Cette dernière mois il y avais beaucoup d'attention des commemorations pour le jour d'ANZAC. 2014 marks the 99th anniversary of the devastating Gallipoli campaign, and New Zealand’s involvement in the war beginning.

This month I went to an exhibit at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery that showed photographs of ANZAC cenotaphs, taken by Laurence Aberhart.

It was strange to think that in almost every town in New Zealand (and Australia) there is a cenotaph with a collection of names of those men who died during the Great War, and once you begin to think of all of these lists collated together, that is a lot of men who died fighting in foreign lands.

I also went to the ANZAC Dawn Service at the Cenotaph in Queens Gardens, Dunedin, and I was astounded by the number of people that were there- there must have been around 8,500 people gathered for the commemoration service.

It was a very poignant occasion, and it was eerie to see the three men (currently in the NZ forces) standing post dressed in the traditional uniforms of the men from a century ago- there was a Naval Officer, a Soldier, and a Maori warrior.

They shall grow not old

As we that are left grow old

Age shall not weary them

Nor the years condemn

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning

We will remember them

We will remember them

I also read Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front- a very harrowing read-, and I’d like to close with a quote from the novel:

“We’re no longer young men. We’ve lost any desire to conquer the world… We were eighteen years old, and we had just began to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts… We don’t believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.”