Hastings Intermediate School pupil Natalie-Rose Suckling, aged 12, at the Hastings dawn parade with fellow students. Photo / Paul Taylor
Hastings Intermediate School pupil Natalie-Rose Suckling, aged 12, at the Hastings dawn parade with fellow students. Photo / Paul Taylor
The highway from Napier to Taupo has been in the wars lately.
And today the cacophony of its heavy traffic rumbles and blasts may have been unsettling for some seated in the 102-year-old Eskdale War Memorial Church on the country's day of remembrance.
The Eskdale service was one of more than 30 in Hawke's Bay - from Kaiuku Marae at Mahia in the north to the Pongaroa Cenotaph in the south – and among more than 500 services nationwide.
For many, particularly varying dignitaries, there were double or even triple appointments, as those who fought and died for their country were remembered at dawn parades and mid-morning community and civic services.
They ranged from RSA and services representatives to Mayors and MPs, high school students in uniform (despite it being the middle of the school holidays).
Anglican minister Rev Nigel Kynoch speaks at Eskdale War Memorial Church, over the noise of the traffic on the highway outside. Photo / Paul Taylor
There were also children laying wreaths, bouquets and poppies, remembering grandfathers, great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers who served in the wars, many to never return.
Among them was Australian Defence Force representative Commander James Harper, at Napier's Soundshell dawn parade and Memorial Square civic remembrance, sandwiching the Eskdale service with his last Anzac Day deployment.
Harper has been on a three-year rotation from Canberra.
He was in Queenstown last year after experiencing his 2020 Anzac Day in his Wellington driveway during the first pandemic lockdown.
Possibly the eldest to take to the rostrum in the region was retired Napier businessman Byron "Buck" Buchanan" QSM, at the clock-tower wreath-laying ceremony in Taradale, with just two months to go until his 100th birthday.
At Eskdale, there were young children among four to five generations descending from Lieutenant Percy Beattie, who died in action at Le Quesnoy on the Western Front in France on November 4, 1918, just seven days before the end of the 1914-1918 war.
It was father-in-law Thomas Clark who gifted the land for the church, and with widowed daughter Anne Beattie bore all costs leading to its dedication on December 3, 1920, more than a century later making it one of the oldest used for the Anzac Day commemorations in New Zealand.
In turn, Hawke's Bay was represented at commemorations across the globe, most notably Ikaroa Rawhiti MP and Minister of Veterans Affairs Meka Whaitiri, representing the Government at New Zealand's return to services around Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey.
More than 2300 Kiwi troops are buried on the hills there, among an estimated 130,000 from the varied forces who perished in an eight-month campaign marked by the anniversary of the New Zealanders' landing on April 25, 2015.
After visiting a Maori battle site where some of the fiercest fighting is said to have taken place, and reportedly overcome by emotion, she told media: "I've had great grandfathers that fought in the First World War, I've had uncles fight in the Second World War in the Māori battalion and are buried in Italy."
