A prayer for peace: preserve us from degeneration, disaster and war

Convinced that violence to deal with violence only begets more violence, that root causes of injustice and hatred need to be identified and healed; remembering also that Jesus told us to pray for our enemies, and that "all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matt 26:52), I wish to share this prayer associated with a relatively little-known devotion to Mary as 'the Lady of All Nations'. This is associated with apparitions of Mary in Amsterdam from 1945-1959, accepted by the Church as being of supernatural origin.

In revealing the prayer to Ida Peerdeman, Our Lady said the prayer was purposely kept short and simple, 'so that every person may manage to say it, even in this modern and speed-mad world.' Significantly, when so many countries are wracked by war, distress or turmoil, it asks for 'the Holy Spirit to live in the hearts of all nations, that they may be preserved from degeneration, disaster and war'.

The prayer in full:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father,
send now your Spirit over the earth.
Let the Holy Spirit live in the hearts of all nations,
that they may be preserved from degeneration, disaster and war.
May the Lady of All Nations, the Blessed Virgin Mary, be our advocate.
Amen.

Read more ...

A chance for peace - it was good enough for Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. - Dwight D Eisenhower.

Those were the words I held up today in the rain to honour Armistice Day - when 'the war to end all wars' ended. Most people probably wondered what on earth we were on about. Hard to believe these words were spoken by an American President at the height of the Cold War, who had been WWII general.

He spoke them after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, when he felt there was an opportunity to nip the Cold War in the bud. It prompted him to give a speech that would be titled “The Chance for Peace”, against the counsel of then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The speech went onto say: "Now, there could be another road before us—the road of disarmament. What does this mean? It means for everybody in the world: bread, butter, clothes, homes, hospitals, schools—all the good and necessary things for decent living."

Similar could be said today of climate change and our addiction to carbon. Whether we see it or not, there is another road that lies before us.

Read more about the context from Robert Schlesinger.

Arrival in Alexandria

Continuing the journey of my grandfather in the Field Artillery with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, I have come to the point where the flotilla receives unexpected news while crossing the Red Sea that they would disembark in Egypt, rather than Europe:

Most of the men had firmly believed that they were on their way to England, and would ultimately go from there to France, and they parted with their illusions regretfully, but once it had been definitely stated that the voyage would end at Egypt they were quick to realise the cogency of the reasons which probably lay behind this decision. At Suez, where the leading transports anchored for an hour or two, detailed disembarkation orders were brought out to the flagship, the Canal pilots were taken aboard, and the Maunganui led the way into the Canal. A powerful electric light was installed in the bows of each, boat so that they might feel their way along the narrow channel in the darkness.
Of the town of Suez little could be seen—a glimpse of the palm-shaded water-front, a glimmer of lights, and then the boats were in the Canal with the low banks on either hand so close at times that it seemed almost possible to leap ashore from the decks. ... The soldiers clustered up forward and silently watched the canal-banks slip by like the unfolding of a cinematograph film; but, late at night a heavy fog enveloped everything, and the leading boats anchored till the morning in the Bitter Lake. Proceeding by day, the entrenchments and fortified posts skirting the canal, with their garrisons of English and Indian troops, provided a first impression of the seriousness attached to the Turkish threat to the precious waterway, and of the elaborate preparations being made for its defence.

http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/nzef-egypt-1914-16-map,
(Ministry for Culture and Heritage)

(The Ottomans did attack the Canal just a few months later in February 2015). However, at this point, the NZEF were due to disembark at Alexandria on the Mediterranean northern shores of Egypt:

The city was in sight at dawn [on 3 December], and very soon after breakfast the transports had berthed, and men and horses and stores were pouring out on to the wharves. The Force was to be encamped on the outskirts of Cairo, so there was still a train journey of almost 150 miles before its travels would for the time being be over. Once the batteries had marched their horses down the big ramps, and slung their guns and stores up from the holds, they had to set to and pack them into the long troop trains which were in waiting to carry them off to their new home on the edge of the great desert.

First blood

It is both strange and sobering to read more than 100 years after the fact, in words that sound quite fresh, of the first death and the first encounter with the enemy of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force - en route to their destination in Egypt. I can do no better than to quote directly from New Zealand Artillery in the Field 1914-1918 to relay the first unexpected loss:

Early on Monday morning, October 25th, a signal went round the fleet that a private of the New Zealand Medical Corps had died the previous night on board the Ruapehu [one of the troopships]; and the intelligence of this first death came almost as a shock to men who had thought only for that side of war that promised excitement and adventure, that stirs the blood and fires the imagination, and little for that other side on which lay its tragedy and suffering and death. In the afternoon an impressive burial service was held. At 3 p.m. the Ruapehu moved up to the centre of the two divisions, and the troops on every transport were paraded facing inwards. Five minutes later all engines were stopped, and the convoy rode motionless on the water while a brief funeral service was held on every ship, and the body was committed to the deep. The customary volleys were fired on the Ruapehu, and the Last Post sounded; the Ruapehu hauled her ensign close up, and the convoy proceded on its way. The service was very brief, but the circumstances invested it with an impressiveness that was not lost on the thousands who paid their tribute of respect to the dead.

A couple of weeks later, after the New Zealand fleet had been joined by the Australians, one of the Australian cruisers serving as an escort was called away to engage with a 'strange warship' that had entered the harbour in the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean. The Australian cruiser Sydney took on and ultimately defeated the German raider Emden, which had been trying to disable the radio station on the Cocos.

However great the pride with which the Australians viewed the honours which had fallen to their young Navy, it was fully shared by every New Zealander, and the official congratulations of the Force were duly offered to the Sydney on the results of the Australian Navy's first engagement. The Sydney had two men killed and thirteen wounded, but the list of killed and wounded on the battered Emden ran into big figures.

According to Wikipedia, under the rather grand title of "Battle of the Cocos", the Emden lost 134 men, and had 69 wounded. More than 150 were taken captive, but the shore party of 50 commandeered a schooner and escaped ultimately to Constantinople (Istanbul).

Close to home

Today at the dinner table, our youngest child asked why in World War One and all the other wars did all those men go out to kill each other? I tried to explain, as simply as possible, that the reasons were complex and even historians can’t agree. World War One stemmed in part from agreements different countries had to protect others if another nation attacked them; and so things kind of spiralled out of control when two smaller countries attacked each other. Then she pressed us as to why the individual men went out to kill each other. I told her some felt they were fighting a great evil, or felt it was their job to fight for their country if it went to war – the “my country, right or wrong” mentality.

What I would give to know what was in my grandfather’s mind as he enlisted then sailed off to war in 1914.

He actually joined the Army long before, in January 1913 as a driver in the Artillery, and received initial training in Wellington for three months before returning south to serve with the Army in Dunedin and Invercargill. From what I can make out from the records, it seemed he was with the Invercargill Field Artillery at the outbreak of war. He probably spent time in further training at Palmerston North, before members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force trooped down to Wellington.

“An official farewell was tendered to the units which embarked in Wellington, at a big parade held in Newtown Park on September 24th,” says the official history New Zealand Artillery in the Field 1914-1918. “Great crowds assembled in the Park to witness the parade, and afterwards lined the streets and cheered the soldiers as they marched down to the wharves. The transports backed out from the wharves before dark, and anchored in the stream ... ready to sail with the dawn”. However, two of the escort ships were delayed from Auckland, and it was decided not to sail without a sufficiently powerful protective convoy.

So, the following day, they all disembarked, “the Artillery with their horses and vehicles marched out to the Lower Hutt Racecourse, and went into camp.” All those years ago, Grandad was less than a kilometre from where I now live. It was three weeks before the troopships departed – with less of a fanfare. The Expeditionary Force, my grandfather among them, finally set sail from Wellington under convoy in the early morning of October 16th – “the sky was cloudless, and only the soft early morning mists obscured the first rays of the sun.”

How the guns were starved

During a visit to my uncle’s on the weekend, I finally learnt how my grandfather Sydney Williams earned his Military Medal. I won’t share details now – it seems premature, and if I leave it a while, that may induce you to come back some time to find out.

Tonight, instead, I turn to the next installment – ‘How the guns were starved’ – of the official 1922 history of the New Zealand Field Artillery. The author, while saying it was ‘unnecessary and inadvisable’ to deal with the overall events leading up to the Gallipoli campaign, felt it necessary to cover the shortcomings that affected the Artillery. Namely, the out-of-date and inadequate guns, and a severe lack of ammunition– usually limited to two rounds a day.

After several urgent requests by the Commander of the Australian Field Artillery for some more powerful naval guns, on 11 July 2015 (100 years ago) ‘one very old and much-worn gun arrived’, though its usefulness turned out to be very limited. At the same time, an ‘absolutely reliable’ source had informed the British that the Turks were having to economise on ammunition for the next three weeks, however, there seemed to be no let-up in their bombardment.

Later in July, reinforcements arrived, resulting in a reorganisation of the Artillery Batteries into two Brigades. I learned today that my grandfather’s commanding officer was Major F G Hume, in charge of 2^nd Battery in the 2^nd Brigade.

Life and death in the Cove

Part of the purpose of this blog was to journey through World War I reflecting on the experience of my grandfather, Sydney Alvyn Williams. He served as a driver in the New Zealand Field Artillery, giving up a job as Creamery Manager at Dunback, north of Dunedin. He was single at the time, aged 24. We don’t have personal reflections by him, so I have begun tracing something of his journey through the official record: New Zealand Artillery in the Field 1914-1918, by Lieutenant J. R. Byrne (1922). It’s enlightening, colourful, and insightful into the perspectives of the day - reflecting the ‘side’ it has been written from.

Brigadier-General G N Johnston, Commander of the New Zealand Field Artillery (NZFA) during the War, writes in an Introduction to the book:

Those who came safely through have settled down again to their normal occupations; the survivors will, I feel sure, look back with a feeling of growing satisfaction when they think of the Great War, and what they did to help it along.

I don’t know how my grandfather actually felt about the War. He, like many, didn’t talk about it much. All I know is that, during a nightmare, he tried to strangle his wife – my grandmother – in her sleep; and when WWII broke out he was keen to join up again – but his wife wouldn’t let him.

Brigadier-General G N Johnston goes on:

All who had the honour of belonging to the New Zealand Field Artillery will, I feel sure, cherish the memory of their association with that Force as time goes by; forgetting the hardships of the war, they will remember only the spirit of good feeling and friendliness that animated all ranks in every phase of the conflict. Their varied experiences and journeyings in foreign lands will be pleasant to look back upon as the years roll by; ...

Catching up with the NZFA in the field at this moment 100 years ago (June 1914), Lieutenant Byrne in the body of the history writes:

... by June the heat had become oppressive, and combined with the ills and afflictions that it brought in its train, was a grievous burden to men who had already been sorely tried in body and spirit. As the heat increased, the amount of clothing worn by the average individual became less and less, until the absolute minimum was reached by the many, who contented themselves with a very short pair of "shorts," boots, and headgear of thevariety that most appealed to their own particular tastes. Clad thus in abbreviated uniforms that were anything but uniform, the rank and file of the army grew bronzed, and some even heightened the suggestion of the primitive by becoming bearded, for the morning shave had become but a memory of another existence. Thoroughly verminous as they were, and often lacking sufficient fresh water even for drinking purposes, the soldiers might almost have been pardoned for ceasing to worry about personal cleanliness; but good habits persist as well as bad, and the desire to wash and be clean never waned. The gunner provided himself with a small pannikin-full of water, when it was to be had, and went about his toilet with the gravity of a man engaged in an absorbing morning ritual. Under such conditions it can be easily conceived what a joy to the soldier were those invigorating swims in the clear, cool, sparkling waters of the Cove.
Every day the guns from the Olive Groves swept the beach with their deadly enfilade, and hardly a day passed when they did not exact a toll in killed and wounded, but none ever thought of foregoing his swim in consequence of these risks. ... The guns usually fired in short bursts at uncertain intervals; and as they were firing at a considerable range the shells gave some warning of their approach and enabled the most active to dive for the shelter of the big stacks of boxed provisions .... In a few moments the shelling would cease, men would straighten themselves up with an air of mingled relief and caution; then one, more intrepid than the rest, would lead the way again into the tempting waters, and in a few minutes it would seem as if there had never been anything to disturb their splashing and frolicking.

“Splashing and frolicking” – yes, life could be fun in the Cove.

When will we ever learn ...

Since my late teens, I have almost always attended an Anzac service of one sort or another – not to sanction war or the military, nor to express gratitude for those who ‘died to defend my freedom’ – I don’t buy into that line. I attend to remember all those who have died or suffered in war, whether soldiers or civilians, particularly my grandfather Sydney Alvyn Williams, who survived Gallipoli and the Western Front. And in that remembrance, I pray ‘never again war’. The fallen will not have died in vain, if we learn, someday, how not to make war. 

   *

So, I write today with a mix of unease and anger. Unease that this year’s longer and larger Anzac Day commemorations has moved from a day of sombre, shared reflection (where individuals can have different views on war and the military) to a kind of sentimental ‘celebration’, sanitising all our soldiers in some way as ‘heroes’ who served and died for a noble and worthy cause.

My anger stems from learning, yet again, that so much of the truer, fuller history of the war and its origins, which would help our understanding and prevention of further conflict, is sidelined.

The truth is there is good and bad in each of us, and most of us participate in the ebb and flow of history through our own small lives with limited lenses, barely or only half-understanding the greater forces and powers at work in our world.

But others say it better.

Tasman Leader editor Alastair Paulin was on the brink of WW1 overload when he wrote, ‘The tidy symbolism and euphemisms of the way we pay homage to the soldiers of WWI risks glorifying and sanitising the reality of war, and our focus on the events of 100 years ago blinds us to the realities of war now. ... I wonder if in all our respect and honour, we have missed the lesson of WWI.’

On Anzac Day eve, Bryce Edwards went over the top with an extensive summary of those expressing ‘Anzac fatigue and dissent’.

But the most pertinent and telling comment, comes from 1933, from someone who lived through the War itself. Vera Brittain was a progressive young woman studying at Oxford University, UK, when World War I first disrupted her comfortable life, then took the lives of her fiancée, brother and two of her other closest friends. She herself became a VAD nurse, tending wounded from both sides, and shared how the war had affected her and her generation in Testament of Youth. Testament of Youth.

In the ‘dark, foggy confusion’ she experienced after War’s end, a ‘half-found inspiration’ led to her studying History rather than English when she returned to Oxford. In doing so she sought:

to understand how the whole calamity had happened, to know why it had been possible for me and my contemporaries, through our own ignorance and others’ ingenuity, to be used, hypnotised and slaughtered. ... It’s my job, now, to find out all about it, and try to prevent it, in so far as one person can, from happening to other people in the days to come. Perhaps the careful study of man’s past will explain to me much that seems inexplicable in his disconcerting present. Perhaps the means of salvation are already there, implicit in history, unadvertised, carefully concealed by the war-mongers, only awaiting discovery ...

Her subsequent words are perhaps even more applicable to us today than when she wrote them:

since man’s inventions have eliminated so much of distance and time; ... we are now each of us part of the surge and swell of great economic and political movements, and whatever we do, as individuals or as nations, deeply affects everyone else. ... if only the comfortable prosperity of the Victorian age [read ‘post-modern affluence’ for our times] hadn’t lulled us into a false sense of individual security and made us believe that what was going on outside our homes didn’t matter to us, the Great War might never have happened. ... the world as a whole will be worse; lacking first-rate ability and social order and economic equilibrium, it will go spinning down into chaos as fast as it can – unless some of us try to prevent it.

I can’t help feeling that these words apply to evils other than War ...

* Video version of ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ sung by its original singer and songwriter Pete Seeger. When Marlene Dietrich translated and sang this song in German, its impact in post-WWII Germany was shattering. Truth crosses boundaries.

Poems for peace and justice

I participated in a 'Poets for Peace' event tonight, held as part of the annual National Peace Workshops, a range of poems and music, touching on World War 1, 19th century wars, modern wars, and the long, ongoing struggle for peace and justice - because peace is not the absence of war - it is justice and life with dignity for all.

I'll save my newest poem that I read to the group for later, but I will share the one I penned 11 years ago - because it's about time it came out into the open. Also a poem from someone probably not known to you as a poet til now.

23rd March 2004 (after the killing of Hamas spiritual leader Shaikh Ahmed Yassin by the Israeli military) 

Dawn.
Helicopter gunships
propel rockets
into a wheelchair,
killing a man.

Dusk.
Grey cloud, tinged with red
reaches for
a sliver of new moon.
Darkness creeps.
There is no star next to the crescent. 

Inside,
the white flame
of our peace lily
is mottled brown
and wilts.  

The second poem I felt compelled to share with the group, to provide a voice they wouldn't expect to hear - former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose truely spoken words were turned into a book of 'found poetry' Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld (2003) by Hart Seely of Slate magazine. Below is an aptly titled one for a World War One commemoration:

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know. 

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Learnings

Approaching the 100th anniversary of the Anzac Day landings at Gallipoli, the debate around the dinner table tonight was over how - or whether - we would honour Anzac Day. Some wished to tangibly remember and express gratitude for those who had fought for New Zealand - without judging their motives or perceptions at the time. Others wondered if all the effort and cost currently going into WWI memorial parks and events was a valid way of remembering them - what have we learnt from past war and conflict?

Towards the end of the conversation, I pulled out a clipping from a student newspaper of 1983 - which itself had republished a 'Shepherd's Calendar' from the New Zealand Listener of 23 April 1952. I have since come to learn the author was Oliver Duff, founding editor of the Listener in 1939, and grandfather of contemporary writer Alan Duff. His words resonated with me then, and still do today, especially as I feel vaguely uneasy about the general tone of our current commemorations seeming to be about 'nation-building' and the sacrifices made for 'our freedom'. War is a complex thing - the more we can do to prevent them the better.

Thirty-seven years after Gallipoli, Oliver Duff wrote:

I did not attend any of the Anzac services this year, or tune in to any, or read any of the speeches afterwards. It is not that Anzac no longer means anything to me or should now, I feel, be forgotten. It still means more than any of the dedicated days of my life and time. But I find it painful to listen to well-meaning people trying to say something cheerful about it, making a Christian day of it, or twisting it to strange political uses. We should have the courage to accept it as a day of sorrow and the men it commemorates as victims of blindness and folly. The fact that they were brave victims does not make their deaths a light to the world but a warning and a disgrace. They died because no-one had eyes to see or ears to hear soon enough to save them.