In Memory of Robert
Ashley Anstis
We have visited many historical sites of human waste but
somehow I feel more connected to this tragedy simply because our grandparents
and great uncles spent 3 years of their life living in this world we cannot
even begin to imagine.
WW1 had 10m military casualties, 9m civilian casualties and
another 20m wounded. By way of comparison Gallopi had 500,000 casualties.
The Flanders fields WW1
statistics of casualties of major battles are as follows
Marnes 500,000
Passchendale 800,000
Verdum 1,000,000
Somme 1,200,000
Spring Offensive 1,500,000
My Grandfather and Great Uncle fought in these fields in the
NZ forces. They came home hero’s but as I gaze upon 1000,s of graves across the
100’s of cemetery’s I cannot help but
wonder at the emotional costs to our country and the consequences thereafter.
Consider the stress of Bronni’s Great Great grandmother back
home with 2 sons in the war every time the post arrives or a telegraph boy
rides up the road.
One day he did stop with a letter. “Lost in action”
….and life goes on; and so does the war; she still has one
son over there somewhere; and the telegraph man continued to ride up the
street.
She must have hated mailmen.
Do we believe that these women could function normally? In a
world of shortages and extra work that the men used to do, they still had to be
mothers to the younger children. And so the emotional cost continues to grow.
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| One of thousands |
And what were the hero’s like after the war I ask
myself?
The badge now sitting in my auntie’s cupboard is a hollow
trophy of a series of battles that shifted a line less than 3km over a 4 year
period. From a non military background it seems to be an exaggerated chess game
of the Generals to reduce each others pawns to assists with negotiations. They
were fighting over a scrap of land that grows wheat.
Unfortunately they were not pawns. They were British, Australia, Canada
and New Zealand’s
future generations of businessman, politician, bankers, farmers and more
importantly fathers.
During the war Grandad wrote a diary and there seems to be no
correlation between his writings and historical accounts except for name
places.
Perhaps war was like his diaries suggests of rugby matches, stealing
milk from the local farmer and Christmas dinners or perhaps the true experiences
were locked in a box called “don’t go there” and shall forever remain.
When he returned he never talked about the war.
Did it affect him? I don’t know because no one living today knew
him before the war to make a comparison but go and learn about the conditions
and ask your self the question. How could it not?
On return from the War he was given a block of bush in the
back of Whakatane which he and his mate walked off after 3 yrs of hard slog
because they didn’t have the money to develop it. He married my grandmother
late in life and had 6 kids. My father the oldest.
I remember my Grandfather as a quiet old man who didn’t say
a lot. He didn’t drink and didn’t smoke. On the surface he seemed an okay sort
of chap and would come to Australia,
and go mustering cattle with us when he was at least 75. He didn’t want any old
hack thank you very much, he wanted a horse with life. Granddad bought us boys
our first own leather stock whip and his status was raised from okay to top notch.
I remember asking about the war in about ‘73 as most curious
17 years blokes are, but the box remain closed….. forever.
While the memorials request that “we remember them” …..and
so we shall. A bigger lesson would be for us to remember the cost of a war to
our nation; and it is more than just money.
If we learn nothing else from this dissertation is that the intangible
costs of a disagreement are seldom accounted for before we wade into a scrap
and if so are always underestimated.
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| Dunkirk today |
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