Patriot Realm

A few nights ago, I watched a series on pay TV called " The Mill. " Like so many British period dramas, it was bleak, grim, disturbing and hard yakka to get through. 

It took me back to a time, sitting in my country school, back in the 1960's in New Zealand when my country teacher ( later my mentor and all round hero apart from my Dad ) asked one simple question. 

" Have you heard of Lord Shaftsbury? " he asked. 

Well, of course, I had not. Nor had any of my fellow classmates. After all, we were a class made up of children from widely diverse backgrounds. Most of my friends were Maori, Hindu Indian, Moslem, Chinese and Caucasian, from both sides of the financial divide.

I was fortunately on the kinder side of the line that divided poor white from my white. But my friends came from both sides of that curtain and both sides of the diversity curtain that now seems to hang like a shroud over what we once were.

I belong to the group known as Baby Boomers – the ones that were born in the post war years and lived through the “ burn the bra “ and early feminist days of the pill, the equality of the sexes and the general liberation of women from the kitchen.  

At the time, I did not realise that my life had gone from one of comfortable domesticity to one of 5 am starts, 10 pm finishes and a pay cheque that largely went to childcare providers.

As a woman, I was proud of what we achieved then. But now, I am not so sure we did anything other than bite ourselves on the bum. And in turn our menfolk into pawns, pansies and poofters.

'So we marched into the sea and when we got out to about waist level they then machine gunned from behind."

The words of the sole survivor of the horrific massacre of  Radji Beach on Banka Island off the coast of Sumatra. 

On 16 February 1942, Japanese soldiers machine-gunned 22 Australian World War II Army nurses and killed 60 soldiers and crew members from 2 sunken ships. 

From the 22 Nurses shot on that day, there was only one sole survivor, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel.

"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."

As we greet the dawn of a new day, many of us will speak these words. Some of us will stand alone and others will be in the company of patriotic and grateful citizens who have risen to pay tribute on what is one of our most important days of each year.

To attend a Dawn Service is a privilege. Lest We Forget how many perished so that we may do so.

My very first Dawn Service was at St Faith’s Church at Ohinemutu in Rotorua in New Zealand. The steam was rising out of the tombs at the lakeside cemetery as the sun rose over Lake Rotorua. In the Church, the glass window showed Christ walking on water.

He is portrayed wearing a traditional Maori Cloak and it was as if he was walking from Hinemoa Island to Ohinemutu.

It was bitterly cold; the air was still and the mist just starting to lift off the lake.

As the bugler sounded out the Last Post, I felt chills throughout my body – not from the cold, but from the intense emotional atmosphere that surrounded me. Tears welled up from within me and I felt an overwhelming sense of Pride, Loss, Grief, Patriotism and genuine Humility.

I was 15 years old.

The Last Post would be familiar to all Australians from an early age. It is played at every ANZAC Day ceremony by a bugler in an army uniform and frequently at funerals of soldiers and veterans.

Does the average civilian attendee understand the significance of this quasi musical interlude? Is it an entertainment piece that everyone expects to hear because it is always part of the programme like the hymn “Oh God our Help in Ages Past”?

The Last Post is one of the most ancient tools used by modern British founded armies and has its roots in the days of the Roman Empire when horns were used to play the hymn of the Goddess Diana and as signals to command troops on the battlefield. Even to this day, the French term for what we call Reveille is La Diana.