Today, we remember our ANZAC boys who landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. It was our nation’s baptism by fire. Out of the 8,556 New Zealanders who served in the Gallipoli campaign, 2,779 were killed and over 5,000 wounded. These were young men from farms, cities, schools – people who had barely begun their lives. In early August 1915, during the Gallipoli campaign of World War I, the New Zealand Māori Contingent played a pivotal role in the assault on Chunuk Bair, one of the highest peaks in the Sari Bair range. This operation was part of a broader Allied offensive aimed at breaking the stalemate on the peninsula. Gallipoli wasn’t the end. Many survivors went on to serve in the brutal trenches of the Western Front – in the Somme, where New Zealand suffered its worst day in military history (603 dead on 15 September 1916), and later at Passchendaele, where mud swallowed men whole and over 840 Kiwis died in a single morning on 12 October 1917.
Since I was a little girl I have had a profound, gut wrenching admiration of the ANZAC’s and their stories. Writing a speech for their memory at 17 years old, I opened with the karanga that welcomed home our unknown warrior after his body was repatriated from Northern France in 2004.
Te mamae nei a te pōuri nui
Tēnei ra e te tau.
Aue hoki mai ra ki te kainga tūturu.
E tatari atu nei ki a kou tou
Ngā tau roa
I ngaro atu ai te aroha.
E ngau kino nei I ahau aue taukuri e.
It was in 2024 I had the opportunity to stand by the headstone where our warrior was once laid to rest in the French countryside, alongside thousands of his brothers. Caterpillar Valley heard the echoes of my calls when the same karanga left my lungs a decade after I learnt it. I was humbled before the sacrifice of our nation’s men. Despite being from the “uttermost ends of the earth” the bones of our men lay in Lone Pine Cemetery, Chunuk Bair Cemetery, Ari Burnu Cemetery, Beach Cemetery, Shrapnel Valley Cemetery, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Messines Ridge British Cemetery, Polygon Wood Cemetery, Caterpillar Valley Cemetery… Therefore we must thank the countries of our comrades for looking after our men. Lest we forget 🌹
