Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: War, now and then

Steve Barnes

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:07:14 +1200

This one sums it up for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urtiyp-G6jY
Anger and tears.

Islander

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:50:59 +1200

That night he also told me of the breakout of Minqar Qaim & he went through the Hospitsal lines, bayonet fixed.

There was an old bloke, veteran of the North African campaigns, who used to bore me almost witless for several years, every time he visited Okarito; he visited me
because…

Just thinking

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:59:47 +1200

Thanks RoO & JW,
Oh the psychology!
I hadn't thought of that.
It was 24 April 197? and he was drunk, reading his and his brothers diaries, tears flowing as much as the beer.
That night he also told me of the breakout of Minqar Qaim & he went through the Hospitsal…

Joe Wylie

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:52:14 +1200

I grew up with Granddads story of being in the firing squad for a member of his section for rape in Italy. No wooden bullets and no-one missed.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that he talked about it. So when will the real stories come out? Not while the…

Rich of Observationz

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:47:48 +1200

That information should be held by Archives or the Defence Force. Given that there would be little reason to keep them closed, you should be able to ask for them to be opened. Personnel records for those executed, court martial records and unit diaries would be the places to look.

Just thinking

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:20:32 +1200

Anyone know when our WWII executed will become public knowledge?
I grew up with Granddads story of being in the firing squad for a member of his section for rape in Italy. No wooden bullets and no-one missed.

Ross Mason

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:09:16 +1200

Another that keeps regularly arriving on the front page of our papers. The old living alone.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5WZJmQ61x0

The other is the perenial child abuse. Can't find a video unfortunately

Daniel Smiling

Lucy Stewart

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:28:16 +1200

Funnily enough, my first major exposure to WWI history was studying those songs and other war poetry as part of sixth-form English class. Very few people in my family served in WWII, and I don't know if any did in WWI; the two I know of who did serve overseas…

Ross Mason

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:01:31 +1200

Two of the best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OjxMQHYo3U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=471-ucVd7o0

Joe Wylie

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:34:45 +1200

It's interesting that as such real threats to the nation receded and the government embarked on small wars of (re-)colonisation, the idea of 'remembrance' has been pushed much harder in the UK.
The sentimental promotion of terms like "squaddie" by the likes of the Sun. Personally I find it pretty…

Rich of Observationz

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:46:07 +1200

It's interesting as a Brit, to see how big a thing this is. Growing up in England in the 60s and 70s, Remembrance Day wasn't much of an event – it was much like Lifeboat Day or other charitable collections. That, I think, was because for the wartime generation, *everyone*…

Raymond A Francis

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:50:55 +1200

Hilary, I often feel those who did not serve had a hard time of it living through the 50s. Of course they were alive but they had missed out on what a lot of the returned men felt was the measure of a man and there was certainly some ill…

Hilary Stace

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:18:09 +1200

Just been reading my father's memoirs. He never talked about the war much although we knew he had been in the Home Guard. Now I have found out it was all more complex than that. He and his work colleague were both called up and deemed fit. However, their employer…

dyan campbell

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:13:29 +1200

I still, understanding the human pain, mourn for Peter Miller’s horse…
(yeah, yeah, stupid- but_

Not stupid at all – feeling some kinship with the animals that suffered in that doesn’t detract from the honour/tribute paid to the men that died in that conflict. The French writer Gabrielle Colette wrote…

BenWilson

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:48:05 +1200

Aren’t “Who’s braver?”, and “Who’s more important?” red herrings anyway?

Of course, especially since a conscientious objector is objecting to going to war on moral grounds. So the bravery is irrelevant – they really think that war is a bad thing to be involved in, brave or not. You have…

Sacha

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:48:43 +1200

I always have meant to go to a Dawn Parade

Do – it really makes sense in a different way than what you see on telly.

Jackie Clark

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 05:53:07 +1200

Anzac Day has always been just another day to me, and I feel very removed from it. I always have meant to go to a Dawn Parade, really as an act of solidarity more than anything else, but have never got there. I think being connected to it makes a…

Islander

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:50:11 +1200

And, unfortunately, with the “appropriateness” filters of his mind dented by a series of strokes and very old age, the reminiscing has been horrific for the children (the tales he told them were the most graphic I have ever heard or read, anywhere). I cannot comprehend what it must be…

Hebe

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:13:50 +1200

A waste, indeed. I heard yesterday only four warhorses came back to this country.

My partner's father was at Hiroshima a months or so after the bomb was dropped. He's severely hammered by it and has only just started talking about it. But it's to the grandchildren, not his children.…

Islander

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:05:58 +1200

We had two generations of traumatised fathers and uncles and grandfathers in our country, and many are still living, and that has had an incalculable effect on the men, their families and our society.
Ae.
One of my grandfather’s brothers is bits at Passenchendahl (so is his horse.)(The horse was…

Hebe

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:46:40 +1200

ANZAC day for me ....I had a grandfather who landed at Gallipoli at 18 years old and was wounded, fought at one of the other big ones, and rounded off with the Somme and his leg shot off. Back in NZ minus a leg by 21.

He never talked about…

Joe Wylie

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:54:05 +1200

I liked what Jackson said

Seems important to me that we remember all sides of the big messy equation that war is, so we can better avoid it in the future.
Amen to that. Good to see the RSA finally being inclusive of all experiences.

As for complaining about coverage…

Ross Mason

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:19:05 +1200

I think this practically untold story on the furlough "mutiny" is even more impressive.

Ross Mason

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:08:45 +1200

This was shaping up to be the nightmare that my Dad endured and I thought I had escaped. Hadn't allowed for American stupidity and Muldoon insecurity.

Hmmmmm.....Muldoon? Vietnam?

Me thinks it was Pahaiatua's very own Kiwi Keith who got us into that melee with the shake of the hand of…

Lilith __

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:08:26 +1200

Aren't "Who's braver?", and "Who's more important?" red herrings anyway? There are so many experiences and so many viewpoints, I'd like to hear and see more of them. I don't think remembrance is a competition.

I liked what Jackson said

Seems important to me that we remember all sides of…

Graeme Edgeler

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:51:48 +1200

The constant wheeling out of the conscientious objector and the faint hint that this was real heroism begins to grate these days. I could never resolve whether it took more guts to go or not to go but bailing out was not braver

I'm not sure that coverage of the…

Raymond A Francis

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:48:32 +1200

John Madden's point that :
The constant wheeling out of the conscientious objector and the faint hint that this was real heroism begins to grate these days. I could never resolve whether it took more guts to go or not to go but bailing out was not braver
That and…

Sofie Bribiesca

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:57:21 +1200

{ ;)

JacksonP

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:38:16 +1200

Wings over the house today.

Snap. ;-)

Sofie Bribiesca

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:26:10 +1200

Wings over the house today.

BenWilson

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:46:32 +1200

Don't know what a straw man is.

It's arguing against an argument that no-one made – the straw man is like a punching bag you set up to knock down. The fallacy is in then claiming to have knocked down the actual people you would seem to be arguing with.…

andin

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:34:47 +1200

Trying to make the point that it may be aging that makes you........What?
Our minds are malleable no doubt, but does age mean you just change your mind for no reason. Or just drift back toward what is generally accepted by the majority?

John Madden

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:27:11 +1200

Ye gods, I lit a few fuses. Anyhow, don't see fighting as heroism necessarily. Research suggests a large number of soldiers shoot to miss which kinda spoofs hero angle. In WW2 the buggers got sent, didn't always volunteer, so is it just inertia?
Don't know what a straw man is.…

John Madden

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:15:14 +1200

No arguments, just mentions. But the word courageous pops up in the post after yours. Don't think I didn't chew over the options when I thought I might find myself in the army, let alone go somewhere and get shot. I just get the feeling the objector subject gets biffed…

John Madden

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:05:22 +1200

Not balding but aging. Trying to make the point that it may be aging that makes you not generation, thus maybe my old man's attitudes were more to do with his age than his generation. Then again, could be whistlin'.

JacksonP

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:35:58 +1200

Dawn Service – Auckland Museum.

One of my grandfathers was in the home guard and the other drove the Canteen bus for the 28th Maori Battalion. He was shot through the stomach by a South African Plane*, but lived to tell the tale, and many others.

Seems important to me…

Just thinking

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:26:49 +1200

ANZAC day for me is about 5am Coffee Royal (Coffee and Rum) and getting out of the RSA before 6pm or the first fight starts, which ever comes first.
The most interesting thing happened about 10 years ago. A couple of young women walked with a quilted banner protesting the…

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:48:15 +1200

Israeli teens enter jail rather than take part in army crimes against Palestinians

Graeme Edgeler

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:11:07 +1200

These days the RSA’s website features the experience of pacifist Archibald Baxter as a bona fide part of NZ’s war record.

This Salient feature was particularly affecting. Damn we sucked.

Joe Wylie

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:55:03 +1200

National Service was abandoned in NZ in 1972 because of lobbying and civil disobedience.
Although I wasn't in NZ then, I believe that more than anything it reflected an overwhelming popular will. While it could be a major practical disruption to be called up in those last years of national…

Lilith __

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:45:34 +1200

I think it’s twisting the term “pacifism” to include designing nuclear weapons that end up getting used to kill vast numbers of civilians

OK Einstein was never involved in designing the bomb. What he did do was publicise German bomb-making efforts and urged the US to develop their own. This…

BenWilson

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:42:33 +1200

It was a horribly practical decision.

Victory over Japan in the Pacific was obviously what concerned NZ's security and sovereignty directly.

It also meant the "real" end to the war, so of course it was celebrated massively. It meant troops coming home, and extraordinary amounts of sex.

Lilith __

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:02:45 +1200

VE (Victory Empire) event

Victory in Europe.

Victory over Japan in the Pacific was obviously what concerned NZ's security and sovereignty directly.

Joe Wylie

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:26:39 +1200

I think it's twisting the term "pacifism" to include designing nuclear weapons that end up getting used to kill vast numbers of civilians, and threaten rival superpowers.
In principle certainly. Still there are plenty of accounts of the rejoicing among the enlisted that greeted the news of the nuclear attacks…

BenWilson

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:06:35 +1200

Thoughts?

I think it's twisting the term "pacifism" to include designing nuclear weapons that end up getting used to kill vast numbers of civilians, and threaten rival superpowers. Why bother to do that? You don't need to be conflicted about believing that violence is justified in order to secure peace,…

Lilith __

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:02:41 +1200

Wow. Nice to know what God’s purposes are.

I read that as being deliberately cagey. He was neither confirming nor denying whether he would pray for England

I think it's a wonderful answer. The answer they were probably expecting was, "Yes, I will pray for England." But he answered in…

BenWilson

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:47:31 +1200

Wow. Nice to know what God's purposes are.

I read that as being deliberately cagey. He was neither confirming nor denying whether he would pray for England, but saying that England, if they won, would thus be fulfilling God's Purpose (since not fulfilling it is basically impossible when you believe…

Lilith __

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:02:24 +1200

Einstein said:

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

and

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those…

Lilith __

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:48:04 +1200

You do know that in WW1 conscientious…

Hilary Stace

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:29:09 +1200

Stunning movie, and great oral history project. Her 'Home by Christmas' featuring her daughter Chelsea, is based on her father's story. Well worth watching too.

Danielle

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:45:40 +1200

Gaylene Preston’s War stories

Even thinking about that film makes me teary-eyed.

Joe Wylie

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:44:12 +1200

I found out a couple of years ago that there was a US policy of sending adult men with intellectual impairment to Vietnam. This is hinted at in the movie Forest Gump.
From the accounts I heard from the numerous US r&r guys in Sydney in the early 70s, most of…

andin

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:00:31 +1200

But I appear to have aged fast.
Or morphed into a member of some other generation. I guess your balding now.

Sacha

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:59:17 +1200

If you're talking about WIPO clauses that the Foundation of the Blind and others might be citing, do you have more detail about what's happening locally? sounds interesting.

Hilary Stace

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:51:44 +1200

I found out a couple of years ago that there was a US policy of sending adult men with intellectual impairment to Vietnam. This is hinted at in the movie Forest Gump.

And re WW2 conscientious objectors in NZ, has anyone mentioned the courageous wives of the COs as featured…

Joe Wylie

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:39:20 +1200

The constant wheeling out of the conscientious objector and the faint hint that this was real heroism begins to grate these days . . . Maybe it is just too cosy liberal round here.
Care to point to an example of anyone specifically presenting that argument 'around here' John?

John Madden

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:26:26 +1200

Pardon the late butting in, I too was up for that last draw but my birth date didn't come up. I was not so sanguine about the risk of ending up in Vietnam as a conscript as Joe appears to have been. This was shaping up to be the nightmare…

Islander

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:38:17 +1200

NZETC /me.books is an excellent site…their work makes the much hoo-haa’d (byCLL & NZSA anyway) “Great NZ Books” site look puerile. Most established writers have shunned GNZB – so, CLL & NZSA’s latest ploy is to try and use an irrelevant law to digitise NZ works *without* authors’ permission, as a purported…

Lilith __

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:49:19 +1200

We will not cease
The whole book is readable through NZETC (NZ Electronic Text Centre)

Thanks for that Ian. And good on Vic Uni for all the careful digitising.

Ian Dalziel

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 08:45:10 +1200

I remember Keith Duffield, a one man revolution in Chchch, he was a conscientious objector, with harrowing tales – but I can't find more than Murray Horton's uncharacteristically short obituary from 1979. – he was an inspiration to us all at the time (and beyond).
I also found this link…

Joe Wylie

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:01:06 +1200

Wow. Nice to know what God's purposes are.
Now you sound like Janet Frame, tormenting her poor old Christadelphian mother :)

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:57:55 +1200

Mr. C. O. Bell (Crown representative): Would you pray for victory for our side?—I would pray that God’s purpose should be fulfilled. As far as I understand it, it is his purpose that England should win

Wow. Nice to know what God's purposes are.

Joe Wylie

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:51:08 +1200

I found this on Papers Past a while back. He was a very distant relative, now deceased. While he appears to abide by the Christian pacifist principles that he shared with the previous two generations of his family, he was much more inclined to render unto Caesar than most of…

Islander

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:45:50 +1200

Indeed...I think the underlying assumption is a truth= words have power, cutting & killing power, as well as nourishing & healing power (not to mention plain old explanatory & enlightening & generally what-makes-us-human power (ever since we discovered that interesting ability to make spoken words last for a very long time)

May that ability…

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:33:44 +1200

Dear Lilith (if I may) that has *never* been the case since Europeans arrived.

I'm happy to be dear :-) but it's funny the comforting notions we can assume are true, eh?

Islander

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:23:54 +1200

I’ve always liked to think that freedom of speech and a free press were a given here in NZ.
Dear Lilith (if I may) that has *never* been the case since Europeans arrived.

Mind you, it wasnt happy comments/free for all at *any* time here. (Two nasty wee killing-feuds were…

Joe Wylie

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:22:11 +1200

If it's not a rude question, when was this?
Not at all. I was born in 1948, so 1969 was my year. I think the Kirk Government abolished National Service. Unlike Australia there was no risk of being sent into combat. As a Commonwealth citizen resident in Oz, aged between…

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:12:33 +1200

BTW I’m old enough to have caught the tail end of having to register for national service. I still have my little conchie card.

If it's not a rude question, when was this?*

So many things about 20thC NZ that I don't know. I was surprised to see in the…

Joe Wylie

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:02:30 +1200

I think it's regrettable that conchies were imprisoned during WW2. Whatever their individual faults may have been, they made a principled stand, and were prepared to suffer for it.
Naturally I agree. Again I feel that it's something of a luxury to pass judgement on the views of someone like…

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:37:18 +1200

Conscientious objectors now have some protection in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amnesty International says:

The right to conscientious objection to military service is not a marginal concern outside the mainstream of international human rights protection and promotion. The right to conscientious objection is a basic component of…

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:12:43 +1200

To him all tyranny has its roots in ideology, including the ideologies, religious or not, of many of his fellow “conchies”.

He talks like an anarchist. Which is an ideology, too.

I doubt many people want real anarchy, I think most of us believe the state must enforce some control,…

Joe Wylie

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:28:07 +1200

Long bow?
Extremely so. While I have the luxury of not necessarily agreeing with Hamilton's conclusions, I certainly respect his intelligence and experience. Long-term indefinite incarceration seems to foster a tendency to see things in rather broader terms than in everyday life. Hamilton identified the enemy of humanity as tyranny,…

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:45:42 +1200

Instead of presenting conscientious objectors as an exceptional class of maligned innocents, he seems to conclude that the vast majority of prison inmates were equally victims of a needlessly punitive system.

Grouping wartime government with the peacetime justice system seems like drawing a long bow. I mean, aren’t conchies more…

Joe Wylie

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:30:00 +1200

a good overview of conscientious objection to the war (WW2)
Thanks for that. I've known a few people whose parents were 'conchies', always for religious reasons. Recently I got to read Ian Hamilton's Till Human Voices Wake Us (thank you Ian Dalziel). Hamilton was a relative rarity in that his…

Chris Waugh

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:10:59 +1200

I wasn't overly impressed with Laurence Fearnley's The Hut Builder as a whole, but that middle section where the narrator is stuck halfway up Mt Cook with a conscientious objector for several days was brilliant. Before that I didn't really know much more than that there were a few Conscientious…

Craig Young

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:03:43 +1200

Sexual orientation and the armed forces today...
http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/32/article_8645.php

And at the moment, one of the poster men for same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom is Corporal James Wharton (23), an Iraqi War veteran.

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:33:31 +1200

There’s a good overview of conscientious objection to the war (WW2) here.

When conscription was introduced in July 1940, conscientious objectors could appeal their military service. But the Appeal Boards were made up of older, conventional men, and the government expected them to ‘prevent the coward and the slacker from…

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:22:56 +1200

The large Dutch community almost all experienced invasion and occupation

I was horrified to hear from a Dutch family friend some of her experiences in Amsterdam during the famine of 1944. She was a child at the time and had vivid memories of being sent out by her mother to…

John Madden

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:56:34 +1200

My old Dad spent his war in North Africa and then Italy. He never said a lot but had a stack of photos, including one taken from under a truck in the middle the desert. In the far distance can be seen a German fighter curving around. My Mum tells…

Chris Waugh

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:59:35 +1200

My parents found this in the Salvation Army archive, Mum brought me a copy when she came over here last October. That's her father, first trombone on the left, on his way to Gaudalcanal. He served there on ambulances then AA artillery, then worked his way up Italy to Trieste…

Lilith __

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:18:22 +1200

I know almost nothing about his experiences let alone his feelings associated with those experiences. He simply couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about them.

My grandfather was an army doctor, and he never ever talked about those five years except (we think) with his ex-army buddies. His standard and final response…

Joe Wylie

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:15:24 +1200

I know almost nothing about his experiences let alone his feelings associated with those experiences. He simply couldn't and wouldn't talk about them.
That sounds very much like the condition of so many NZ veterans. Beyond the shallow comradeship of the blowhard heavy-drinking RSA culture there was a sense of…

Bart Janssen

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 09:17:29 +1200

My father was in the Dutch army at the outbreak of WWII. He fought, was a PoW, escaped (apparently not that hard), was part of the resistance, was captured, escaped ...

I know almost nothing about his experiences let alone his feelings associated with those experiences. He simply couldn't and…

Islander

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:57:28 +1200

Russell -there was none of the white feather stuff going on in the "2nd World War"
but there was enormous pressure for people who seemed like suitable young male recruits to BE so- one my beloved uncles was discovered to have tuberculous-scarred lungs and so couldnt go overseas with his…

Russell Brown

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:34:58 +1200

and wound up a supplies sergeant in the RNZAF. I think it blighted the last of his short – but very public, prolific & otherwise productive- life.

My grandfather was a skilled brickie, and was required to stay home in case his skills were required. There obviously was no shame in…

Islander

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:25:39 +1200

Lilith- what a strait and toxic position for families to be in…very well done your father…
My father wanted to be an airforce pilot* – was discovered to have serious heart disease (he died of it in 1958) and wound up a supplies sergeant in the RNZAF. I think it…

Lilith __

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:05:21 +1200

The new additions include the 2005 documentary Sedition – The Suppression of Dissent in World War II New Zealand. New wartime laws affected media coverage or even discussion of pacifism. It’s available for viewing in full. Lest we, you know, forget:

Look forward to viewing this. My father was a…

Public Address

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:05:21 +1200

Discussion from blog post.