Going over the top

Each year we are called to remember the sacrifice of the Anzacs; each year time takes us further from what happened on April 25, 1915. Edward Rooney meets some special people ensuring Kiwi children stay connected to our past.
On the first chilly Tuesday night after daylight saving winds our clocks back for the winter, we stand and strain to see as darkness closes in on a small reserve near One Tree Hill.
Janet Anderson, Scouting associate for the Akarana zone, and pack leader Hinerake Ratcliffe call out marching instructions. The pack of about 30 boys and girls steps and wheels left in unison.
Standing in rows, the Cubs and Scouts are shoulder-tapped by the leaders to become Turks or Anzacs. Stifled groans or squeaks of glee follow as friends are separated or reunited into the two sides.
They mumble and murmur while moving slowly to their new positions. Janet claps her hands and shouts: "Quick smart!"
Janet clutches a plastic shopping bag full of ping pong balls as she leads the "Turks" up a small, grassy incline. "You are Turks and you will wait here on the high ground," she tells them.
"I want you to understand what higher ground means. You will stand up here and look down."
Unseen in the gloom, lower on the field, Hinerake calls to the newly-drafted Anzacs: "Get ready! You are going over the top!"
The children are told to run in pairs or threes to advance up the slope at the Turks, but discipline crumbles loose and the lot of them rush at the hill. Turks pelt the Anzacs with ping pong balls, making soft thuds on impact or small slapping sounds as they hit faces.
"That's not fair," one Turk shouts. "I hit you and you're supposed to be dead."
Once the Anzacs reach the Turks, they all scramble for the ping pong balls in the wet grass and keep firing them at each other until the Anzacs are ordered back down the hill to repeat the assault.
Shouting and shrieking ensues in the darkness. I try to suppress a shudder, not so much from the cool air and drizzle. These sounds of childhood delight are really not so different from screams of suffering and torment.
Evening activities had begun like all Scout meetings, with one child selected to help fold the New Zealand flag for running up the pole. "Do not let the flag fall on the ground, or we will have to burn it," Hinerake warns the young girl. "Do you know why we will have to burn it?"
"Because it will have lost its honour," the girl replies.
By now the Scout hall, which is a kindergarten by day, is abuzz with the noise of more than two dozen youngsters. The hubbub quickly abates as Hinerake calls them into line to inspect their uniforms.
"Where's my straight line?" She hollers as the kids shuffle into position. "Arms at the side, fingers curled at the tips, shoulders back, chests out ... by the left ... front, march! C'mon cubs, swing those arms!"
The children stomp their feet, obviously enjoying the noise they make on the wooden floor.
Janet Anderson - a kindly-looking grandmother from Glendowie - has told me earlier about her role in the Scouting movement and why she is here tonight.
"I'm still involved as an associate Scouter, kind of like a minister without portfolio. I go in to prop up areas with a shortage of leaders or where packs are lacking some skills."
Janet is on a mission to teach Scout groups in Auckland how to support their local Anzac Day services.
She's tackling the assignment with a mixture of battle re-enactment, storytelling with books and one ghastly surprise at the end of the evening. But let's not spoil that just yet.
Tonight, we have simulated the First World War landing at Anzac Cove - this time with 30-or-so shiny-kneed, bright-eyed kids from the One Tree Hill/Ellerslie Scouts.
Back inside the relative warmth of the hall, Janet begins to talk. "I know you study this at school. But tonight, I just wanted to remind you about it.
"Did you know the Turkish Army was among the best in the world at the time the Anzacs were sent against them? That is because they had been trained by the Germans."
The children, as one, sit silent as Janet opens pages of a book to show a map of one of the smallest battlefields in modern wartime, which many historians call the birth of New Zealand as a nation.
Into this cramped cove 20,000 troops were delivered to the guns of the Turks.
The Australia and New Zealand Army Corps landed at a small bay - now known as Anzac Cove - north of Kabatepe on the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25, 1915.
The aim was to seize part of the Sari Bair range to cover an advance across the peninsula to sever Turkish supply lines and harass Turkish forces fighting further south at Cape Helles.
The Anzacs were never meant to land at the cove, with its precipitous slopes around rough gullies. They should have landed on a much longer beach and on a wider front, but it seems a navigational blunder put the troops ashore in the wrong place.
"All the hills and cliffs are around here," Janet says, pointing across the map. "They are what you tried to enact outside tonight. The Anzacs had been towed there in big boats, then into small boats. They didn't land in the right place because the currents were too strong for the boats."
Her voice wavers now a little. "They went up the beach and the Turks opened up and they were mown down. But they didn't give up. Wave after wave kept going, just like you did out there."
Janet explains how the wounded and dead were carried down the cliffs and hills on donkeys.
But there was no safe place to take them until they could reach boats on the coastline, still under heavy fire.
"I want you to know," she says to the children, "the person who was in charge of the Turkish Army that day was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and he went on to become the first President of Turkey.
"He wrote a letter to the mothers of the Anzacs who were killed, and this is what the letter said: 'Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours ... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.'
"He realised how sad the people of Australia and New Zealand were because of the large numbers who had been killed."
Silence is heavy in the hall. Janet says any children lucky enough to go to Turkey will find a warm welcome for New Zealanders. "There are no enemies there between us now and it's sort of nice that the story of the Anzacs has that end to it ... because war is a terrible thing."
She takes a couple of questions from the children before going into the kitchen to prepare supper. Hinerake takes charge with a game involving passing empty water bottles around a large circle. One of the bottles is called a dog and the other is a cat. Laughter fills the space again.
Supper comes as a horrid shock. "This is what the Anzacs would have got to eat. That is, if they were lucky enough to get to the food from April to December in 1915 at Gallipoli," Janet announces with relish.
On white paper plates is tinned corned beef spread on dry biscuits; and rolled oats mixed with cold water to make a grey paste, topped with a dollop of bitter plum jam.
There are quite a few takers and Janet is pleased.
"I hope that on Anzac Day, these children will stand a little straighter and they will pay a little more attention to what is being commemorated.
"It will actually mean something for this child."