Anzac Day sets off genealogy hunt for war-time tales
I remember tackling Dad about why he bothered "celebrating war".
My father and the Girl Guides put me off Anzac Day commemorations.
Dad used to slip quietly out of the house before dawn to parade with other returned servicemen, maybe returning early in the afternoon smelling unfamiliarly of rum and beer.
He did not talk about it, and the message seemed clear. It was his private thing, and whatever disturbing memories the day stirred up were not to be inflicted on the youngsters.
At some stage, I got involved with the civic Anzac Day services later in the morning. Our attendance as Girl Guides, in uniform, with badges and shoes polished, was compulsory, and therefore, resented.
It seemed like the two experiences of Anzac Day going on within the family never quite janine.rankin@fairfaxmedia.co.nz
connected, until, one day, they collided.
As a know-it-all 14-year-old, having watched the big kids in protest marches against the Vietnam War, I remember tackling Dad about why he bothered ‘‘celebrating war’’.
He explained as best he could, that was not what he was doing. It was about remembering and supporting the men he served with and honouring those who did not come back.
The 14-year-old shrugged and flounced off unconvinced.
Quite what Dad would make of the modern family outings to Anzac Day services I do not know. But I think it would have been a mixed reaction, of puzzlement with perhaps a little pride, given the closing line of the brief war memoirs he was cajoled into writing. ‘‘What a bloody waste.’’
Anyway, this Anzac Day I decided I would honour the occasion by delving into some war records Dad’s cousin’s son sent me recently.
He had extracted Great Uncle Hector’s war records. There was another strong, silent type.
Uncle Hector never spoke about the war either. I’m pretty sure about that, as nearly all of my childhood holidays through into my middle teens were spent at his Southland farm.
Presumably always ancient and gruff, Uncle Hector was too scary to ask.
Searching through those old documents and trying to make sense of them was one way to dedicate a day to a cause.
Uncle Hector, once a slightly built, fair-skinned, blue-eyed 28-year-old, went rather over the top in living the Anzac spirit.
Originally from Maniototo, he fled relative poverty in search of a better life in New South Wales, and signed up as an Australian at the start of World War I.
That was why I had never found anything about him by searching in New Zealand.
There was a mass of documents. Signing up. Embarking. Hospital records. Exotic place names in Egypt and France. And the one thing I was looking for. Gallipoli.
Some of the handwriting was hard to decipher, and some typewritten notes were hard to read, but yes, there he was, on November 14, 1915, on the Themistocles bound for the Gallipoli Peninsula.
It took a little bit of checking, but it seems he must have arrived there just in the nick of time to be evacuated.
The weather had turned atrocious, thousands of men suffered frostbite, and the neatlyexecuted withdrawal was achieved before Christmas.
By the New Year, Uncle Hector was in hospital somewhere near Alexandria with influenza. A couple of months later, he was back in hospital with a foot injury.
Enter Great Grandma. The file includes a number of letters from her, politely inquiring, anxiously asking, how bad her son’s condition might be, and whether he would be sent home.
Poor woman had already lost one son. Great Uncle George had headed off in 1914 with the Otago Infantry Battalion.
By August 1915 he had died in a hospital in Alexandria, not of injuries, but a victim of that even more efficient killer of soldiers from the trenches — enteric fever, or typhoid.
Uncle Hector survived and recovered well enough to battle on in France, until, it seems, he was discharged as medically unfit for service in 1918, amid much concern about his pre-existing struggle with varicose veins.
At this stage, Great Grandma’s demand for information on his whereabouts became strident in a cablegram. It seems he did not want to be found for quite some time.
But by now, close to the going down of the sun, I was starting to feel like I was intruding.
End note:
It was great to see the Palmerston North City Council deciding to seek community views on whether it should set up a Maori ward or wards.
They might not be the silver bullet for ensuring Maori views are heard and heeded in local government, but the conversation needs to be had.
Many will salute its intentions as progressive. But it would be naive to assume, as proposed editing of its discussion document suggested, that the subject will not be controversial.