Remembering

For down time when it has been a bit hot to be doing much outside, I've been working away on a rather special editing task.

My father wrote letters home during the war. His war was World War 2 and the correspondence begins with a brief stint at Levin in September 1941 and ends with the 17 May 1945 telegram from a contact in Scotland advising the family that Syd was back in England and no longer a POW. Now that's one acronym I grew up with and never had to have explained to me: Prisoner of War.

Over the years, we some stories from the war. Like others, Dad censored what he told us, but he did give us enough of a clue to appreciate his decision to serve and accept those quirks of behaviour and personality that were clearly a result of his experiences. He also could appreciate the views of younger generations, for example, during the Vietnam War. He had huge respect for conscientious objectors during WW2 and for the pacifist voices that continued to be heard. In our conversations on the subject of war and peace, the Christian faith was always at the heart of it, just as it had been in 1942 and through the hard years that followed.

Dad was captured in Italy after having to bail out of the Wellington bomber in which he was the wireless operator. He was recorded missing in action on 19 September 1943 and the first news of him being alive and a prisoner came, in a telegram from the same contact in Scotland on 22 December.

As the editing process was coming close to completion, with photos inserted from his “snaps” plus maps, mementos, and pictures sourced from the web, that internet searching flushed out other resources that have taken my understanding further. In particular a book entitled The Last Escape: The untold story of Allied prisoners of war in Germany 1944-45.¹ Dad was part of that story and I found myself making pencil marks at points where things were mentioned that were in his letters. However, much was not in his letters, nor in what he told us. The closest we'd ever got to the horror of it was in our talk around the table during the evening after his funeral. Uncle Keith told us something Syd had relayed to him: how he could not live with himself for one particular moment on the death march he was part of, as they were being forced away from the advancing Allied lines. When there was a person who needed his help but if he helped them he himself would be dead. Perhaps there was more than one moment like that and it went so against his Christian faith.

How that faith surely made a difference to his survival through those years of captivity. And afterwards. The interesting thing is that he doesn't talk about his faith in his letters. It just is: a basic underlying hope.

I'm of a generation and situation that is very fortunate. Not to have had to endure this – that really was what made it worthwhile for Dad and his contemporaries – but also to have had close contact with people who did and to have absorbed something from them. The value of these letters I've been working on, and books like The Last Escape, is in deepening this and in sharing it with others too. My sister-in-law on the farm made sure that Dad's war treasures remained safe; when the time was right she got to work on typing up the correspondence. We're going to be forever grateful to her!

The right time was understandably after Dad had died. That's also when I was in Europe and finally identified the camps he had been in. If only it had been sooner, one might think. But no. We'd love to have been able to talk with him more, given the extra information, but we really had to follow his lead on how much he wanted to say. That has been stark in reading the book about the ordeals of the POWs. It was better he never knew how much we have come to know. He didn't have to suffer it again, by seeing any hint of understanding in our eyes.

In April this year, we reach the milestone of 100 years after the terrible defeat at Gallipoli. In the Whangaroa community we are marking this during the week before ANZAC Day with the “Whangaroa Armed Services Commemorations 2015”. It begins with a combined church service in our church on Sunday 19 April at 2.30pm and the plan includes bus tours around the ūrūpā/cemeteries in the district, a dinner for service personnel and WW1 descendants, displays in the town and in our church facilities, and a family day in our church grounds on the Friday afternoon/evening.

Who will you be remembering as we draw closer and closer to ANZAC 2015? What insights have been handed down to you by those who served – be it overseas or keeping the home fires burning – during all the conflicts that are in the memories of our people?

Rangimarie Peace Shalom

Robyn

1 John Nichol and Tony Rennell, Penguin 2002.