ANZAC Day 2022 – Weep for we have forgotten our promises to the dead

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
50
1332

ANZAC Day has always been a deeply sacred day for us as a nation.

The haste and glee of how we fed the mincer of war with our most dazzling children and harvest of life has always called to us from the grave and demanded we never do that to the next generation.

That is the obligation of every citizen in a democracy.

I have no interests in singing the glory of war, each conflict is a collapse of reason and failure of diplomacy, we should only ever raise our arm to protect ourselves or protect others.

The lessons of this violence are to prevent such angers spilling over and staining our children with their dark treacle.

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So as we stand in commemoration of the lives lost, our promise to the next generation looks weaker than ever before.

Covid has touched us as a people in a way that only the unique experience of global war can. It has frightened us and unleashed that fear alongside a torrent of misinformation and subjective emotional rage.

We have forgotten our obligations to the dead.

The speed with which so many of our citizens have believed madness online and threatened  violence because of that madness is an affront to the democracy the dead fought for.

The speed with which middle class Wellingtonians cried out for the military to beat up protestors on Parliaments lawns is an affront to the democracy the dead fought for.

The speed with which we moved to give lethal military aid to the Ukrainians is an affront to the democracy the dead fought for.

The eruption of domestic violence and crime against one another is an affront to the democracy the dead fought for.

We have forgotten our promises to the dead, to de-escalate, to fight for peace, to do all we can to prevent violence from erupting in the first place.

The speed with which we have turned upon one another, the rush to demand violence against our enemies, the rage that now explodes against one another on a day to day basis.

We have forgotten the lessons of the glorious dead, we have forgotten our promises to them, we have become the rough beasts of Bethlehem.

Is this what our glorious dead died for?

As the drumbeat for war slowly echoes across the Pacific, we need collective courage for Peace first and self defence second like never before.

 

The Gunner’s Lament

A Maori gunner lay dying
In a paddyfield north of Saigon,
And he said to his pakeha cobber,
“I reckon I’ve had it, man!

‘And if I could fly like a bird
To my old granny’s whare
A truck and a winch would never drag
Me back to the Army.

‘A coat and a cap and a well-paid job
Looked better than shovelling metal,
And they told me that Te Rauparaha
Would have fought in the Vietnam battle.

‘On my last leave the town swung round
Like a bucket full of eels.
The girls liked the uniform
And I liked the girls.

‘Like a bullock to the abattoirs
In the name of liberty
They flew me with a hangover
Across the Tasman Sea,

‘And what I found in Vietnam
Was mud and blood and fire,
With the Yanks and the Reds taking turns
At murdering the poor.

‘And I saw the reason for it
In a Viet Cong’s blazing eyes –
We fought for the crops of kumara
And they are fighting for the rice.

‘So go tell my sweetheart
To get another boy
Who’ll cuddle her and marry her
And laugh when the bugles blow,

‘And tell my youngest brother
He can have my shotgun
To fire at the ducks on the big lagoon,
But not to aim it at a man,

‘And tell my granny to wear black
And carry a willow leaf,
Because the kid she kept from the cold
Has eaten a dead man’s loaf.

‘And go and tell Keith Holyoake
Sitting in Wellington,
However long he scrubs his hands
He’ll never get them clean.’

James K Baxter
1965

 

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50 COMMENTS

  1. On Anzac day, we acknowledge the many tens of thousands of Kiwis – Maori European & all other ethnicities – who fought & died for our free nation & it’s democratic principles.

    It’s unlikely that m/any of them or their descendants would put their lives on the line to defend co governance.

    Lest we forget

    • I beg to differ, Just watched a doco on the history channel in which they interviewed what would of been the few survivors left from the Gallipoli campaign, and almost all of them reflected and wondered why in hell they needed to go and invade another country.
      Good article @ Martin Bradbury.

  4. Even though History is written by the victors having done it all for god, king and country, and is garnished with outright lies, we still have learnt nothing from the carnage of past wars and seem to be quite happy to do it all again for god, king and country.

  6. Don’t talk to me about us being so grateful to those who gave their lives in defence of our “democracy.” There were more people in the nearby cafes than at the Anzac service we attended this morning. Others out jogging never broke step, and those riding bikes never stopped peddling. Gordon McLauchlin’s description of us as a passionless people was never more apt.
    “Suicide In The Trenches” by Siegfried Sassoon
    I knew a simple soldier boy
    Who grinned at life in empty joy,
    Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
    And whistled early with the lark.

    In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
    With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
    He put a bullet through his brain.
    No one spoke of him again.

    You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
    Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
    Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
    The hell where youth and laughter go.

    • Why not pray for all and any imperialists, the big, the small-dicked and the insignificant?
      And why pray anyway?
      Why not just act as a decent human being that realises and respects your competencies, but realises you’re dependent on the competencies you don’t have.
      Or is that too bleeding heart shit?

  9. “ANZAC Day 2022 – Weep for we have forgotten our promises to the dead”
    Indeed.
    But also THEM appear to have forgotten their promises aussie.

    We, and them have a right, and a natural instinct to defend ourselves and our lives, and those of our offspring.

    If you can figure out a way to neuter the psychopath, or even the sociopath, let me know.

    I’ve been wondering lately whether or not massive doses of oestrogen might be the answer We could get some third world slave to start manufacturing the necessary. Give each of them a semi, and we could probably empower them to forcible administer the solution

  10. Its also unlikely many of our Maori men would have put their lives on the line if they had know they would have got treated like second class citizens.

  11. Yes but the white working class soldiers names all went into a ballot for farming land and they got a full pension. And who got all the welfare state jobs, the state housing corporation houses in the nicest areas and this list could go on. Many Pakeha NZers became middle and upper class due to the discriminative and racist implementation of government policies over many decades. Redistribution is also a dirty word.

  12. Yes but the white working class soldiers names all went into a ballot for farming land and they got a full pension. And who got all the welfare state jobs, the state housing corporation houses in the nicest areas and this list could go on. Many Pakeha NZers became middle and upper class due to the discriminative and racist implementation of government policies over many decades. Redistribution is also a dirty word.

  13. Yes but the white working class soldiers names all went into a ballot for farming land and they got a full pension. And who got all the welfare state jobs, the state housing corporation houses in the nicest areas and this list could go on. Many Pakeha NZers became middle and upper class due to the discriminative and racist implementation of government policies over many decades. Redistribution is also a dirty word.

  14. We have just about lost our souls as NZrs. We had an idea of what we wanted to be. I note from the lives of people I have come to know amongst friends and my family, also myself, how it is recreation that people are looking for, it’s experiences, not so much experience, how subtle we are – an ‘s’ opens a new world. Grave Mullane did not want to just experience being in NZ no she had to have the whole shebang.

    The 17 year old who drove wildly and madly killing a number of people when he had been forbidden by our legal pronouncement; in March he was before ‘the Beak’ again another offence. How often are we going to allow the chain saw murderer to rip us across our hearts.? Why should there be no death sentence for those who clearly deserve it, we aren’t cats – we don’t have 9 lives? We are prepared to send the NZ Defence Force to kill as a public service, so why not civilians. People seem to mouth their principles like false teeth, but we are all sly, ‘If you don’t like what you see well we have other ones.’

    My father went away in the midst of the 1940s and is under I think. a white cross close by his co-pilot and crew in France. He had his OE early I went in 1970s. I never went to his grave. It all seemed to be past and done by, not to be forgotten but to do better and stick to better standards, smarter, brighter, more caring future, more moral etc. Now we are diminishing society, teachers say children aren’t receiving a proper education. High poverty, low horizons. We can’t build decent houses. We can’t operate a people’s financial system helping younhgpeople save a bit, rent a state house. where they learn how to run one and how to manage their lives, their house, their relationship, their children, their extended family and work at a job, and strain at attainment, and laugh about foolishness but still keep trying, and play music and find our soul. But not under the present regime or the carping National one, or the C///ts in the Green Party, the
    Great Pretenders and the Maori parties kia kaha but to what end. It isn’t just expensive things or living rough getting. It’s about balance, having a try to do it all, and succeeding 99% a lot of the time, but a piece of wisdom, limiting the box.

  15. The original veterans never wanted Cenotaphs. They wanted things to help them reintegrate. The Political Leaders wanted Cenotaphs to avert the gaze on their guilt of starting the whole thing in the first place. ANZAC DAY is manufactured

  16. The original veterans never wanted Cenotaphs. They wanted things to help them reintegrate. The Political Leaders wanted Cenotaphs to avert the gaze on their guilt of starting the whole thing in the first place. ANZAC DAY is manufactured.

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