This Anzac Day, we mark the centenary of the landing of New Zealand and Australian soldiers—the ANZACS—on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. At least 44,000 allied soldiers were killed, among them 2721 New Zealanders and 8709 Australians.
Nowadays, it’s also common to hear about the 87,000 Turks who died at Gallipoli. Colonel Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkish commander of the battle, became the first President of Turkey. Every Anzac Day, his message of reconciliation is read at the Atatürk Memorial in Wellington. It includes the lines: ‘There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears, your sons are now lying in our bosoms and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they become our sons as well.’
His words echo thoughts in Harold Hill’s article ‘Comrades in Arms’. During World War I, the New Zealand War Cry reminded its readers that we are all members of the same human race.
Harold writes about the anti-German hysteria in New Zealand during WWI. This hysteria touched my own family. My paternal great-grandfather emigrated from the border region of Schleswig–Holstein in southern Denmark in 1914, an area constantly under dispute between Denmark and Germany. He was conscripted into the German Army, but did not want to fight for Germany and headed overseas, settling near Palmerston North. When war broke out, my great-grandfather was interned on Somes Island in case he was a possible German spy.
As theologian John Stott once observed: ‘We must admire the loyalty, self-sacrifice and courage of the serving soldier’, but at the same time we ‘must not glamorise or glorify war in itself, however just we perceive its cause to be’. As we remember the terrible human cost of war, let this serve to increase our commitment to global peace-making.
Christina Tyson
Editor
Matthew 5:9 New International Version
‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’
Matiu 5:9
‘Ka koa te hunga hohou rongo: ka huaina hoki rātou he tamariki na te Atua.’