Stamp of honour for veteran
David Bennett got an email “out of the blue” one day telling him his picture was going to be on a New Zealand Post stamp. His first reaction was “no way”.
The Royal New Zealand Air Force veteran, 42, was one of six contemporary veterans chosen to be commemorated on a stamp. There were two service personnel, a male and female, from each of the three armed forces, and all were deployed from 1995 or later.
Bennett went to Afghanistan twice, East Timor and the Solomon Islands, but only started calling himself a veteran in the last year or so, he said.
“Before that I definitely didn’t feel like I could match up to those older boys.”
His grandfather served with the RNZAF in the Pacific during World War II and his great-grandfather served in France during World War I. They were his benchmark.
On Anzac Day there were a lot of contemporary veterans wearing medals but they’re not on parade because they don’t feel like they belong up there with those who served in World War II or Vietnam, he said.
“So part of the stamp thing is to try and change that and to try and encourage other people who have served to be acknowledged.”
The story behind the stamps is to show that veterans are not just elderly men and that’s one of the reasons he decided to accept having his photo on a stamp.
“It’s not about me. It’s who I represent. “Veterans’ Affairs reached out, out of the blue, and said ‘hey, look we’re putting together this stamp series to promote younger veterans’. There’s that perception that veterans are World War II or World War I guys and there is none left.”
But there is an estimated 40,000 veterans in New Zealand and 30,000 of them served after Vietnam.
Veterans wear their medals on their chest on the left side. Someone wearing a relatives’ medals wears them on the right.
Occasionally on Anzac Day Bennett was told he was wearing his medals on “the wrong side”, he said.
“I say ‘no, they’re mine’. And you have RSA members who have never been in the military say, ‘you haven’t fought in any wars, so you’re not a veteran’. That’s not the greatest.”
Bennett joined the RNZAF in 2011 when he was 18. He started as an avionic technician looking after the aircraft.
He went to university while in the air force, studying electrical engineering before becoming a flight engineer on a C-130 Hercules.
Based at Whenuapai, Bennett was in No 40 Squadron and by the time he left the air force in 2012 he was a sergeant.
In Afghanistan his crew was attached to an American unit at the massive air base in Bagram. They also performed tasks for Nato all around Afghanistan.
And they supported the New Zealand contingent in Bamyan dropping off troops and supplies.
One thing that sticks in his mind from the time he spent in Bamyan was the sight of Afghani girls walking to school. But after the west pulled out the return to Taliban rule had changed that, he said.
“It’s all changed. It’s sad. Its a real shame, all that work and all those people who sacrificed everything. It’s undone that work.”
As well as East Timor and the Solomon Islands, Bennett was involved in major events on home soil.
He went to Australia in 2010 to pick up a mine rescue team and their equipment straight after the explosion at Pike River. And he was working “non stop” after the Christchurch earthquake.
“We were flying in supplies. The memory that sticks with me the most is flying our elderly residents — their rest homes were damaged — to rest homes around the country.”
Last Thursday Bennett went to Wellington and met the other five “stamp” veterans Ang Coyle, Rebecca Brierton, Kelley Waite, Ben Peckham and Vance Leach.
Bennett’s stamp is the most expensive of the six at $4.60.
“I was just a small cog in a massive machine. We all go to places to try and leave it a better place than when we arrived and be a positive impact on people’s lives. Hopefully we did that.”