Allan Davidson outlines the memorials, traditions and rituals we have around Anzac Day and reminds us of missing dimensions in our remembering.

In Hokitika, where I grew up, the iconic 1903 town clock commemorates both the 130 Westland men who served and the four troopers who died in the South African War, and the Coronation of Edward VII. Memorialisation of war and empire were closely related.

After the First World War, a foundation stone for the war memorial wing and administrative quarters at Westland Hospital was laid on Peace Day in 1919 when the signing of the Treaty of Versailles was celebrated. On the same day, the sod was turned for the building of St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church. Not completed until 1935, a marble plaque inside the church named 40 Presbyterians and Scots from Westland who died on active service. Under their names are the words: “Lest We Forget.”

In the local recreation ground, an impressive marble cenotaph was unveiled in torrential rain on Armistice Day in 1922. The mayor spoke about how the memorial was a reminder “of the great sacrifice made to preserve the unity of Empire”, a sentiment which should be “observed to the end of time.” At the District High School, a marble obelisk was erected. Over time, this became the memorial for pupils who died in the South African and two World Wars.

Hokitika’s WWII memorial favoured a pragmatic approach to memorialisation with a Memorial Hall. The names of those who died were listed on two brass plaques at the entrance porch.

Places for Remembering

War memorials are ubiquitous in New Zealand. The Australian historian, Ken Inglis, called them “Sacred Place”. They are sites of memory. For grieving relatives of those killed, the naming served as a surrogate headstone for the grave they could not visit.

Early Anzac Day services at these memorial places were often funereal in tone, combining solemn religious observances and rhetoric, honouring the dead, encouraging patriotism and imperial loyalty. The memorials acted as community gathering places. Once a year, old soldiers could join together and honour their fallen comrades.

There was a very male, military construction to these services. The grieving widows and children were on the periphery. One place which did recognise the significance of their suffering was the centrepiece of the National War Memorial Hall of Memories. Lyndon Smith’s statue, Mother and Children, conveys something of the anguish and grief brought by war.

Change in Attitudes to War

Over the years, our perception of history has been challenged. Many baby boomers (the generation born after 1945) had difficulty entering into their parents’ and grandparents’ worlds. This was reflected in the late 1960s and early 1970s in anti-war protests, stimulated by their opposition to the Vietnam War.

Younger demonstrators, laying wreaths for the Viet Cong and for peace, clashed with those for whom Anzac Day was a “holy day” of remembrance. Patriotism, national identity, rhetoric about sacrifice and the “glorious dead” were challenged by calls for peace.

The National Council of Churches sought to mediate, holding a consultation in 1972 on the observance of Anzac Day.

Other protests followed, with the campaign for a nuclear-free New Zealand prominent in the 1980s.

There was also a growing awareness that the civilian victims of war, through such things as bombings, genocide and rape, had largely been overlooked in public memorials.

By the end of the 20th century, a kind of memorial tourism was popular. Aging veterans and descendants of war dead visited the cemeteries and memorials at European battlegrounds. For a time, visits to Gallipoli around Anzac Day became almost a rite of passage for young New Zealanders. I think of the words of theologian Albert Schweitzer: “Soldiers' graves are the greatest preachers of peace.”

The ambiguous alliance between memorialisation and national identity was seen in New Zealand’s repatriation of the unknown warrior in 2004 and the development of Pukeahu National War Memorial Park. For the Returned Services Association members and the diminishing number of veterans from past conflicts, the resurgence of attendance at Anzac Dawn and civic services by soldiers’ descendants, some wearing their forebears’ medals, was a heartening response, giving new life to remembering past conflicts and their human cost.

Missing Dimensions

But there have been some missing dimensions to our war memorialisation and sites of memory. Two in particular stand out.

Remember Conscientious Objectors

First, the names of the dissenters, pacifists, conscientious objectors, remembered in a line from Shirley Murray’s Anzac hymn as “the brave whose conscience was their call”,

were largely missing from our national naming. The National Memorial for Conscientious Objectors in the Archibald Baxter Peace Garden in Dunedin, opened in October 2021, gives visibility to the horrific treatment extended to some WWI objectors and reminds us of those who against all odds were willing to stand up for peace. The books, Saints and Stirrers, edited by Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain (2017)* and Pursuing Peace in Godzone, edited by Geoffrey Troughton (2018)* provide wide-ranging accounts of Christianity and peacemaking and the peace tradition in New Zealand. The many Māori and Pākehā women and men named in these books are worth honouring and remembering.

Acknowledge New Zealand Wars

Second, we are only now beginning to challenge the loud silence and ignorance among Pākehā about the continuing legacy of the New Zealand Wars and land confiscation. The teaching of New Zealand history in schools will help. There are many battle and grave sites associated with these wars which are our country’s own significant sites of memory.

The designation of Rā Maumahara National Day of Commemoration for the New Zealand Wars on 28 October offers the potential for learning about their significance and continuing impact. Vincent O’Malley’s The New Zealand Wars – Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (2019)* and Richard Shaw’s powerful account, The Forgotten Coast (2021)* are good starting points for Pākehā readers.

It was not until 1975 when I read Dick Scott’s Ask That Mountain, the story of Parihaka and the prophets Te Whiti and Tohu, that I learned about peaceful responses to colonial aggression. Among the Parihaka prisoners sent to the South Island, a group was sent in 1881 to the Hokitika jail at Seaview. I worked at Seaview Hospital in the early 1960s and passed the former jail site daily. I was stunned by my own ignorance when the Parihaka monument was erected there some decades later. The story of the incarceration of the Parihaka prisoners at Seaview was never talked about when I was growing up.

We will need to appreciate and learn our history if our sites of memory are to remain meaningful and relevant. War memorials and the dead they name can provoke us to pursue the ways of peace. “Lest We Forget” is not only a call to remember. It also questions what and how we remember, and how we are to live today and into the future. 

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 269 April 2022: 14-15