NZ War Memorial

The New Zealand Memorial at Hyde Park Corner Back to Home

Saturday 25th November 2006. Lynn and I went up to London on the train. I haven't been on a train or a plane for 12 years since claustrophobia set in. Then I put it down to mid-life hormonal fluctuations and psychology. But now I think it was possibly owing to the start of the diabetes which eventually surfaced about 4 years ago. This photo is just big enough to prove it!

However, if you have sudden-onset claustrophobia, I would suggest having your bloodsugars checked, especially if you're overweight and middleaged...
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The first place we came to was a square beside Liverpool St Station which has this sculpture of a leaping hare, leaping over a cresent moon, which is a rising crescent moon, leaning on a bell. This one you can click on to enlarge...

My friend Lynn, and the New Zealand War Memorial.

At first, from a distance, it looks just like a load of black girders, slanting out of the ground like - industrial ruins. Like a broken building. Like a Calvary. But then, getting closer, you notice that the very form of each girder makes a cross, as you can see above. The crosses at the back of the group are lit by white led lights so they start to glow in the dusk. Then you realise that they're pointing South. It all points South, and of course, if you are a NZ'er, you recognise the crosses instantly as the Southern Cross, the most obvious constellation in the NZ sky.
Then you see that each girder is decorated, and each one is different. There is one which forms the NZ flag, the Union Jack which is set in the form of the girder, and the stars. There is one which is the hull of a great Maori canoe, with fish-hooks, recalling the legend of Maui and his brothers fishing up the islands, and of course the arrival of the First Canoes in about 990. Altho I think now that its believed that there was an earlier indigenous people, more Stone Age, who were extinguished by the more advanced civilisation of the Maori.
There is one with a quotation from Katherine Mansfield. There is one dedicated to the AllBlacks. There is one dedicated to the Airforce...they are all Beautiful. We took some details.

And there is another thing which struck me. The girders are rooted into the ground. Looked at another way, they rise, out of the ground, like the volcanic peaks of which NZ is made, the Earth risen from beneath the waters, and thrust up into the air. And another symbol, perhaps more private. I have known men who have sickened in the atmosphere of England and Europe, whose roots are so deeply embedded in NZ soil that they cannot thrive outside it. Well, that's common enough in farming communities. But still, it is there, another reference to the one of the essential facets of New Zealand.
The connection to the land is still young, strong, primitive. It is both scary and exciting. To go into the bush, to walk into the bush, is a foolhardy thing to do - even today, people disappear ten feet from the road and never come out again. Even to see it, is to realise that primitive Earth was a Very Different Place. If you walk into the forests, along the old deerhunter trails, or the logging roads, you feel a very different spirit. They are not old, somehow, they are alive. They still have Spirits. We try to resurrect the ideas of Wood nymphs and Water nymphs and the indifference and trickery of some of the old gods from Greek and Norse myth, but if you want to feel it, go to New Zealand. Take care, but go into the bush, and Feel for it. And come out, and - perhaps - be very grateful for those Benedictine islands of Christianity in the midst of the the old European Wildwoods. Such places should be preserved with every rule that the combined jurisdictions of Europe, Asia, Australasia, they should be made World Heritage Sites for the remembrance of history.
Just like war memorials like this are for the remembrance of human blood spilt far away from home... and it continues....

Michael Subritzky-Kusza, of New Zealand

The Last Anzac

They buried Doug Dibley today,
a fine old gentleman who died in his sleep,
at Rotorua on a hot December afternoon.
No warriors death for him on Walker's Ridge,
where the poppies fed on the blood and frozen dreams;
of good young men from Wellington.

A days leave and a seven year old son at my side,
we bore witness as six tall infantrymen in service dress,
raised him high from the gun carriage,
and quietly marched his flag draped casket to eternal rest;
among the trees and hills of his beloved Ngongotaha.

Volleys fired and mournful bugles call,
we shall not see his like again,
no more grow old as yet no more remain,
with living memory of that time,
when machine gun and bayonet did their awful work,
and Anzac boys closed with desperate Turk,
among the gullies and crumbling ridges;
of a foreign coast that was Gallipoli.

Remember this day my son,
remember this hour and this place,
for here and now they bury this nation's last lament,
to a time of King and Empire.
And the poppies on the ridges grow,
and the scrub thorn in the valleys thrive,
and the memory of young mates who died;
we sod this day with Trooper Dibley.

The Letter

Dear Mr Subritzky, sorry to be a bore,
but we're sending your son Danny to the Bosnian War.
Yes, we know you did Rhodesia, your cousin Bill did Vietnam,
but we're running out of soldiers and we need a few good men.

Sure, your uncle Jack the Anzac, was in the Battle of Chunuk Bair,
and Bob Subritzky caught a packet on the Somme.
But we need a few good men, to send to Europe once again,
and we'll kit them out and send them with a song.

Cousin Fredo got a head wound in the Monte Cassino fight,
and poor old Archi, he went crazy on the wire one stormy night.
Yes, your family's done its' bit, but it doesn't count for shit,
and when your son gets back, we'll give the lad a gong.

Now you know the bloody score, it's just another friggin' war,
and we're off in a couple of days, to the blood and smoke and haze.
Of course your boy should be alright, unless the Serbs decide to fight,
because the Moslems in his sector seem OK.

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