier when a prisoner of war could have been safely captured? The anzacs are portrayed in such a squeaky clean way – it was the yanks in Vietnam who did the bad stuff, or the huns in europe.
For those who honour the day today I would encourage them to take the emotions the proceedings trigger, consider the current wars around the globe and help find a way to make these truly the last wars on earth.
And just one more thing.
Here in Australia aboriginal servicemen have not been financially compensated for their service in WWII. Am sure that this is not the case in NZ but over here there are still a lot of skeletons in the army’s closet.
April 25, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Hark… is that the sound of violins I hear from this outspoken female? They sound pretty screechy and out of tune too.
Gosh, I wonder how different it would be to be hit in the head by a sniper if you were an Abo, compared to if you were a stinking white bastard. Pretty much the same I would think, Sheila.
When I was in Gallipolli I didn’t see a village for bloody miles. There’s absolutely no habitation there – which was why it was chosen as the invasion site. But I’m sure the vile soldiers would have absolutely loved a nice bit of rapine had it been available, so they’re just as guilty as if they had actually done it, aren’t they?
I’m surprised nobody has yet mentioned all the howwible environmental damage done to the Cannakkale penninsula by us and the Turks.
Seriously… Gallipolli means as much to Turkey as it does to us, as Mustafa Kemal (the founder of modern Turkey) was the batallion commander who pre-empted the invasion through his spot-on decision to occupy the high ground as soon as our invasion fleet was spotted. The Turks picked us off in the beginning like shooting tin cans at a fairground. It must have been horrible.
Also seriously, while terrible things aredonein war, we should never forget that war is sometimes necessary and not to be prepared to go to war is folly. Gallipolli was poorly executed by the British and their alles, but the aims of the campaign were, I belive, valid. We were well and truly beaten by a heroic and dedicated resistance.
April 25, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Anyone who suggests war as a tool of state policy should be carted off to jail forthwith. The aggressor is always in the wrong.
Using this rule, it’s easy to tell the just wars from the unjust wars. There are very few just wars.
April 25, 2008 at 10:32 pm
These days ANZAC day has become a nuanced celebration of a national myth that Leni Riefenstahl would recognise immediately, an irony that’s not lost on thinking people when they consider the nature and outcomes of the sort of imperialist hubris that led to the great coalition wars of the 20th century.
April 26, 2008 at 8:22 am
Don’t forget we have the third highest child abuse figures in the world .
Poor children suffer while Helen has a good weep at her wedding .
Go figure what a disgraceful country of lies and more lies.
April 26, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Well said. But I want to pick up on one thing, the idea of politicians starting wars.
Did Churchill start WW2? After all he declared war on Germany. Who takes the blame? Did the British public support him because he vowed to fight the Germans, or because they hoped he would avoid war?
If we had parallel worlds we could tell if just letting Hitler take over (the pre-Churchill policy) would cost more lives or less in the long run. Would we be speaking Japanese today? Would the entire world have gone behind a great iron curtain for 60 years instead of just Eastern Europe and Russia? Would Hitler have lived to 94 and ground the civilised world to dust? Who knows…
But imagine you were in Britain in 1939 – what would you want your leaders to do? It is too simplistic to say that only politicians start wars.
April 26, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I want to pick up on one thing, the idea of politicians starting wars. Did Churchill start WW2? After all he declared war on Germany.
And I am happy to debate that. I have thought about WW2 long and hard. I have travelled extensively in Germany and Europe generally. I speak German to a reasonable standard and have had many conversations about this issue with Germans. My reading of history is that Germany was the most cultured country in Europe at the time, yet it descended into barbarism on a scale not seen before or since in human history. How could this happen?
Hitler was a politician, a very successful one. He was not some general who seized power, he was a civilian politician who took power through the ballot box. Huge numbers of Germans adored him. He made them proud to be German. They followed him into the abyss.
I don’t think they would have followed him into that abyss if they knew what the abyss was. But by then it was too late. I think Krystallnacht was the turning point. Before then, much of Germany was behind him, but much of Germany was repelled by what happened that night, but by then, it was too late.
I don’t believe Churchill started World War II, though some might argue Britain’s declaration of war that night in September 1939 began it. I believe Churchill justly and bravely stood up to the madness that Germany had become by then.
I am generally a pacifist and do not usually support war. But Hitler was intending to take over the world and exterminate everyone who was Jewish. This was the most monstrous plan that had ever been unleashed by anyone in human history. It was a plan not known at the time Britain declared war on Germany, but it was an evil still stopped by Churchill nonetheless, and without him would have been an evil completed with eight million Jewish deaths rather than the six million Hitler managed before his defeat.
I cannot conceive of what the world would have been like today had Hitler won, and he would have won had Churchill not stood up to him. But it would have been a terrible place.
Hitler hoped that Britain would have supported him. Hitler was not by his nature an enemy of Britain. But Britain under the politician Churchill stood up to and waged war against Hitler the politician German and, I believe, the world is a better place today for it.
The war against Hitler is one of the few just wars there has ever been, I would argue. It was a war that had to be fought, otherwise tyranny would have ruled the world.
I still weep for every young man conscripted to fight in that war, whether German, Japanese, Allied or whoever. They were sons forced by politicians to kill the sons of other parents. But I also weep for all the civilian innocents who died in that war, especially the millions of European Jews who were murdered for no other reason than their ethnicity.
Whatever Churchill’s failings, and he appears to have had many, he was one of the great men of any age and well might Britain feel that World War II was their finest hour. I do believe it was.
April 26, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Um, it was Chamberlain who declared war….Churchill was a rebel backbencher when war was declared.
He was brought into the War Cabinet after war was declared and put in charge of the Royal Navy: he became PM in May 1940.
April 26, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Um, it was Chamberlain who declared war….Churchill was a rebel backbencher when war was declared.
Yes sorry you are right. I grovel. My only excuse is that I was decades away from being born then. As were you.
It was over Poland, and Britain’s agreement to declare war on Germany if Hitler invaded. Which he did in September 1939. Churchill supported it. And it was Optimist who misled me but I should have picked it up.
As did New Zealand. If my memory is not even worse than it seems, I recall (reading) that NZ declared war on Germany that September day even before Britain did.
April 26, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I recall posting something along those lines (about NZ declaring war early) and being corrected by someone.
Apparently its a myth, but its a good one.
April 26, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Samoa, our shame.
Better flesh that out a wee bit,
3 September 1939 – Great Britain (& therefore NZ) and France declare war on Germany. Due to the International Date Line, NZ actually declared war before Great Britain.
http://www.geocities.com/somesprisonersnz/chronologyww2.html
WW1 we invaded German Samoa and straight back there start of WW2.
April 26, 2008 at 5:59 pm
WW II was the consequence of repeated German and Japanese aggression against their neighbours. I count it among just wars.
April 26, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Er yes, Chamberlain sorry. Actually I watched his performance on a war movie a month or two ago and I can’t imagine anyone more reluctant to declare a war…something like ‘unfortunately I have received no such undertaking and therefore as of xxx we are in a state of war with Germany’. I suspect Churchill would have put it differently and perhaps gained some early advantage.
As you say Hitler wanted Britain to come on side and it is remarkable how long he kept that up. I love that Blackadder bit where Flashheart is captured by the huns and meets up with a German flying ace who almost expects to be friends. (Flashheart shoots him of course)
Anyway, now that you have said that WW2 was a just war, I’d like to make a huge leap and say so was the first Iraq war. Had the world left Kuwait to its devices there would have been much more death and destruction than eventually occurred. The war might have spread if Iran or Israel felt threatened. The pattern of oppression that Saddam had carried on for years in Iraq would have carried on. I could rant on but you get the idea.
And in case you are still with me, I believe that actually many wars are ‘just wars’. The problem is that an impartial party will never feel the slight quite so keenly as the protagonists. The USA didn’t join the war in 1939 but only in late 1941 after being attacked itself (ok I admit they provided huge amounts of ammunition, etc.) So for example Israel sees the actions of several of its neighbours as threats to its existence. So Israel might declare war on Iran, for example, or maybe just blow up a few things. Is that a just war?
The key point is ‘who decides whether declaring war is just’?
The sole superpower – the US? No, that’s only one point of view and in many cases the US wouldn’t have a position (think Iran v Syria).
The International Pacifists Association? They would always say no, and that wouldn’t solve anything.
The arms industry? They would always say yes
The UN? No, it’s not democratic and vote buying through aid, etc. is rife.
God? – which one?
Unfortunately there is no suitable arbiter on Earth for determining which is a just war. Admittedly some parties are pretty obviously in the wrong, but this is often not the case and it is the hard cases that matter. This is a sad but inescapable fact.
Therefore, apart from an apology for such a long comment, I will leave you with the through that (sadly) the only suitable arbiter of a just war is a democratically elected government of a sovereign state acting in its own best interests. Based on this, wars are sometimes just, and sometimes inevitable.
(the good news is that democracies tend to have non-conscripted armies so the deaths should be fairly limited these days)
April 26, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Optimist,
There’s a school of thought which says WW I was the first Gulf War….
One of the big British concerns was the Berlin-Baghdad railway then being constructed.
It went through the Balkans and Turkey, hence their strategic importance.
Oil was the main reason, of course. But what was perhaps most worrying to the Brits was it took Germany closer to Afghanistan and the jewel in the Crown, India.
Oh, and Churchill once said the most important decision he ever made in his career was, when First Lord of the Admiralty before WW I, deciding to convert the British Navy from coal to oil fired ships.
Seen from this perspective, Gallipoli looks like less of a sideshow, doesn’t it?
I’m not saying this school of thought is correct: what I am saying is it throws an intriguing light on things.
To anyone with an interest in the bloody history of the 20th Century and has access to the History Channel, try to catch Niall Ferguson’s ‘War of the World’ which began rescreening last night.
It’s brilliant.
Oh, and on conscription in modern war: It’s a no goer.
Modern war is too technical. The age of mass armies, which went roughly from Napoleon’s time to the Korean War, is over. You can’t just shove a rifle in someone’s hand and tell them to go over the top any more. It takes too long to train someone to be battle-ready.
Which does not mean deaths are more limited, as the civilian casualty count of any recent conflict should tell you.
April 26, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Gallipolli was by no means a side show, actually.
The Ottoman Empire had been previously dallying with the idea of coming into the war on the British & French side, but were persuaded the other way by the gift by Germany of a battle cruiser, which proceeded to sail into the Black Sea through the Dardanelles and the Sea Of Marmara and shell the shit out of several strategic Russian towns including the Crimean penninsular while flying the TURKISH flag, thus causing an international outrage which effectively put Turkey into the war on Germany’s side.
The Dardanelles is a hugely important waterway which carried in 1915 ALL the commerce by way of shipping from Russia’s back door out into the Mediterranean, and thus to Europe.
The Ottoman Empire was seen to be politically and economically in trouble by the allies, and their plan was to launch a rapid pre-emptive battleship strike on Constantinople in order to quickly take them out of the war and the capture of the Dardanelles was the only way for them to do that.
Mines laid in the Dardanelles by the allies were being cleared by night as quickly as they could be laid, and so the Gallipolli campaign was launched in order to get a land force across the penninsular to capture Cannakkale and secure the seaway.
If it had not been for Mustafa Kemal’s brilliant early moves against them and then the whole heroic performance of the Turkish army for 6 months, and if the British plan had succeeded, then the outcome would have been much different and the whole history of the Ottoman lands from Gaza right through to the Shaat-Al-Arab marshes of what later became Iraq would have been totally different. For at least 70 years.
Its oh-so-fashionable for people who know almost nothing about it to dance around like peacenik poofters chanting about the ‘folly’ of Gallipolli. War is sometimes necessary, moral and right, and, yes, people do get killed in the process. And sometime (oooohhhh horror!), the other side fights better and harder.
We should be remembering our forbears’ sacrifice and gallantry and thanking them for it, not blubbing on about ‘peace’.
April 27, 2008 at 12:57 am
Poneke, you are very lucky to have such a wise daughter.
April 27, 2008 at 10:29 am
The Dardanelles have always been important militarily even when they were the Hellespont.
April 27, 2008 at 6:05 pm
“Gosh, I wonder how different it would be to be hit in the head by a sniper if you were an Abo, compared to if you were a stinking white bastard. Pretty much the same I would think, Sheila.”
Dave – aboriginal australians signed up at a time when they had no vote or rights in their own country. They were promised to be paid the going rate by the army and shortly after joining up their money stopped. To be honest, your response sounds pretty racist or just plain ignorant to me. White folks can get paid to be shot at (as my relatives were) but not black fellas?
April 28, 2008 at 9:03 am
The statements in the post and in the following comments about conscription in NZ are not at all accurate. As a former army officer (and Vietnam veteran) who trained national servicemen during several separate postings, I was well aware of the additional burden that National Service placed on the regular army. Far from releasing regular force soldiers to serve in Vietnam, (and by the way the introduction of National Service preceded our involvement in Vietnam) it caused a lot of army resources to be redirected to supporting the much enlarged National Service-based Territorial Force.