Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: The War Stories

Richard Aston

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 17:18:10 +1200

We sang that verse in Wellington Cathedral.

Good on ya Celia , that's good to know .

Richard Aston

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 17:14:56 +1200

This article from the VUW Student Magazine Salient had a pretty big effect on me when I first read it.
Had a big effect on me reading it today Graeme!. It’s bloody shocking.
Baxter’s resilience and total commitment to his ideals is breathtaking, doubt I could have done it.

Celia Wade-Brown

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:48:51 +1200

We sang that verse in Wellington Cathedral.

Raymond A Francis

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 10:52:59 +1200

I know that Islander, like you a fair number of local Maori are whanau (Tumaru and Te Maihroa clan) or have some sort of connection

The whiteness is based on the census figures

Islander

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:02:59 +1200

Not bad for a small town that is one of the whitest in the country (not that last fact is worth celebrating) but rather the hard time that we had in the 1980s

Um, there's a lot of -covert Maori? – in Waimate, inlcuding 2 sets of my whanau.
Each…

Raymond A Francis

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 11:57:29 +1200

Hard to believe but the local paper claims via a book written by a local boy that Waimate ex residents are more than 1% of the army
Not bad for a small town that is one of the whitest in the country (not that last fact is worth celebrating) but…

ChrisW

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 10:22:26 +1200

My Gallipoli bound Granddad, just before he left Middle East ...
I'm interested (my grandfather in the Wellington Mounted Rifles). Yours was with the Canterburys in the immediately post-War deployment from Palestine to Gallipoli?
I'm trying to reconcile the horse story with that described after careful research in Terry Kinloch's…

Kyle Matthews

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:36:58 +1200

-there was – I understand – a deliberate decision, made on financial grounds, not to repatriate ANZ horses-

Also quarantine reasons. According to wikipedia, 136,000 horses were shipped from Australia. 13,000 were left at the end of the war, only one returned to Australia, the rest were killed or went…

Ross Mason

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:54:37 +1200

My Gallipoli bound Granddad, just before he left Middle East, along with practically the whole Canterbury Mounteds, took their horses down to the beach and shot them. He said it was because they would not leave them for the locals as they treated theirs appallingly. They couldn't bear seeing theirs…

Islander

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:17:42 +1200

Yes, indeedy.
Out of the 10,000 plus who went overseas, only (only!) half of which were estimated
to have been killed on battlefields.
Peter's horse is still remembered in the whanau (as well as Peter of course!) because he was unusually intelligent & well-trained.

Henare

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:50:31 +1200

According to this story Bess came back.

Islander

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:42:53 +1200

And the blokes who fought in the desert campaigns-

one of the utterly inglorious things about the WW1 campaign is what happened to the horses.
My blown-to-bits greatuncle Peter took his horse to war. Neither of them came back.
Bad enough BUT
-there was – I understand – a deliberate…

Henare

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:17:30 +1200

This is in Cambridge. Nothing glorious about this ANZAC. Yet it probably refelcted more accurately the feeling of the families left behind.

BenWilson

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:47:10 +1200

The mean age for army personnel at that time was around 29.5 according to this study. So I think comparing to the general population, rather than just the 20-29 year old population, is relevant. Although that is quite an interesting stat.

Graeme Edgeler

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:44:28 +1200

The conscientious objectors , like James K’s father Archibald Baxter who were seen as cowards .

This article from the VUW Student Magazine Salient had a pretty big effect on me when I first read it.

Graeme Edgeler

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:40:41 +1200

They are. Somewhere around 20%.

At the 2006 census, the proportion of people aged 20-29 who gave a clear answer to the Maori descent question and who indicated they were of Maori descent was over 20%.

Tamsin6

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:34:11 +1200

And we don't just remember the soldiers. My great-great aunt Marion Brown, of Southland, died when the Marquette was torpedoed.
http://muse.aucklandmuseum.com/databases/Cenotaph/1781.detail

A little more detail here:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nzlscant/marquette.htm

Robert Urquhart

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:48:10 +1200

http://youtu.be/FEY6LcZFtXc

Russell Brown

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:10:20 +1200

This is good news: He Toki Huna: New Zealand In Afghanistan is available for viewing on-demand.

BenWilson

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:43:03 +1200

The particular devastation of the world wars on Maori can't be underestimated. I don't know, but would not be surprised to learn, that they are a high proportion of the armed forces today.

They are. Somewhere around 20%. Interestingly, Maori women are even more represented, as a proportion of the…

linger

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:31:54 +1200

The aggression seems dissonant with the inscription “Lord into thy hands we commend their spirits”. … indeed: presumably the inscription is supposed to refer to the list of the fallen, but really the only way of reconciling the verbal and visual messages is to read “their” as referring to “those…

ChrisW

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:42:15 +1200

Compared with that marble soldier, the Te Aroha WWI memorial in bronze, grey granite and cast iron takes a very different stance! The aggression seems dissonant with the inscription “Lord into thy hands we commend their spirits”.

No sign of prideful sorrow here.

Could it have been a “boy named…

ChrisW

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:31:00 +1200

I must get back to Gisborne one of these days; remind me to look up that statue and pay my respects when I do.
Please do – but he won't be back for a year or two yet. I suspect the centenary of Anzac Day itself in 2015 will be…

Russell Brown

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:24:13 +1200

The particular devastation of the world wars on Maori can’t be underestimated. I don’t know, but would not be surprised to learn, that they are a high proportion of the armed forces today.

Yes, that's absolutely the case.

Ken Sparks

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:08:29 +1200

Really good to see Kay and Annie's doco just now – always a pleasure seeing Jake Bryant's camerawork too. I have huge respect for Jon Stephenson and it was fascinating seeing him at work in the field. Maybe our army should only be used for national emergencies and actual overseas…

Chris Waugh

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:03:49 +1200

And young, so young,

I've been doing my usual Anzac Day lesson this week. It's a certain kind of magic to tell my students that those soldiers were their own age when they lost their lives and see – physically see the expressions on their faces and the lights in…

Hebe

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:38:12 +1200

That marble soldier seems thoroughly expressive. And young, so young,

ChrisW

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:29:19 +1200

My preparation today for Anzac Day involved visiting the Gisborne district war memorial cenotaph to photograph it complete with its marble soldier on top. The monument was damaged in the December 2007 earthquake. Subsequent investigations indicate it is in poor structural condition on weak foundations close to the riverbank. The…

Ana Simkiss

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:56:05 +1200

The particular devastation of the world wars on Maori can't be underestimated. I don't know, but would not be surprised to learn, that they are a high proportion of the armed forces today.

Henare

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:01:47 +1200

I have taken my son since he inherited his Koro's medals. It's nothing to do with glorifying war, it's about honouring the effort and loss made by a couple of generations.

Ken Sparks

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:40:53 +1200

Anzac Day just makes me sad and I've never felt moved to join a dawn parade and stand around with people who generally think war is either honourable or at least unavoidable. Call me an idealist but I'm with the conscientious objectors. Didn't stop me from taking my son to…

Richard Aston

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:51:29 +1200

And on Jim Mora's radio show this avo . Shirley Murray a NZ hymn writer on her Anzac hymn . The controversial third verse is being omitted by many.

Honour the brave whose conscience was their call,
answered no bugle, went against the wall,
suffered in prisons of contempt and…

Public Address

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:51:29 +1200

Discussion from blog post.