I have a lot of disparate feelings on ANZAC day. These revolve around the clash between honouring the New Zealand men and women who sacrificed their lives on foreign shores and my firm belief that war is an ineffective, cruel solution to conflict.My maternal great-uncle returned from the Middle East Theatre in World War II with this Egyptian brooch for his mother. Thankfully, his two brothers also returned safely from the Pacific. A paternal great-uncle also returned to NZ from France in World War I but died soon after. It's never talked about and is difficult to find any detail about. I didn't know until my grandmother gave me the brooch recently that all her brothers fought in World War II.
I hope that the recent resurgence in interest in New Zealand's role in global conflicts, the talk instead of silence, will go some way to ensure my children never experience war.
