Filtered through American Memorial Day - ANZAC and The Glorious Dead

For American Memorial Day I sat with New Zealand's version of of the memorializing holiday, ANZAC Day. There is a specificity to the holiday, although I see the creep of appliance sales and furniture discounts down here, too. The day officially commemorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps by putting cheap red crepe poppies on every conceivable thing. 

If I asked you to tell me which was the Great War and which was the World War would you be able to tell me?

I gave you a big hint and put them in chronological order.  Great=1st, World=2nd.

The Great War.  How great?  The only great association I have with ANZAC is homophonic, a tiny venue in Toronto, Canada: The Tranzac.  Sometime around 2009 I watched Richard Laviolette and the Oil Slicks play there (check out my favorite Funeral Song).  The accordionist’s instrument strap broke during their first song and an audience member leapt up to kneel at her feet through the rest of the set, holding up the accordion Atlas style.

A sculpture of the Titan Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders, 2nd century CE. (National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy

Why make such a big deal over WWI, anyway? In my life experience it’s overshadowed in cultural significance, pop culture, monuments, movies.  Unless the subject is trench warfare WWII is the go-to.  Somebody who is a WWII buff is considered totally normal, but I would be surprised if someone cited the Great War as their area of expertise unless they were an actual historian.  You go out of your way for The Great War.

Well, unless you're New Zealand.  This country had only a measly million residents in 1914, Maori and Pakeha.  And New Zealand sent 100,000 overseas,10% of their Entire Population. The casualty rate for these young people across the world was 58%.  Young nurses and soldiers, a whole generation of young people just gobbled up at Gallipoli (among other fields of death).  10% of everyone who lived here, that's mind-boggling, and isn’t any wonder I stumble across monuments everywhere:

Oamaru's Garden of Memories

 

 

 A stone’s throw from my house in Christchurch, an obelisk overlooking the Otakaro river.

Dunedin Square, a somber Queen Victoria statue slightly off-screen.  

A good example of how afterthought the notation of the other wars can be.

You can see at the bottom of the lion someone has left a poppy painted on a pebble.

While I can understand the importance of these memorials, given the incredible loss to this very young country, all their young dead, buried across the world, I do have beef with a phrase I’ve seen plastered all over the memorials.  “Our Glorious Dead.”

These words deserve deep skepticism.

This is some war-praise bullshit. It always feels like it’s about the war, and not the dead individuals and their lost youth, grieving families.

This memorial isn't for me.  As we continue to gallop into the future, is this for anyone?  Gallipoli-ing.

Christchurch Bridge of Remembrance

I am doubtful that we remember the important things, not just the simple symbolic ones that have had their nuance ironed out.

The figures are labeled Sacrifice, flanked by Justice, Youth, Valour and Peace.  The central winged figure is Victory.  It was placed in Cathedral Square in Christchurch in 1937, and the plinth had the dates of WWII carved into it later.  https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/christchurch-war-memorial 

I am not immune to pangs of feeling brought on by a stone carved sentiment.

SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
GRACE
BELOVED WIFE OF
ELISHA ROUND
WHO DIED 1 NOV 1881,
AGED 52,
HER END WAS PEACE.
ALSO OF THE ABOVE 
ELISHA ROUND,
WHO DIED JUNE 30TH 1895,
AGED 72
"RESTING."

ON THIS SPOT THE PIONEER WOMEN OF CANTERBURY AND THEIR FAMILIES RESTED AFTER THEIR CLIMB FROM THE PORT OF LYTTLETON.

AND GAZED WITH AWE BUT WITH COURAGE UPON THE HILLS AND PLAINS OF CANTERBURY WHERE THEY WERE TO MAKE THEIR HOMES.

 

 I can recognize the poignancy or loss, the grief of an entire nation, but never the glory in war.  

I rescued this little succulent from an ANZAC wreath that was dying on the monument in my neighborhood.  It hasn’t rooted yet, but these suckers are tenacious, so I have faith that eventually it will.