Veterans missing Anzac Day services
It will be a different Anzac Day for Taranaki’s veterans in 2020 writes
For World War II veteran Ron Bingham, 2020 is only the second time he’s missed an Anzac Day dawn parade since the end of the war.
‘‘Anzac Day is worth travelling – whether it’s rain, hail or sunshine, with the exception of this year – to a service to observe, and stop and think, and probably share a beer or two,’’ he says.
‘‘There’s not as many of us left as there were a few years ago.’’
Bingham, now 98, started in the Taranaki territorials – they were meant to be 18, but he was 17 and three quarters and put his age up to get in.
In 1942, he went for training, and after that, together with 3000 other recruits, he sailed to New Caledonia, and after further training his regiment was moved to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
‘‘There we got our first taste as far as an enemy was concerned because there was still thousands of Japanese on Guadalcanal, although they had lost possession of it.
‘‘They still were an enemy and we were bombed quite regularly by the Japanese from the islands that they possessed further north.’’
They moved on to two further islands where there was opposition but not in large numbers, as the Japanese were heading back up the Pacific at that stage.
‘‘We were repatriated from Nissan (Island) in 1944.’’
It was not his final part of the war – he later went back to Egypt for training and then up to reinforce the Italian contingent.
‘‘Gradually as the tempest and all the political yahoo went on, we were categorised and able to be eligible to be returned back to New Zealand.’’
Bingham was discharged in 1946. He married Gwynneth in 1947 and they have five children. He and Gwynneth were both involved in the RSA for many years, and in 2000 Bingham was the 15th New Zealander to be awarded the RSA gold star and bar.
Bingham is not the only one who places such high importance on the day New Zealand remembers its fallen.
For John ‘Jack’ Kirkland, Anzac Day is ‘‘top priority’’.
Kirkland, now 91, served two years in the Korean War.
‘‘Since I came home in 1952 I have never missed an Anzac Day parade.
‘‘The only time I didn’t have one in New Zealand was when we did the revisit to Korea and we attended the Anzac Day service in Seoul at the UN compound.’’
It’s getting more and more popular now, but sadly there are fewer and fewer veterans, he says. He spent four years as Parade Marshall, but because of his health he now
Gradually as the tempest and all the political yahoo went on, we were categorised and able to be eligible to be returned back to New Zealand. Ron Bingham
sits with ‘‘the old blokes’’, he says.
‘‘It’s a very important day and it’s a real shame we’ve got this pandemic going on. But I’ll be standing to – which is an army term – we always stand to at dawn and repell any attack. So I’ll be standing out the front of my unit.’’
He won’t be alone, people around the country were asked to stand at dawn in their own homes or driveways on Anzac Day.
Kirkland’s regiment landed in Busan on New Year’s Eve, 1950, 11 days before his 22nd birthday.
‘‘I enjoyed the army – I was brought up in pipe bands and used to drill and discipline.’’
His role as technical assistant included plotting targets, working out gun data and surveying the guns in when they moved.
‘‘I’ve often thought later in life, recently actually, how lucky we were that we didn’t kill some of our own people, because the maps weren’t very good and we had to pick a spot on the map when we moved.
‘‘We didn’t think of it at the time but we had to hope that we didn’t miscalculate where we were.’’
The biggest battle they ever had was Anzac weekend, 1951, in the battle of Kapyong.
The Australian infantry had pulled out and the South Korean army was there.
‘‘It was a bright moonlit night – at midnight we were woken up and told to move, that the Chinese were getting close to us. And we hear this noise coming down the road and it was the Republic of Korea Army, running down the road to get away.
‘‘We’re a couple of thousand yards behind the front line, with artillery guns – we had quite a job to get onto the road.
‘‘The Australians were brought back in and we supported the Australians in a leapfrogging situation as we retreated.
‘‘We were very close to being overrun – we were the front battery.’’
Kirkland also represented K-Force at the opening of the new UN building.
He married Judy in 1959 and has two children, and also has two granddaughters and two greatgrandsons.
This year traditional services have been replaced with honouring the day from within your bubble, and Alfred ‘Nugget’ West, who was in Egypt and Italy in WWII, says it is a pity Anzac Day services couldn’t go ahead.
‘‘It was always a good day,’’ he says.
Now 96, West says he made some great friends in the army, but ‘‘you don’t want to dwell’’ on the war.
He married Dorothy and has two daughters.
Vietnam veteran Roy Komene says in the earlier years, Vietnam veterans stayed away from Anzac services because of the antiVietnam feelings, but in later years they started to go.
Anzac Day is for the soldiers and veterans and to remember the fallen, but as veterans, we remember for 365 days of the year, he says.
June Yearbury, who served in J-Force following WWII, has been going to Anzac Day services since she was a little girl.
‘‘One day we couldn’t see, there was such a crowd, and we were on the shoulders of our parents,’’ the now-95-year-old says.
Yearbury, nee Gibson, was a nurse with 2 NZEF (Japan) and worked in 6 New Zealand General Hospital, which was in Yamaguchi prefecture at a place called Kiwa.
‘‘I’m the last of the nurses that were over there, so that’s a shame.’’
She helped put the pins in the poppies this year before coronavirus shut down Poppy Day and traditional Anzac services.
Next year ‘‘we won’t have to put the pins in,’’ she says.
And when traditional services return she’ll be there.
‘‘It is a day of remembrance. ‘‘It’s too important to forget.’’