Anzac Day has always been special to me. It was something we grew up with, going to the services a part of what we did. We went as a family. I used to go with my dad after my "little sister" was born and Mum couldn't go. Vaguely I remember Mum being pleased that I wanted to go, because it wasn't right that Dad should go alone. Or was that my fantasy? I don't know. But it became "my thing", going to the Anzac services with Dad. As the soldiers marched past, their medals on their chests, it was grief, not pride, on their faces. Tears don't dry up with age.
I have just been reading research suggesting that there is a kind of "dark tourism" associated with attendance at such services. It is a disturbing thought. It is also a challenge to me, someone who occasionally guides people around the battlefields in the Liri Valley. Am I feeding an unhealthy desire, mine or anyone else's, to be associated with death? I don't think so.
I have huge reservations about the re-enactment of battles, a growing tourist business in many parts of Europe. I have no reservations about thinking of the dead, honouring their memories, and passing on the stories that veterans have told me.
Come and visit me and I will take you to five very different war cemeteries within a very small radius around Cassino. You wont go away unchanged. When you read the ages on the tombstones you will be thinking of members of your own families, your sons, your daughters, your grandchildren, your brothers and sisters. The soldiers who died had families too.
Kerikeri students locating family members, New Zealand section of the Commonwealth Cemetery, Cassino, Italy 23-4-08
A friend who has no memories of her father lays a wreath at the German Cemetery, 18-11-07. Her only comfort is knowing that he knew her for three short years.
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