Anzac Day reflections

I've been involved in Anzac Day commemorations since I was 10 when I marched with the Girl Guides to the Cenotaph in Otorohanga. When I was 12, I was the flag bearer in the parade.

I began going to Dawn Parades when I worked Wellington in my twenties. We would walk down to the Centoaph in Boulcott street. The street lights were switched off, so we gathered in the pre-dawn gloom, to read an order of service by torch or candle light.

I came to love the poetry, and the familiar hymns. The service was always the same, begining with the Anzac Dedication "On this hour on this day Anzac received its baptism of fire". The singing of the hymn "Lest we forget", the Last Post and the Laurence Binyon poem "They shall grow not old, as we who are left grow old". And when the service-men and women marched past, I found it hard to contain my tears.

The first year I lived in England, I spent Anzac Day in Turkey, at Gallipoli itself. The memorial there is identical to one overlooking Cook Strait. It was a huge event - more than six thousand people. The Turks were very welcoming, the close relationship New Zealand has with Turkey evidenced by the fact they didn't charge New Zealanders for a visa stamp (other countries had to pay).

In England, I took a day off work each year to go to the Anzac service at Westminster Abbey, where the organist, never having heard Howard Morrison sing, would play "How Great Thou Art/Whakaaria Mai" at a bouncing speed, and "God of Nations" extra slow.

This year, both my parents are in Austria visting the site of Stalag 18A, the prisoner of war camp where my grandfather, Bertie Daysh, spent nearly four years.

Granddad was taken prisoner at Kalamata in Greece, and then transported across Albania and Yugoslavia to the camp. They were moved in cattle trucks, and the conditions were dire. No sanitation (and men with dysentry). Next to no food or water. Conditions were better once they reached the camp, where they were sent out on work parties. Granddad went out to work on farms (he was a dairy farmer at Te Rau-a-moa near Kawhia in civilian life). I've also discovered that he helped build a hydro-electric power station at Lavamund.

At the camp in Lavamund, a Red Cross report of October 1941 reports that the men lived in hutments, had 350g bread ration a day and adequate food, especially now the Red Cross parcels were arriving. On clothing it says:

"The state of clothing is unsatisfactory. The majority of the prisoners are wearing French uniforms, often of extremely poor quality. These uniforms wear out very rapidly. As the prisoners work in all weathers, it is difficult to dry them and sickness due to chills is frequent in the Camp. The prisoners have no change of underlinen and the majority of them have no socks. Their shoes are in a lamentable condition.

For some reason the fact that my gentle lovely Grandfather was working hard without socks upsets me every time I read it. The Red Cross report from 1944 paints a much better picture, although there had been a problem when American planes bombed the camp by mistake, killing the chaplain and wounding prisoners.

I don't actually remember him myself, as he died 10 days before my first birthday. I still have the silver bracelet which my Grandmother bought from me, engraved "Happy Birthday Rachel, love Granddad". It isn't likely that he bought it himself, as he developed a brain tumour when I was a few months old, and was not himself in the few months before he died. He was fine when I was born though, and delighted in his first grandchild. He was not to meet his three grandsons or two other granddaughters, the youngest (my sister Bronwyn) born on the day he would have turned 75.

Granddad went away to war in his mid 30s, and was taken prisoner quite early on. After four years in the Prisoner of War Camp he must have felt life was passing him by. At the end of the war he caught polio, and was still very ill when the camp was liberated, so had to stay behind until fit to travel. When he did finally leave, he went to England, and promptly married my grandmother, with whom he had been writing letters via the Red Cross. They had a one week honeymoon before he travelled home on a troop ship, leaving her to follow on a ship full of war brides. They had my mother almost immediately. She and her brother grew up climbing trees, rowing on Kawhia Harbour, and helping their father catch whitebait. I think his life after the war was a good one.

Looking back, what have I learned from Anzac Day commemorations, and my Grandfather's story?

Well, troops are still being killed by friendly fire in Iraq. The Red Cross is still doing sterling work, and my family is still grateful.

Granddad apparently said that the German and Austrian guards could have made it a lot worse for the prisoners. Our family now has close ties with Germany, as both my sisters spent a year on youth exchange and I have two German "sisters" who lived with us. So conflicts don't last forever. Good can come out of war, occasionally - the continuing strong relationship between New Zealand and Turkey as a result of the Gallipoli landings offers hope in that respect.

And, on an individual level, the fact that my Grandfather survived his experiences, unbitter, that when his life seemed to be very bleak, it got very much better, offers me encouragement when things aren't going so well for me.

Thanks Granddad, for your love and persistence, whereever you are.

Lest we forget.