‘History has taught us nothing’
A reminder of war and a warning of future conflicts made for a sobering Anzac Day Dawn Service in the Waikato.
‘‘It was, you know, the war to end all the wars, but it didn’t,’’ Reverend Canon Adrian Gover said.
‘‘The only thing we learn from history, is that we learn nothing from history.’’
Gover delivered the message to nearly 1000 people who filled the streets of Cambridge during its Anzac Day Dawn Service.
‘‘It was a generation lost, they were the best of the best and who knows what our nation would be like now if they lived,’’ he said.
‘‘In 1939 it began all over again, leaving young New Zealanders to die in Cassino, Greece, Italy, all the deserts in the Middle East, the seas and in the sky.’’
‘‘We’ve lost more lives in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, as well as Afghanistan, the conflicts go on and on.
‘‘Once again I hear the sound of politicians rattling their sabres, and I despair, that mothers may again receive the dreadful news of a child killed in action.’’
Sobs could be heard from the crowd, as he spoke of the 2721 New Zealand lives that were lost in Gallipoli in 1915.
That number was twice the population of Cambridge at the time.
‘‘But it’s not our worst day,’’ he said.
‘‘Two years after, many more of our young men perished in the killing field of Flanders on the Western Front.
‘‘That Flanders poppy we wear is a symbol of terrible loss of life, and a total, total waste of war.’’
Exactly 1084 New Zealand soldiers died in a matter of hours in the Belgian province, where the poppy was the first to emerge out of the churned up soil of that battlefield.
Gover spoke of a family in Tuakau - a widow, who had three sons that all died in the war.
‘‘Like so many others, they had left home with adventure in their eyes.
‘‘They were among the 12,483 New Zealanders who died on the Western Front, and it may seem like just a number but each was a life, a precious life,’’ Gover said.
At the time of World War I, he said the nation was small with just one million people - smaller than the population of Auckland today.
By the end of 1918, 102,438 New Zealanders had served in the Great War, and more than 60,000 had become casualties.