Cadets a credit

I know that I’m not alone in recognising the great work that the three Nelson Cadet Units did for the Anzac Day events.

Prior to Anzac Day, members of TS Talisman, Nelson Army Cadet Unit and 23 Squadron Air Training Corps cleaned veterans’ graves in all the main cemeteries in the region, and placed a poppy on each one.

They manned the Catafalque Guard at the Nelson Dawn Service, and at other venues. And after the Dawn Service, the Nelson Army Cadet Unit drove down to Murchison for the 11am service there.

These young people are an asset to our region, and deserve all the support we can give them.

Those they shot at were told the same so that each side thought they had ‘‘God on their side’’.

My uncle, a Dutch teen of the German occupation, told me how the occupiers had that very thought engraved on their belt buckles.

My family of conscientious objectors believed that man-made events, including wars, and institutions are God-decreed as ‘‘God worked his will among the nations’’. My late grandmother, born when Victoria was queen; saw religion and monarchism as synonymous.

Despite their professed pacifism, they were proud of the empire - a product of war. The popular hymn, ‘‘all creatures great and small’’, instructs that the very British class system is Goddecreed and so the ‘‘divine right’’ of kings persists in many minds.