[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the dispatches, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you in this episode. We are going today I'm going to be talking with academic and author Doctor Rowan Light and Royal New Zealand Air Force officer and pilot Tim Costley about the Anzac tradition which began with the australian and New Zealand soldiers who fought during World War one in the Gallipoli campaign that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey from February 1915 to January 1916. Doctor Rowan Light is an historian and lecturer at the University of Auckland, as well as being a project curator at the Auckland Museum. In 2022, Otago University Press published his book Anzac the Legacy of Gallipoli in New Zealand and Australia, 1965 to 2015. The book explores the myth making around Anzac and how commemoration has evolved from 1965, when many assumed that the tradition of remembering the Anzacs would not survive beyond the death of the last Gallipoli veteran, to the Anzac centenary in 2015, when the australian federal government outspent all other countries and New Zealand's centenary program was the largest commemoration in the nation's history. Tim Costley served over 22 years in the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a helicopter pilot and in various leadership positions, including commanding officer of the flying training wing and flight commander of the NH 90 helicopters. His operational service includes Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands, and humanitarian missions in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and New Zealand. Tim also served in Europe as the first New Zealand officer sent in response to the invasion of Ukraine. He is also the founder of the Missing Wingman Trust, a charity caring for air force families, and in 2014 he worked for his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, serving as Prince Williams Equerry. Tim has a master's degree in international defence and security with a focus on crisis management and a bachelor's degree in mathematical physics. He is married to Emma and they have three daughters. So without any further ado, let's have this profoundly important conversation with Doctor Rowan Light and Tim costly about the Anzac tradition which commemorates the Australians and New Zealanders who have served and died in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations.
Right, Tim and Rowan, it is great to have you here for this conversation. Thank you both for taking time out of your busy schedules to talk about what I think is a profoundly important tradition here in New Zealand, and that is the Anzac tradition and all of the customs that go along with it. Rowan, if I could perhaps start with you to kick us off. You're a man who. You're in your thirties now, right? Is that right, Rowan?
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Yep, that's right. 32.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: And so you're a, I'd say relatively young guy who's written a book about the Anzac tradition called Anzac nations, the legacy of Gallipoli in New Zealand and Australia in 1965 to 2015. I'm really intrigued in what it was that inspired you to write this book, because I don't imagine many people in their early thirties are necessarily thinking, I'll write a book about the Anzac tradition, maybe because they just don't have that same connection to it, or perhaps possibly because they think, well, everything's already been said, what can I add? But you wrote a book, so what inspired you to actually write that book?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Well, I suppose the context of the book is really that it came out of a PhD that I completed at the University of Aucklands in 2019.
The research for the book was done as part of that. And I suppose what made me pursue the PhD was a few different things. I think I certainly had. Like many young New Zealanders, I grew up with Anzac Day as sort of part of my annual kind of calendar, you know, at school, going along to Anzac Day services.
I had a great grandfather who was at Gallipoli and served at the Somme, lost his eye at the Battle of the Somme. And that was certainly a family story growing up, but it wasn't really, actually, until I moved to Australia. So I lived in Australia for a couple of years, studying and working, and that's when I came to realise how different the Australians in some ways, how very different the Australians think about Anzac Day and the sort of role, an emphasis of Anzac, the Anzac tradition in Australia, because, of course, it's something that we share and it's in some ways unusual in the first World War, the commemoration of the first World War, that we have these two countries that have this kind of shared acronym tied to this annual day on the calendar. And so I was interested in the. I noticed the differences and I thought, okay, I'd like to understand this more and understand what makes what's shaped the New Zealand tradition.
And I think probably what was shared at that time was really the rise, what's been called the revival of Anzac. And so the ways that Anzac Day has kind of had a resurgence. So, yeah, as a young, relatively young New Zealander, at 30, in the last 30 years, in my lifetime, Anzac Day has become quite a different sort of, I think has quite a different quality to it then maybe a generation ago. So the very fact that young people are quite interested in going to Gallipoli, for example, is a place of pilgrimage.
If you go to an Anzac Day service in the coming weeks, you will notice young people are present. And I think that in itself kind of tells you that's the big change that's happened. So I was interested in those changes happening in Anzac, this kind of revival and sort of what looks like this pursuit of a kind of foundational kind of story for Australians and New Zealanders that really interested me as well.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: We're going to talk about Australia in just a second. But before we had a few folks, if you're listening to this podcast, you won't know this, but we had a few little technical glitches trying to get the show kicked off today and poor old Rowan disappeared. And Tim and I were just sort of discussing what's the significance? We're asking the question, what's the significance of 1965? In the title? Why 65?
[00:06:55] Speaker B: The interesting thing about 1965, which was the 50th anniversary, is that it was a very small affair and a very quiet, comparatively quiet commemoration. And in fact, the main sort of discussion around Anzac Day in 1965 was actually that it was going to disappear because the veterans themselves, the Gallipoli sort of generation who had been at the landing and had fought in the campaign and gone on to fight on the western front and that sort of first generation of Anzacs were dying out and they were literally elderly men and in fact, a number of them actually died on this pilgrimage that they undertook to Gallipoli in 1965. And so it's this very interesting moment, which is that the country's kind of deciding sort of going, oh, you know, once they die, you know, Anzac will die with it, Anzac Day itself will die with them. It'll have served its purpose as a day which is about them and their kind of service.
And of course, what's happened since is very different, that it's actually transformed again and it's turned into a commemoration which isn't really about so much about a kind of firsthand military experience, because many, very few New Zealanders have first hand military experience, of course. And it's become much more about this kind of a binding story, a kind of cultural mythology that kind of imparts something significant about what it means to be a New Zealander. So those two moments, 2015, 1965, kind of are a massive transformation of Anzac. And that's what my book kind of explores.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Well, that'd be a good point to bring Tim into the conversation because Tim actually guessed it right then he thought that was actually the case. So you were on the money, Tim. Well done. And also, I think it's important to bring you in because you are. Rowan's just talking about military service. Very few Kiwis have that. You are someone who actually has served in our armed forces. And so from that perspective, Tim, how significant is the Anzac tradition? And I guess the identity that really goes along with it for our armed forces from the inside looking out, if you like.
[00:09:05] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I mean, there's so many sides to this coin. It feels like. I mean, it absolutely is.
I mean, Rowan's, I think, really beautifully summed up what it means to all Kiwis and, I guess, to all Australians as well. And there is that thing, you know, we hate each other on the rugby field, but I tell you what, the minute you turn up in the middle of Afghanistan and you see one of those australian uniforms are pretty distinctive, especially if you're the only kiwi around that particular area, you'll just naturally drift towards each other and cling on to someone that you know you can really relate to. And whether it's Afghanistan, Timor, Solomon Islands, Papua New guinea, wherever I've been around the world, you know, when you're at the business end, you're always pretty happy to be side by side with the Aussies. But the Anzac tradition is really interesting, isn't it? Because it probably shouldn't be our defining moment. I mean, ultimately, we lost the battle. We lost the battle at Gallipoli. We had to retreat. So it's not our great victory. Most countries you think of british, and maybe Waterloo or Agincourt you think of many countries, have these big moments of victory as their defining moment. Ours is one of defeat. It's not our biggest loss. It's not. We lost far more people at Passchendaele in Belgium or the Somme in France.
And so it's not that this was our worst tragedy and that's why we market or remember it, but I think it's the fact that this was our defining moment when we finally stood on our own 2ft. Yes, we had a british general, General Birdwood, over the Anzacs at Gallipoli, but this was the first time New Zealand went and fought in their own rights. Not just remember, this is the days of the British Empire. So we're not just fighting as a british colony, but we are fighting as New Zealand, side by side with Australia. But it is New Zealand's battalions and regiments that are going up and ultimately take places like Chanakbir that are now names that are so well known.
It was previously we had, what, the Boer War, where we were just another british outfit sort of wrapped in british leadership because you couldn't trust those antipodeans to fight by themselves. And I think it's the fact that we actually stood by ourselves. We did a remarkably good job in terrible conditions. And it wasn't the fault of the. Of the Kiwis or the Australians on the ground that the mission wasn't ultimately successful, but it's that New Zealand came of age. It stood alone, it stood by itself. It fought in its own right. It fought proudly and bravely and valiantly. And despite the fact that the outcome some eight months later might not look like it, this was a really important moment, I think, for New Zealand, not just as an armed force in terms of our military, but for us as a growing nation.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: So is there a sense. There's a sense of nationhood then, chaps tied up in this? But also, do I get a sense here, Tim, from what you're just saying there. There's also a sense of almost like the birth of New Zealand as a military power, albeit small.
[00:12:20] Speaker C: Yeah, and I don't. I mean, I don't know if military power, you know, New Zealanders, we don't sort of naturally relate to that kind of concept, but it certainly. It's one of the key moments and I think our country's history.
If you look at the pathway from Surah, 1840 and before through to 1915 on the shores of Anzac Cove, this has got to be one of those key moments where it said, we are actually now a nation that can stand in its own right in the world, make its own decisions, do its own thing and it can be justifiably proud of what our boys did over there.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: The tendency when you think of Anzac is you think of, well, it's Gallipoli, it's world War one that tends to be, you know, because obviously that's where it's very much grounded in that. But it's a tradition that didn't cease. Right. I think of things like, even like obviously through World War two, there's things happening there, Vietnam, things like the Battle of Long tan where you have those australian soldiers who are surrounded on the ground, but it's the Kiwi boys with their artillery that actually keep the enemy at bay when they're totally outnumbered. And it's quite a connection between these two countries. So what does all of this, I guess, mean for our relationship with Australia, it feels like it should be quite pivotal. Does it sustain something here that's quite important in that regard?
[00:13:52] Speaker B: I think I just go back a little bit, if I can, just to. Because I think Tim touched on some of the key kind of sort of constituent elements, I think, of why Anzac appeals today is this kind of national story.
It is this kind of compelling story, and I think it's also one that connects New Zealanders to a bigger global story, which, of course, was the first World War and is this kind of global kind of catastrophe. And I think in some ways, nationalism is an important part of that, but in some ways the foundation, as you described it, Brendan, of that First World War experience was one of profound loss, of course, it was one of profound mourning precisely because of the numbers of New Zealanders who die in the course of the First World War from 1914, and in fact, even in the aftermath, many dying from influenza, for example.
So it was a profoundly traumatic moment in our country's history. So New Zealanders saw themselves as part of this british family of nations with Australia and Canada and India and other sort of settler colonies.
But one in eight British. Sorry, one in eight British died on active service, but whereas one in five New Zealanders would die in service of empire. So it was a very.
It was a considerable contribution. And I think that's really what I think produces a profound.
Yeah, a profound kind of community grief that really shapes the New Zealand's anzac tradition.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: I think also at the same time, you'd think that might be something that would drive New Zealanders away from, like, for example, the theater of World War Two, like. But it seems like there's no hesitancy. They are more than happy, our men, fighting men in particular, and I guess, obviously nurses and others as well, but the desire to actually heroically go back into the battlefield so quickly, so soon after what. What was a truly awful and the first big mechanized warfare in the world. Right.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: And I think it's. It's partly reflects what was seen as the sacrifice of that first World war generation. You know, it was about.
It was about service to empire. You know, it wasn't a clear cut, you know, New Zealand. There was a growing sense of New Zealand, of a New Zealand identity and New Zealand's place in the world, but it was very tied to the sense of empire as something which was good and useful and that New Zealanders had sacrificed for. So that's not something you sort of put aside easily. I think when it came to the Second World War, there was the sense of now the next generation has to step up again just as that, just as their fathers had. So that profound grief also creates a sense of responsibility precisely because that's. That's one way, of course, that you make sense of grief is to say, well, actually that sacrifice was worthwhile. And so, you know, it wasn't sort of just rhetoric. For example, when you look at a first World War medal, the British Empire medal that everyone in the British Empire received, it has honest the image of the king. But on the flip side, it has the statement that this was a war for civilization. You know, that was a true, that had rung true for New Zealanders between the first and second World War, that their commitment wasn't just to their own family and community, but also to a sense of civilization. And we might look back on that and rightly sort of put that in context and criticism. You know, we tend to be more critical of that and maybe we see that as a bit naive, but that was a very true sentiment for New Zealand, many New Zealanders. So when it came to the second World War, it was seen as well. This is also a fight for civilization not unlike we see, you know, I mean, it's interesting thinking about these histories, of course, because we've got the war in Ukraine, of course, happening. And there's a sense, you know, one of the ways that that war has been framed for Europeans is that this is a fight for. For Europe itself and the western world against this aggressive Russia.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Tim, there's a sort of a sense too that with the fighting men of New Zealand, there's a sort of nuggety farmers type, can do number eight wire attitude. Right. I remember talking to a friend who served in our armed forces and I hadn't realised this until he told me that, like what the Americans call special forces, their rangers, he said, oh, no, that's just your typical sort of standard infantry training training in New Zealand, you know, it's not, you know, that's normal. And there's sort of something about that. You hear so many of these stories from that period about how the Kiwis acquitted themselves with a very nuggety sort of almost like that pioneer spirit went with them into the battle.
[00:18:58] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's not just a she'll be right attitude, it's a pretty understated way of getting on with business. But you're right. Whether you think about Malone and the boys hitting up Channic beer, whether you think World War two, you know, Charles upping with the double vc and he'd rather just get back to the farm, thank you very much. At the end of things and it doesn't see what the fuss is all about. I think that's the spirit that you see. You're right. I think Kiwis are well trained and do a particularly good job. Australians also. I think that's why you're always happy when you see them down the line if you're parked up next to one of their units, because you know what you're getting and you know, it is a.
You know, it's an excellent professional fighting force. And even back in those days, of course, because we had those sort of that, like you said, the pioneer spirit, but you had people that had come and had to find and make their own way. They were still breaking in land, remember, at the end of World War two? So the people that came in off the backcountry blocks to sign up and do their duty to king and country were absolutely the kind of people that were going to make the best of it over there, not make a lot of fuss and just get on with the job at hand, but had a bit of mangrove and a bit of fight in them when it really came down to it.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: How pivotal is this gentleman for race relations in New Zealand? Because you think about things like the Mori battalion and I don't know, is this, I guess, a theatre?
Yeah, a theatre of war in which there is the fostering of a strong bond of respect between Mori and european New Zealanders. You know, there's a community and a brotherhood that. That rises above everything else going on back home.
[00:20:44] Speaker C: I think when you're in that situation, a lot of other differences. And look, I haven't been in anything like the conditions and the situations they were in, World War one or World War two. My Afghanistan time was probably as bad as it got. And I still feel sort of embarrassed to be standing at Anzac day wearing medals when I think about what my grandparents did. But absolutely, I think we. When you are in that situation, it doesn't tend to matter so much the religion, the race, the background of the person next to you, if they were educated or not.
And so I think some of that does fade away. Look, World War one, remember, Mori soldiers weren't integrated into generally into our fighting battalions, but they were world renowned for their ability as tunnelers over on the western front made a real name for them there in the same way that the Mori battalion in World War two did. So they absolutely proved that they are, you know, in the context of 1915, 1918, they were equal and as able as the. I guess the colonials that were fighting on top of the ground, that they were tunneling underneath. And I think that probably, you know, anytime you have a shared experience like that, anytime you've been in a situation, I think it does foster and grow a bond. But I don't know. It's a really interesting question to go. Has that lasted? Is that a narrative that. That plays out in New Zealand today? I'm not sure.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: As someone who's of irish descent here in New Zealand, I think about the fact that often when I'm overseas, for example, talking to audiences overseas, I will often proudly talk about our Mori battalion, for example. And not that I'm aware of. I don't have any Mori heritage in my family line that I'm aware of. But I still take pride in that as this sort of sense of ownership at that societal, cultural level.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's point. A good point. It's certainly when we think about the New Zealand Anzac tradition and its sort of distinctive tones, one of those would be the Mori Pkeh shared story there. So, for example, the difference between Australia is that they explicitly forbade indigenous Australians from serving in the armed forces. They wanted this.
The australian imperial forces were to be this white. It was to be the best of white Australia.
That's not to say that indigenous Australians didn't serve. There were those who, in different parts did volunteer and were recruited. So it did vary. But there was no formal kind of contingent, as there was in the Mori contingent in the first World War that Tim has mentioned there, which were sort of a. They were called the pioneers because they were a auxiliary force. They were there to help build infrastructure.
Now, that's the sort of difference, I think, that does generate different stories and different ways that we imagine those battles and those experiences.
For Mori communities volunteering for the First World War, for many Mori communities, it was a very important moment because it was about a statement of shared citizenship. It was saying, well, we're part of this empire as well. We signed the Treaty of Waitangi. We want to fight. This is our right.
And someone like Sir Aparanata, the great statesman of the great Mori statesman of the early 20th century, this was his vision that Mori would pay the price of citizenship, as he called it now, that in that he wanted actually a battalion in the first world War, which he eventually got in the second world War.
And that did. It was about. But it was a huge sacrifice for those Mori communities, those men who went and fought and died like any community. It deprived those communities of leaders and a generation of workers, of farmers and leaders.
I mean, it's contested because many of those Mori returns and they didn't necessarily receive the same treatment as those european New Zealanders. So, for example, they sometimes weren't able to get the financial support for purchasing land, for example. So there were moments that there's definitely. I think that's a contested story as well, I think we have to recognize. But I think it's certainly. Yeah, and there was, of course, there were Mori communities that didn't. That specifically refused to volunteer. And in fact, the only Mori communities that faced conscription were Waikaso. Waikaso communities. And that was precisely because they were.
Because they had a history, of course, of conflict with the crown.
And of course, the Waikasa war that happened in the 1860s and was still remembered and was felt quite, you know, was very close to home and held quite close to their hearts.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: And so does that play out differently today still, that conscription is there a sense of the Anzac story then is different for some of those people today?
[00:26:14] Speaker B: It's interesting because conscription was a big difference, again, between Australia and New Zealand.
In Australia, where they. You mentioned the Irish, you know, your irish background, Brendan, in Australia and in New Zealand, irish, particularly irish nationalists who didn't like the British Empire and didn't like the idea of being conscripted into its armies and dying for the cause of the king, you know, resisted. Resisted conscription. And that was a. That was another contested moment in contested politics where.
So in Australia, so they defeated two referendums on conscription. So the australian forces were strictly volunteers. And that's a great source of pride in Australia today, where you go to a memorial in Australia and what you will read are the names of those who served, not just those who died, but those who served as well. And so in New Zealand, if you go to a memorial, you'll see those of the names who died. And that's because it reflects the sense of that they were conscripted. They didn't necessarily choose to go, but they answered this sense of duty and they went.
And hence why New Zealanders. Our Anzac tradition actually has this quite powerful sense of sorrow in Australia. It's very much, I think, much more of a. Much more of a stronger sense of a celebration.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: I think that's a very interesting distinction. And, Tim, if I can bring you back in here, because I think this is where I'm interested in talking a little bit about, I guess, about the return home afterwards.
And we probably just. What we do, we take this for granted today. Mechanised warfare is the norm and very technologically advanced. You've been in some of these modern theaters of war. You've seen it, right, and you've lived that out. But for these men, this is, you know, tanks, gas shelling, it must have been hell on earth. And then also you're in an environment where we don't really know how to treat men, perhaps, who are experience what we might call PTSD today. Right?
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
And people just like you say, they didn't know how to reintegrate them. And when we come home these days, you know, we get given briefs by psychologists about reintegrating.
We have people, you know, there to support families and all sorts.
It's really well done. It's still, I'm sure, not perfect, but, you know, it took my wife and I two or three deployments to work out exactly, you know, how you go away on deployment and what's happening to the family as you sort of subconsciously detach, as well as how to integrate when you come home.
But these guys, you know, for a lot of them, yep, 20% were conscripted. But even for those that volunteered, you know, a month too, earlier, this wasn't even seeming on the cards. So they've come out of normal civilian life, been thrown into something. The war very quickly became this brutal trench warfare, this just this awful, awful place. And if you speak to a lot of families, they'll say that, you know, their. Their ancestors, maybe their grandfathers, they never spoke of it when they came home, except maybe to a few mates that have been there with them, because how do you. How do you bring those experiences home? How do you reintegrate unless you just sort of isolate it and shut off and keep going?
And what does that do to someone on the inside? I don't know, and I can't imagine what it was like for them. But it's just so far from the world that we live in in New Zealand. And I wonder if that's one of the things that influences this New Zealand culture. Because even in Australia in World War Two, Darwin was attacked by the Japanese. But if you think about european countries, they saw it firsthand. They saw the brutality, they saw and experienced the suffering. This just seems so far away from New Zealand. It's hard for us to comprehend and to understand and therefore to empathize and support.
And even today, you know, we see a lot of this sort of anti war, which has become anti military, sometimes sentimental. And I think it's because it's just so far removed from what we experience day to day. In New Zealand, did we learn.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: I guess we, the royal we. It's the military, really. I'm thinking of here, the New Zealand military. Did they learn the lessons of that theatre of World War one? And I guess also the lessons from. Not just from the aspect of fighting, but also of supporting men who come home again, or do you think it took other things we've taken from that and that we still carry with us today in a sense that we learned.
[00:30:54] Speaker C: Oh, look, I mean, it's, you know, 100 years down track, things are so different. The military lessons absolutely got learned. And, I mean, if you want to get into the military side of it, you look at the way that Germany embarked upon World War two, this concept of blitzkrieg, even in the Gulf War, right? We talk about shock and awe. It's this, we don't want to get stuck. Stuck in this horrible trench warfare, the static warfare, where we just. It's a war of attrition. We just, you know, bleeding and blunting ourselves against each other.
Do we learn that?
Yeah, at a military level, to a large degree, probably we learned some key lessons.
You know, the world leaders didn't learn the key lesson, which is how to avoid war.
But did we, at that sort of more personal level, did we learn that? You know, I think if you talked to veterans from World War two, maybe even from Vietnam, I think those lessons took a long time to learn. I think, thankfully, the military is a very different place today. It's very supportive and works. My experience was when I was serving, was that it was very supportive to individuals and families as you come home. And I think we have learned, but I think they've been hard won lessons.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: Rowan, you. I know I've heard, or I've seen you talking before about popular Anzac myths.
Maybe you want to touch on that topic, but I guess the thing to kick us off here is, do you think it's fair to say that we punched above our weight in World War one? That seems to be a popular belief. Is that true? Is that one of the myths? Or is it fair to say we did punch above our weight?
[00:32:30] Speaker B: I think, of course, it does depend how you define that, but I think what that tends to. I think that popular myth or story is it comes down to those casualties that I mentioned. So certainly New Zealand did. And that level of those who died, the soldiers who went away and died, did face was a considerable sacrifice compared to other parts of the british empire. For a population of a million, this small country, 100,000 serving that today would be something like 500,000 serving. You know, if we were to think about New Zealand today, if we were to mobilize and to send a conscript or. And recruit 500,000, I don't know. What's that the popular. Was that the population of Christchurch at the moment?
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's slightly less than Christchurch. Slightly. Slightly, yeah, less than Christ. But it would. It'd be about that big. Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: And then about. And then 100,000 of those would die, you know, would not come back. So that if we want to think about the profound, you know, impact of.
To give a sort of a contemporary comparison, I think certainly, I think Tim's had a really important point there that of course the difference in where we might pop some of that myth is of course that we didn't have that civilian casualties.
Those countries like on the eastern fronts between the Russian, the meat grinders of the eastern and western fronts destroyed landscapes and they destroyed villages and towns.
So that does, I think, create a very different experience and I think it's important to put that in context. We didn't lose infrastructure, we didn't lose an economy.
We of course faced the Great Depression like other countries did in the 1930s, but we didn't have the same devastation to our. Our way of life, of course. And then Tim also makes the point about the long term impact of war in the First World War. And in any war, of course, is often in those who do return deeply wounded and those might be physical.
And of course we now recognize the kind of psychological wounds of war.
Of course, the New Zealand. New Zealand's experience of the First World War was really one of the absence of those who died. So we don't have, you know, we don't have cemeteries to mourn the dead. You know, we had to build memorials that marked really their absence. And of course we can go to any small town in New Zealand and you'll find those memorials or those plaques and halls and churches with the names of loved ones. Of course we did. The New Zealand government and veterans groups did invest in building monuments and places like Chanakbir, Gallipoli.
So. But you know, those are certainly, I think those, those are valuable kind of ways to frame some of those popular stories.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: There's a certain idea that you hear floating around that World War one was all about basically fat cat generals sitting with nice comfortable rooms or maybe even hotels, you might say, with sandwiches and tea and coffee while the ordinary everyday man was bleeding and dying in the trenches. Is that a myth? Because I've heard others who say, well, no, that's not really an accurate representation of what the war was like.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: I think that is a good point to make, which is, I think the kind of melancholic, sorrowful tradition of Anzac if the Australians kind of are prone, I think, to sort of celebration. So, you know, Tim pointed out that Gallipoli is a defeat. Well, you go to Australia and you talk to the average Australian. Many do not know that. They just assume it was a victory because they. It's such a celebration, it's such a, it's so nationalistic in many ways, which I think is often jarring because we tend to be so much more sort of demure in our nationalism in New Zealand. But New Zealand, I think you're right. There's almost a tendency now to kind of read into that experience a very kind of opposite, a different extreme, which is thinking that the only response to the war was that this was futile. And the way, you know, it's the Blackadder, the Blackadder version of history which was really, you know, this idea that the generals were fighting just to move the drinks cabinets, you know, 5 cm closer to Berlin. You know, that's that great line from Blackadder. But, you know, New Zealanders didn't hold that view. They didn't return from the war. That wasn't, that was certainly, there was a very small minority perhaps that that held that view and they was a sort of early little so anti war tradition. But it wasn't really until the. But, you know, they saw this as I've talked about their service much more in terms of one was their mates, you know, fighting for their mates, in fact. And that's what they remembered was their friends who they fought with and died.
They talked about empire, they talked about New Zealand's place in empire. They talked about civilization and sort of democracy. And it's not really until the sixties that we actually, I think we see the, the sort of emergence or like the mainstreaming and almost the kind of takeover of that anti war tradition. And that of course reflects a very different context.
One of the interesting shifts, of course, you know, when we think about the first World War, Second World War, the Vietnam War, is that they are, they are wars that are fought by and large by citizen soldiers. So this idea that, yeah, the average New Zealand citizen could be drawn in and would be, could be deployed and trained and of course, the big shift I think, in our military sort of story now is that we have a professional army.
We don't have the average Joe kind of volunteering to go into combat so that's a big difference. But I think certainly that sense of the futility that was part of the experience, it was very much a reaction from the 1960s and I think it transforms the Anzacs in some ways a way it takes some of that, I think, as a historian, I think it takes away a lot of the agency and in fact the decision making that many of these men in the first World War had, which was that they understood what was happening. They probably didn't. They didn't know the full implication of this industrial warfare as you've described, but they understood they were making choices and they had an engaged opinion about world events. They weren't just sort of fresh faced, naive young men, which was really the image of the Anzacs that I think takes over, particularly by the eighties. I think that's really the image and something I explore in my book is really how the image, the representation of the Anzacs becomes increasingly boy like. They become sort of more and more as boys rather than men who volunteered or were conscripted to fight.
So of course, the famous film, the australian film, is Gallipoli by that Mel Gibson made his breakout role and that was popular among Australians and New Zealand audiences in the eighties. That kind of re, I think, was an important moment that kind of re represented the Anzacs in this kind of boyish mold.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: There's myths, right? Or in the sense, I guess, myths where people make up, you know, fabricated stories, but then there's mythology or mythos that, you know, arises out of something like this, a moment of great suffering or trauma or, you know, something totally out of the ordinary that a community or a nation goes through.
It feels like the New Zealand military.
Surely the mythos, if you like, for the fighting man in our military is shaped in profound ways by Anzac, right. And particularly by World War one and Gallipoli and everything else as well, right? Is there a sense in which there's a certain mythos about the New Zealand fighting men and women, about, I guess, our military itself? You know, what it means to be part of that?
[00:40:45] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. It's not something I've thought about. I mean, I think it is absolutely. It is a sacred day.
Not, I mean, for all Kiwis, really, but certainly for our military, it is that founding sort of that almost that birthplace of an independent New Zealand military like we talked about earlier, I think it's a really special day.
You certainly buy into the Anzac tradition and when, you know, you overseas, you know, when I think back to my time, you know, you realize that you're a part of an extended Anzac tradition but at the same time you also realize you're not at the same level. What's the word for it? You know, it's not at the same scope of what those, the original Anzacs did and you know, like I said earlier, it's.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: Why is that, Tim? Is that just because you have what, the advantage of technology and different training or is it that they were ordinary farmers? What do you, what do you realize is the key there?
[00:41:44] Speaker C: I mean you look at that. I mean what's our. We lost ten people in Afghanistan. Ten lives were lost, each one of them tragic. But that's ten people over twelve years in what was one of the worst at the time until Ukraine came along, one of the worst sort of theaters of war. When you compare that to losing 16, 17, 18,000 people over the, over the four years of world War, one out of 100,000 as Rowan spoke about, I mean how can we compare what we went through to what those guys went through and the fact that, you know, not just the risk to life but look at the conditions of what they were serving and look at the dysentery, look at what they had to live on. They literally camped into the side of a hill. I don't know if you've been to Gallipoli and walked up that ravine. I had the authentic experience. I did eat something dodgy and have a very authentic Anzac experience at one of those ravines.
But when you imagine doing that, dug into the side of that with the Turks, you know, 30 meters up shooting down on you and that's how you live. I mean I just don't think I can imagine what it was like for them and I would never put myself on par with them.
[00:43:04] Speaker A: But again I think that speaks to here there's a certain humility. Humility, sorry again in that. That Kiwi military service, it's not the braggadocio, gung ho perhaps more than american military type approach where there's something more humble about all of this again, isn't it?
[00:43:21] Speaker C: Oh it is and that's the news. I mean part of that is the New Zealand culture. Part of that is, you know, there's good aspects to that. There's the. The tall poppy thing is not a great aspect of New Zealand culture. I don't think my experience being in America with the air force back in 2003 at the start of Gulf War two the way that, you know, we were shocked when we got stopped on this of the street and the policeman's yelling at us, and we're like, whoa, what have we done wrong? And we go over to see him and he's like, hey, buddy, I just want to say thanks for looking after my country. And we tried to explain, look, we're just here doing training, and they're like, yeah, I know it's a big secret. You can't really say, but we know what you're doing.
But people are just treated differently. I've been in America twice for Memorial Day, which is like their Anzac day, and it really is a completely different experience. People thank you for your service. They, you know, they pick up your check in a restaurant. In fact, I was in.
Here's a story to pick up on what Rowan was talking about earlier, about the punching above your weight thing and the fact that we didn't pay the civilian cost in New Zealand. And I think that's part of the reason, maybe, that we don't look at our military in the same way, maybe. I don't know. But I was in Belgium last year in response. I was working around Europe in response to the situation in Ukraine. And I went to Belgium for this service, memorial service at mazzines, one of New Zealand's big battles.
And we were in uniform, myself and another officer, and were in town having lunch afterwards in Ypres, which is, you know, where they have the last post, the Meningate really famous World War one site.
And a guy came up to us and he said, are you guys from New Zealand? And we said, yeah, we are. And he said, I just want to say thanks for looking after our country. Remember what you did. And he was. I don't know, maybe in his sixties, and he was belgian, but he'd lived in Ireland for the last 40 years, but he still remembered, because his parents and his grandparents remembered what people like us had done 100 years ago. And when we went to leave, we found he'd already paid all our bills.
He knew what the cost was to his ancestors. He knew what it meant.
And that's something that simply you just don't get in New Zealand.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Wow. You sort of. It's interesting, isn't it? I wonder how much to the.
Possibly almost like an embarrassment about being at the beck and call of the british empire. You know, like where the sort of. We're the supplier of cannon fodder. You know what I mean? It's almost like a. I don't know where that plays into our. The way we view that part of our history, but at the same time, and, Rowan, if I could quote you here in an op ed a couple of years ago, you said that this is the country's most prominent day of remembrance, and I think that's a fair assessment.
Why do we think that is, gentlemen? Why is Anzac, this tradition, so significant still for so many ordinary Kiwis and all this time later, like you said, rowan, it actually didn't die out. It got stronger.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it's certainly. It's an interesting paradox in a way, because what Tim has identified there is how as that firsthand military experience has kind of gone out like the tide of the 20th century, which is, you know, a good, we could say is a good thing. We don't have to fight. You know, we're fortunate as New Zealanders today not to have to experience what, you know, people of Ukraine and Russia are experiencing today, today. But that's this. We don't have that wave of death that was the first world war.
And at the same time, the Anzacs have become these kind of archetypes. They've sort of transformed and they've become these kind of founding. Yeah, they've become the founders of a kind of military tradition. They've become this kind of totemic sort of icons of our history. Of course, many of our. Of your listeners and perhaps you yourselves, went to Gallipoli, the Te Papa Gallipoli exhibition, you know, with these kind of giants. And that was kind of, I think, shown in some ways quite well, this kind of. These giants and their kind of meaning. And so in some ways, that's complex and the book explores different way threads to it, but it is the ways that one thing I do come back to each chapter is really that Anzac survives and it changes and it becomes adapted for different needs.
And that's partly because people choose to, you know, storytellers like historians, but also filmmakers and playwrights and writers take that stuff. They take the kind of material of this, these stories and the kind of human, compelling drama and that imagery, as Tim has painted of the cliffs, the arid cliffs of Gallipoli. And you go there to Gallipoli and it is striking and it's hard not to be moved and captivated, but they take those stuff and they tell stories. They tell new stories and they give it new emphasis.
They put them into their own contemporary kind of debates.
But also we see, of course, institutions like Te Papa, for example, in different memorials and different museums and different media that inform and invest in these traditions, which I think is an important point because. Yeah, I think the key is that Anzac and a key point. I sort of want the book I wanted the book to show was that Anzac didn't just survive because it survived and has survived and has changed because of groups committing to it and investing in it and deciding that it was worthwhile to keep.
I think it's interesting to think about how it does seem to transcend. It transcends the left and right. And I think a key part of it is how since the eighties particularly, and as New Zealand has undergone extraordinary changes, you know, we think about the economic reforms of the eighties and even the ways our society has changed and, you know, the empire, you know, we talk about. We've talked a bit about empire and commitment to empire and of course that. That sounds so strange to us as New Zealanders today, but that was, you know, fundamental way that New Zealand is up to. Up to the sixties, really up to the. Into the post war period after the Second World War. That was a fundamental way that they saw their world. You know, Empire was how they traveled. It was how they. They found themselves connected to different parts of the world.
The loss of that. It was a huge cultural kind of moment. So if we think about that, we think about, you know, just the countercultural kind of revolutions that were happening in the sixties and seventies and the kind of societal norms that were under question were being questioned and some of them being sort of seen as old hat and then the economic reforms. So there's these kind of compounding societal traumas. They're different. They're different sort of the global catastrophe of the first world War, of course, but they are sort of moments of seismic change.
So Anzac does seem to emerge from that as a kind of cherished day that all New Zealanders can kind of share.
And I think that's potentially why it has succeeded in a way that, say, Waitangi Day hasn't quite succeeded as a day of remembrance, where Waitangi Day is much more about contemporary concerns, it's about the unresolved issues of our history, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it's good to have days that we actually, you know, we talk about, we argue and we critically evaluate our histories. I think in some ways Anzac Day has benefited by being like the contrast. It's sort of the day of unity. It's the day where we all.
I say all, but I suppose not everyone, but many, you know, many people go to Anzac Day services and they feel this kind of emotional connection. One of the interest, one of the fascinating. I mean, I. Part of the book. Sorry, I'm going on and on here, but one. I mean, of course, in writing the book, I would have hundreds of conversations with people just on the bus or as I was saying, you know, at parties or whatever, and people say, what are you doing? And I'd say, I'm writing this book. And they'd inevitably share a story about Anzac Day.
And I remember talking to one person and they said how, you know, they'd had no real connection to Anzac Day, but their mother had recently passed away and they went to Anzac Day to just feel connected, to sort of feel a moment of sorrow and mourning and to tap into a kind of a public emotion, a public expression of emotion, of sadness. And so there's so many different ways that people use Anzac Day, of course, and some of it can be quite religious, of course, the roots of the Anzac ritual, of course, sort of a public Christianity. Many people don't really have any sense of the religious aspect of Anzac day, but they go into it with quite different ways. But I think that sort of quite fundamental connection that people feel, I think, is part of why it seems to have survived.
[00:53:16] Speaker A: Authentic conservatism is actually about nurturing and cultivating traditions that are good and that are true and that are beautiful and like, you've made that point here, Rowan, that that's exactly what we see with Anzac Day. And it's the customs are an outworking of that traditional and those customs have remained strong and they're really growing. And I get the sense, Tim, that perhaps this is a very interesting example where it's actually the ordinary, everyday families, I guess, who cultivated and kept that alive amongst New Zealand culture. And even though maybe a lot of their relatives, even as they were dying and passing on, they still cultivated and kept that tradition alive.
[00:53:57] Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting, eh? And I mean, it seemed to pick up as those final veterans of World War one were all passing away. And then I guess people could see that there was limited time left with the world War two veterans. I wonder, and Rowan will know more than this, more than me, but, you know, that seemed to stimulate it. But you're right. And I love what Rowan said before about Kiwis wanting to tap into a sort of a public expression of emotion, because that's just not the Kiwi way. It's almost like this is the one excuse where it's okay to come together and express maybe a little bit of emotion or have that sort of that national mourning and remembrance, which is so in some ways such an unkey thing to do.
And I love that sort of concept that he talked about. It's hit that critical mass or that point of social inertia where there's enough behind it that it's something. You know, it's one of those Easter Sunday, Christmas Day and Anzac Day morning are the only times that shops can't open.
There's something special about it. And this is what I was going to say, I think. I wonder if part of it is because it's so far removed for Kiwis. You know, we can't actually imagine what it was like for the boys at Gallipoli. We can't actually relate to that. And, you know, Rowan spoke about the sort of. The ways that it's the sort of the new layers or interpretations or poetry, the poetic sort of views that come of it, and people add these new angles. But I think it's because it's so distant that there's. There's this gap between reality and what it must have been like for them that Kiwis want to come to cling to that. It's, you know, it's not something that we can grasp, so it's not something that we can just brush away like any other tall poppy would be. I wonder if there's an element of this, but. But if I can just go down one other angle and you tell me to shut up. But, you know, he's not going to do that, mate.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: You're more well trained than I.
[00:55:51] Speaker C: No, look, you just edited out afterwards. But, you know, when Roman spoke about the things that have come up in society that. And yet this one has transcended. And, you know, it's really interesting. Think. You think about whether that's Vietnam back in the day, whether that's protesting against maybe Gulf war more recently. And I wonder if there's an element within New Zealand where the sort of the protesting and the abhorrence of war and the futility of that sort of that death and killing gets mistranslated. To be protesting about the military, we don't see big things. But I think of last Anzac Day, Newshub published an article by Otago University saying the military are useless to deal with modern challenges. We should get rid of them. They can't deal with COVID They're basically causing all these problems with our environment. And I wonder if some of that is not actually stimulated by the military, but by war. And I wonder if we just construe the two things sometimes.
The rant that I've gone on sometimes is war killing, conflict. That's not what the military does. That's just the environment which they have to operate in. If they're going to bring peace, you need to take light into those darkest of places. And the military are the one group of people that the government can send to go and do that. And, you know, when there's a massive cyclone and a flood in Hawke's Bay or the East Cape, when a ship runs aground and spills oil all over the beaches of Tauranga, when there is uncertainty around, you know, free and fair elections in the Pacific, when there are people without food, without water, without medical treatment, it's the military that go into those. Yes, 100 years ago they were going into conflict and war, but these days they go into all sorts of challenges. I think we struggle on Anzac Day to relate to some of our experiences which may have been in different security challenges, maybe economic security, food security, health security, environmental security. You know, it was the military that we saw in the front line of COVID manning isolation hotels, manning checkpoints out there, working from day one.
But I think probably, you know, I don't speak for the military, but as I look back on my time, I wonder if sometimes we don't know how to tell that story or they don't know how to tell that story. And as Kiwis, we struggle to maybe separate the military from the war and I think that's one of the things we can relate to. Anzac Day is just so far away. Gallipoli seems so far away and so distant that it's something that you can almost rally around. You put that into better words for me.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: Well, can I pick up on that point actually, Tim, and feel free to jump in as well? Rowan, is, because New Zealand has had a strong anti war current throughout, particularly the last 60, 70 years, and this doesn't still actually seem to have damaged the pride of Anzac, though.
Why is that, do you think? Maybe we've matured a bit after. I know it wasn't as bad in New Zealand, but I know, for example, I have a couple of uncles who volunteered and fought in Vietnam and they talk about the treatment the american soldiers received when they went home and they were spat on and everything else, and often a lot of them were concerned, scripted to.
But it feels like maybe in the last 2030 years, we've learned from that experience, as we've heard more of those stories and realized it wasn't those men's fault. Do you think we've learned some of that lesson? Is that why Anzac pride has remained strong and the celebration of this has not, I guess, been, I guess, dampened or harmed by that very point? You talk about Tim, that war itself is evil and brutal and horrible.
But the men and women who go into those theaters of war are not.
[00:59:40] Speaker B: Somebody who embodied some of that contradiction in a way that between the anti war generation to the sort of Anzac revival, of course, was Helen Clark, who was a protester as a young person and had protested against the Vietnam War, becomes prime minister eventually, of course, and becomes actually one of the biggest promoters of Anzac commemoration. And that sort of, and of course actually leads the apology apologizes precisely for the treatment of the Vietnam War generation. I think there's a few things that shift there. One is in some ways that shapes someone like Clark.
One is the recognition, I think, that we've identified already in our chat, which is actually that war has, it makes victims of everyone. So, you know, soldiers have a degree of agency and they are participants in conflicts, but of course they come back with. And so, you know, the rise of something. So the fact that we know what PTSD is, for example, as a public kind of vocabulary is very important to actually how we've transformed that generation, the Vietnam War generation, into kind of victims.
We now think of them as. Not just as in those terms.
I think also it's really about those big shifts that happen and the needs of our society to have a degree of unity and to find ways of knitting or healing social wounds.
And so, for example, the fact that Clarke makes the apology, you know, it's really about recognizing that Anzac has this capacity to bring us together. You know, she repatriates her government, repatriates the unknown warrior, for example, from France.
And as an example of that sort of that sense of healing, you know, bringing. So if we're talking about these century long sort of contests and sort of family sorrows that sort of ripple across generations, you know, that moment, that was in 2004, and that's a moment that I explore in the book, is the repatriation of the unknown warrior is meant to represent the healing of the nation. It's meant to be about the nation coming together and the return of this one of its own from these battlefields finally to the nation's capital, you know, has all these compelling kind of tones of unity.
So I think that's part of it. I think that's a big part of it. I don't know what you think, Tim.
[01:02:22] Speaker C: Yeah, I think maybe there's safety and distance as well. You know, when you think back to World War one, World War two, well, World War one really is a futile war. World War two, at least there's a clear person instigating it. There's this force of evil that must be stopped. People can kind of accept that and relate to that. World War one. That was 100 years ago. Geez, that must have been awful for those people.
Let's remember what that meant as they gave up their lives to ensure that we would be safe down here in little old New Zealand. I think when you think about the more recent ones, if we hadn't have had Anzac Day and someone said, well, let's start a remembrance day for the guys that died in Afghanistan or East Timor or something else. I think a lot of Kiwis were it not for that tradition, you know, that there's an element of Kiwi culture that says, why? Why would we do that?
Because, you know, maybe it's that tall poppy thing again, so. But I think there's safety in the distance from. From 1915 that we can find comfort in somehow.
[01:03:29] Speaker A: Well, there's a great point you make actually, Tim too, that like one of the New Zealand fallen in Afghanistan actually comes from where we live and her name is now remembered every Anzac Day. It's like that foundation of Anzac actually allows those who have died subsequent and will die in future serving in our military that they are brought into that embrace, if you like, of that tradition as well.
[01:03:55] Speaker C: Yeah, just. I mean, absolutely as they should be. And I certainly take a moment on Anzac day to think of my friends that died, whether it was, you know, someone like Leon overseas or the other guys back home in New Zealand. But, you know, that's it to me. It's remembering the sacrifice that was made. But I always think about the willingness, the willingness of these guys to get off the farm or out of their town or wherever it was, and to head over to the other side of the world, which was completely foreign in itself, and go to fight for king and country. But I'm also grateful for the willingness of our defence force today, the women and men who still serve there that are willing to go to whatever it may be now. Yep, sometimes it is a few people that have gone over to help around the fringes of the war in Ukraine, or maybe it was in Iraq or maybe it was in Syria or Afghanistan. But it's that same willingness that sees people willing to drop everything at a moment's notice and head to Hawke's Bay or to head to Tonga or to head whatever the next challenge is. And I think it's a day that we should still be, you know, clearly we want to remember those that paid the ultimate price and gave their life for their country. But also to be grateful for the fact that we still have willing women and men today who are willing to do whatever it might be that the next situation calls for.
[01:05:22] Speaker A: How do we gentlemen walk the fine line? And it is a fine line here. I think this is what we're really getting at between the glorification of war and killing, which you don't want to do, and the genuine homage and respect that should be paid for all that is good about the Anzac tradition and the fallen soldiers in our country.
[01:05:41] Speaker B: That's a big question. I think Tim's hit a key point with that sense of the distance that the First World War allows us as New Zealanders, as in a kind of an imaginative story.
At the same time, we often, I think the average New Zealander would be clueless as to the experience of modern warfare and what it continues to. How it continues to impact our veterans and their families, of course, who have to deal with these different kinds of wounds, psychological, mental and the kind of impact that it has on families and things, of course.
And I think that reminds me of the importance of being, you know, we have to be critical, we have to be critical of and very thoughtful about and reflective about these kind of cultural traditions because they can be distorted, they can be detrimental if we lose sight of that experience and we often, and we confuse sentiment with that experience and the reality of war. I think it's part of the way that we navigate that difference between coming to terms with these, you know, profound histories of loss and sorrow and sacrifice and not allowing them to be co opted into the glorification of war or necessarily. Yeah. Is really, I think, about the role of history. I think history plays an important part of that because it's really about grounding us in that experience and what actually happened and why people did this and why they went away to war and obviously helps us as citizens ourselves to be reflective and to think about, okay, well, why today? Why today?
Make certain decisions? And I think that's a big part of us.
[01:07:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, how do you. How do you avoid glorifying war but honour the service and the sacrifice? It's a great question and it's almost the answer. That's exactly what we do. And every year I go to my old high school, Palmerston north boys High, and since my father died I've taken his role in the old Anzac day service and I've just looked up on my phone and found the prayer that he wrote. But the last that I read out, but the last thing, the last sentence of it says help us to remember the mateship, agony, courage and compassion of war service, but save us from ever glorifying the horror and tragedy of war.
And it's that same sentiment, isn't it, that my dad, speaking of there, we want to honour the service and the sacrifice. I think that's what it's about for me. Service and sacrifice, not the death, not the killing, not the conflict. Like I said before, that's just the environment at which our military are asked to go and be beacons of light in a dark place. It's not their goal, it's not what they do. It's just that they are the only ones that can go into those places sometimes to go and try and fight for the peace that we all want to see.
[01:08:55] Speaker A: It's really. Then back to what you were saying before, again, Tim, and you've hit on a couple of times. It's really about the spirit, the ethos, really, isn't it, that underpins what happens in those places. And like I think of, for example, Colonel Malone, and I think in some ways, you make him one dimensional when you look solely at what he does on the battlefield. I read that final letter that he wrote home to his wife the night before he died, and that, to me, encapsulates what really is important about all of this. You get that sense of virtue in this man's life in a very profound kind of way. It's the self giving, self sacrificial love he has for his wife, his family, his nation. You know, there's so much more going on here. And it's not simply, oh, he picked up a gun and shot some people, or he ran up a hill and survived machine gun fire, you know, it's so much more than that.
[01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:09:45] Speaker C: And every one of those names that sit not just on cenotaphs around New Zealand, but in wargraves and memorials around the world, you know, they all had a backstory that was, you know, it's cliche to say, well, that was someone's son, that was someone's brother, that was someone's mate. But they were, and they had a story, and each one of them impacted a whole web of our community back home. And there were, you know, when you add up, you know, almost 20,000 of those people that died, that impacts the entire country.
We, I think, struggle to understand just the scale of that and the deeply personal impact of that, maybe.
Yeah.
[01:10:28] Speaker A: I've got one final little question I want to ask, and I guess another one to wrap it up at the very end, but we've seen lately. It's almost like a bit of a Rowan. You mentioned storytelling before. There is a resurgence in the cinematic storytelling around this. We've had all quiet on the western front remade for a third time and by Netflix and actually achieve Oscar accolades because it really is quite a good film. 1917 was another one we've seen in the last couple of years. It's almost like that story for a whole new generation is starting to be told again. And I guess the question I want to ask in relation to this is, what do you think, gentlemen, is the future for Anzac Day? And I know that's an awful question to ask because how do you answer that question? But, you know, like you say, Rowan 65 or so, they thought it was going to die out, that sense at all.
[01:11:21] Speaker B: That's right. And it's a good reminder to be careful about that. Well, historians shouldn't be in the sort of market of making future predictions, but I do. I think what the history of Anzac Day shows is that it changes. And it would be, I think, yeah, wrong to assume that it'll disappear necessarily. I think it can take on new shapes and these kind of rituals and scripts and the profounds connected to these profound personal stories, as Tim has said, is very compelling. And I think it really depends really, on how communities respond. I think what's been interesting in the last couple of years, of course, is that we had the center of Anzac and it was this huge moment, big public commitment, and there was government funding and all sorts of things. And, you know, a huge international commemoration of the first World War. And then, of course, we had COVID. So we had the sort of the complete opposite where we had lockdowns and we didn't have Anzac days and we didn't have precisely those kind of habits, the habits of getting together. And each year, and I think we'll see the question will be how much. How it bounces back from that, because that has been disruptive.
And that'll of course, depend on how communities, how people and groups kind of invest in it.
I do wonder whether.
How Anzac can be a connective sort of story for different kinds of conflicts.
So we've talked about. So, Brendan, you talked about the veteran who died from Rangiora in deployments and how that's been a story that's obviously fitted quite naturally into this day of mourning, day of remembrance.
Other parts of New Zealand history have sort of come into focus. You know, we're talking a lot more about the 19th century wars between government and the british army and Mori for example, and I do wonder if some of those stories will be incorporated in interesting ways into this day of remembrance.
Again, that'll really depend, I think, and it'll be interesting to see.
Those are some of my hot takes. I think the Second World War is going to become, you know, that's the next big military commemoration on the calendar. You know, the centenary of the. Of the first of the Second World War, you know, is not too far away.
Might be a bit egregious to sort of suggest that, but it isn't. It's. It's within a decade or so where we'll start to really start to think more about it.
And I think that will be a big of a bit of a shift, an emphasis, because that will produce. That will produce new films that you've talked about. 1917 and Dunkirk was, of course, the second World War story, but all quite on the western front that those, you know, filmmakers will move on. They'll move on to Second World War stories as well, again in our exhibition making and our book writing and our media will shift as well.
So I think we'll see. That's one thing, we'll see the Second World War, and that has a different emphasis in many ways.
That's my sense.
[01:15:02] Speaker A: What's interesting to me, too, is that Anzac Day, and I think, Rowan, you mentioned this earlier, is it is one of the very few public acts of, I guess you'd say, religious custom that is still part of our public life as well, and quite openly accepted, you know, and celebrated. I see a great good in that, you know, we all this head, I guess.
[01:15:25] Speaker C: Yeah. I don't see things going backwards anytime soon.
I think it continues and it continues in a solemn and appropriate way, and it continues with the momentum that it's got. I wonder if part of it is because it's kind of a day that's safe together as one nation, that all the other barriers fall away.
Maybe if Waitangi Day had a little less division around it than it's had in more recent times, maybe people would have gathered around Waitangi Day as well, like some other countries do. So, for example, America around Independence Day. But as we still grapple with some of those issues, and I wonder if Anzac Day is the safe place that we can come together and find one united sort of identity as a nation. And that's one of the key drivers that keeps it going.
[01:16:21] Speaker A: And on that point, let me ask you this one final question, then, getting very practical about all this. Maybe there's people who are listening who have never participated in the annual customs of this Anzac tradition. They've never commemorated Anzac Day. Or maybe they've got kids now and they're thinking, gosh, I've really got to reconnect to something that's actually part of our story here because I'm thinking about myself, kids and handing that tradition on to them. How should they start to do that? What are some things that people can do, do you think, to bring this tradition into their lives when April 25 rolls around each year?
[01:16:53] Speaker C: I think just turn up is the first thing right? Turn up, put your alarm on, get up early. It doesn't matter what you're wearing, you don't have to dress up, flash, you don't have to do anything right, you don't have to say anything right. There's no right or wrong way. It's just about being present.
So the biggest thing I'd say is turn up and please feel welcome. You should. Every Kiwi, every person that's even visiting our country should feel invited, should feel welcome that they can rightfully come and take a place here. This is one of, if not the biggest days in our calendar as a nation. And so turn up, just be there.
Turn up to a dawn service and take a minute as they play the last post or in the silence they're waiting for it to start.
Maybe it's a beautiful clear dawn rising, maybe it's pouring with rain. The boys 100 years ago had to deal with all of that weather, but just take a minute to go. What was, you know, just to reflect on the service and the sacrifice of all those that went before us, what it was that they were willing to do. And in many cases, the price they did have to pay for our sake, not knowing what the future would look like if they didn't. So, yeah, I would say just. Just turn up.
[01:18:15] Speaker B: I think that's a very sensible response. The only thing I'd add is that they should buy my book as an added extra.
[01:18:23] Speaker C: That's a given. That's a given.
[01:18:25] Speaker B: It's available in all good bookstores and you can buy it online as well, but it's in Whitkulls and paper plus in these stores. So, yeah, I think we should make it a tradition of buying books for Anzac Day as well.
[01:18:41] Speaker A: Yes. I learn the history, right.
And pass on that knowledge to those who come after us.
I was just thinking how best to wrap this up and I guess, first of all, I'd say, Tim, thank you for your service and I know you're carrying on that. I guess that Anzac spirit in a sense. You've talked a bit about that spirit of service you're running for office here in New Zealand. Having a crack at that, that's not easy. So thank you for all of that. Rowan, thank you for writing the book and creating another, I guess a written addition to our history and this important tradition. And to both of you, thank you very much again for taking the time to have this conversation today about this Anzac tradition, the importance of it and how we might better, I guess, engage with it and contemplate it as a New Zealand people. Thank you both.
[01:19:36] Speaker C: Yeah, pleasure.
[01:19:37] Speaker B: Thank you. Brendan and I really, really enjoyed the conversation.
[01:19:46] Speaker A: The Dispatchers podcast is a production of Leftfoot media. If you enjoyed this show, then please help us to ensure that more of this great content keeps getting made by becoming a patron of our
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