Chance to remember
‘Anzac Day is very important and special to me’
Karen Wemyss will be one of countless others from around the country and the world who will be commemorating Anzac Day. “Anzac Day is very important and special to me.”
She said it was a chance to remember others who have lost their lives as well as reflect on her own military experience.
Wemyss was in her early 30s when she swapped her job as a chartered accountant for a career in the military.
She joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force as an officer on January 31, 2006.
One of the reasons she changed her career was after seeing the devastating footage of the Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia a few years earlier.
“I wanted to be able to help in those kinds of situations.”
She also had a rich family history of military service as both her grandfathers’ fought in World War II — one with the Royal Air Force and the other with the New Zealand Army. And she had a great-great uncle who fought in World War I; she visited his grave in Belgium some years ago.
“That was very special and I put some poppies on his gravestone.”
Wemyss served for 15 years before retiring in April 2021 as a squadron leader where her specialist trade was as a logistics supply officer.
One of her career highlights was in 2010 when, as an air movements officer, she attended the 95th commemorations at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli with a group of veterans.
In 2008/09 she spent nearly four months in East Timor supporting 3 Squadron as part of the International Stabilisation Force.
By late 2010 she was deployed to Bamyan Province, Afghanistan, for about eight months, where she was second in command of the national support element.
“It was essentially a logistics role.” Wemyss, who has held a number of roles in the military, was also the New Zealand Defence logistics adviser in Washington DC for three years.
When she retired from the military she took up a civilian role with the Ministry of Defence and is the principal adviser for foreign military sales with the United States.
Wemyss, who graduated from Massey University in 2020 with a master of arts in defence and security studies, settled in Paraparaumu a year ago and is enjoying life on the coast.
She has also joined the Paraparaumu RSA, where she is the organisation’s ceremonial and protocols representative. “I’m quite passionate about honouring and supporting past veterans but also navigating our path for our current and future veterans.”
There are no closecontact formal parades in the Kāpiti district this year, because of Covid-19, but the change to the orange setting means the public is invited to the playing field by Paraparaumu’s Memorial Arch at 7am to join a shortened service led by Paraparaumu RSA president Philip Simpson and the RSA executive. It will include the laying of a wreath, the piping of a lament, the playing of the Last Post, the reciting of the Ode of Remembrance, a minute’s silence, and overhead Kāpiti Aero Club will again pay its respects with a flypast.