Comment:
When I stand at dawn each Anzac Day, dressed in uniform and wearing my medals, it's hard to avoid two distinct emotions: the sense of loss of good friends who were serving their country, and the awe of our earliest veterans. I can't avoid the thought that my service will never compare to that of my grandfathers' generation.
Our modern Defence Force still operates in combat zones around the world. For us, conflict is not the aim, conflict is simply the environment in which we are called to serve and to act in our fight for peace. It is those darkest places that need the light the most, and we must be willing to be the force for good that takes the light to those places, even in the most trying and dangerous circumstances. Kiwis are exceptional at this, and I'm proud to have served with the very best of them.
Each Anzac Day I remember those of my friends who have lost their lives while serving in our armed forces. Many lost their lives in New Zealand having already served overseas, one was killed in Afghanistan. It is in the stillness of the dawn, with just the faintest flicker of early light, that I take a moment to remember them: the flying together, the laughing together, the conversations late at night in conflict zones around the world. Always missed, never forgotten.
But for all my service it still seems wrong to me that I now have more medals than either of my grandfathers. Grandpa was in the air force, flying low-level reconnaissance missions over Burma. He was mostly an air bomber, but he never dropped a bomb, instead taking photographs of Japanese targets. Grandad was a gunner in Africa and Italy. He returned from the war to work in a garage, fixing rather than destroying. They both survived the war, yet so many did not.
