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.