In the process of writing my submission to the phase two Covid inquiry (don’t forget to do it – there’s only a couple of days left), I was suddenly reminded of Anzac Day 2020, which was one of the strangest days in my experience.
Anzac Day has always brought some mixed feelings to me, and not just because I’m part English, part German and part French. My parents didn’t go to commemorations because they saw it as glorifying war. Yet when I joined the Girl Guides, they grudgingly came and stood in the crowd to watch me carrying the flag, grim and tense and wondering what I was doing it for.
As my own children have gone through Scouts, Cadets and various brass bands, I’ve joined the sidelines and noted with interest that Anzac Day has become more, not less, popular as the wars have drifted further into the past. Nor, as one might have expected, has the focus changed to remembering more recent wars or reflecting on the desire for peace and the reality of conflict in general. No, it seems that the two World Wars are still etched deep in the popular memory and families are still seeking some catharsis for their pain. Perhaps this makes sense in New Zealand: the nation that made the greatest sacrifice, without ever having been invaded.
But five years ago an Anzac Day came that was like none other. No parade, no dawn service, no cannons, no skirl of pipes or blare of trumpets. The sun rose on a world paralysed with fear, on empty streets, closed shops and shuttered houses. Our family looked out the windows in despair, wondering when the world would ever wake up from this horrible dream. Finally we climbed the hill to the war memorial by ourselves and one of my sons played The Last Post by himself over the rooftops of a town that looked as if everyone had died.
How could it be, I wondered. Anzac Day was all about courage, about looking death in the face and doing one’s duty without regard for personal safety. How had we come to this strange place where all that mattered was saving one’s own life from a trifling threat and it was a virtue to leave the vulnerable to die alone?
Maybe in the future we will have Covid Day, with parades and wreaths and speeches to remember the bizarre war of humanity against itself that is now a part of all of our lives’ experience. It would be nice to think that there could be healing from it and real lessons learned. I hope and pray that the phase two inquiry will open a public conversation and that we can begin to have the talk we need to have.
