The Spirit of Anzac

In 2000 I was honoured to be deployed with the New Zealand Deforce on the peacekeeping mission to East Timor. East Timor had been under foreign rule through most of its history, and most recently it had been under Indonesian control. Most of the East Timorese wanted to become independent, but there were groups who wanted to stick with Indonesia. After all, Indonesia had provided the schools, the hospitals, doctors, nurses, the legal systems, the buildings and even the roads. And the people wanting to stick with Indonesia were prepared to fight, and they did. Skirmishes turned into slaughter. On 6^th September 1999, in the village of Suai, the church mass became the town massacre, with over 200 people killed.

An international force brought some peace to the area, but something else happened. When the Indonesians pulled out of East Timor, they took everything; everything they could carry, or put on a truck, they took back into West Timor. Doors, windows, roofing iron, flooring tiles, reinforcing walls and even paving stones. You ought to see what a cobblestoned road looks like when all the cobblestones have been bulldozed up; and between that and the monsoon type weather, most roads were rendered unusable, or at the least, extremely dangerous. And this was the environment that The NZ Defence force found themselves in…

And so it was, that on 30th November 1999, Warrant Officer Class 2 Tony Walser (Whiskey company, 1RNZIR) was killed when the road collapsed beneath his truck as he worked to repair some of the infrastructure that had been destroyed.

On Anzac Day 2000, Staff Sergeant Billy White (Victor company 1 RNZIR) died when his Unimog crashed 30 metres down off the road.

And throughout this period, there were still bands of militia operating in the area, and making forays from West Timor, over the border and into East Timor. And it was in one of these scenarios on July 24, 2000, that Private Leonard Manning (Bravo Company, 2/1 RNZIR) was killed in action; he was the first NZ soldier to die in combat since the Vietnam war.

I conducted a lot of memorials there, to remind ourselves of the value of the work we were doing, showing gratitude for the sacrifice people had already made to bring security, safety and stability to the people of East Timor. And as I went from village to village, I got to hear the stories…

I was intrigued by the memorial site for Billy White; it was spotless and shiny, and always had fresh flowers. When I asked about it, I was told that Billy White had not just crashed, but he had saved the lives of people from the local village, who were making their way to market and met his truck head-on… and he went over the edge. And those people maintained his memorial in his honour.

Anzac Day allows us an opportunity to acknowledge that Military service is dangerous, and that service men and women have made great, and sometimes the ultimate sacrifice for others. Not just in days gone by, in Gallipoli, but right now. They face dangers from the enemy, and the environment. They face making choices that most of us will never have to make, and they take risks that you and I will never have to take.

But military people are an unusual bunch – almost a counter-culture. While everyone else is insisting on their own rights, these people put their own rights aside in the service of others. They choose to take risks so that others can remain safe; they somehow push through their own fear so that others don’t need to be afraid. And while everyone else is running away from the enemy, military people are running towards the enemy so that any shots fired don’t harm innocent civilians…

They are called on to do what other people can’t do, don’t want to do, or are too afraid to do; they are rescuers. And that’s where Anzac Day moves from not just honouring military veterans of years gone by – but also acknowledging our modern- day veterans (of which I am immensely proud to be one) and those currently serving in the New Zealand Defence Force.

What does ANZAC Day do for us? It allows us an opportunity to pause and acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice made by so many service personnel in past campaigns.

It helps to keep veterans and their families visible, and it allows us to recognise the sacrifices made by currently serving military in peace-keeping and peace-time roles. And, perhaps most of all, it invites us to celebrate the human spirit of sacrifice, of putting aside your own rights for the good of others, of doing what it takes to keep others safe, and that spirit will be celebrated everywhere that people gather for a commemoration service on Anzac Day.