A high price for freedom

Mayor John Carter and Far North District Council chief executive Shaun Clarke (ex-RNZAF) were among those who laid wreaths in Kaitaia on Tuesday.

Freedom, bought for today's New Zealand by those who served in war, was a common theme at Tuesday's Anzac Day services in Kaitaia.

It was most eloquently expressed at the civic service by Rev Michael Withiel, who quoted American Army veteran Charles M Province's poem Freedom:

It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given is the freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the peace camp organiser, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
It is the soldier, not the politician, who has given his blood, his body, his life.
It is the soldier who has given these freedoms.

Rev Withiel also told the service that the words of the Ode to the Fallen (They shall not grow old ... ) suggested that some things lasted beyond old age, and even death, values, virtues and human qualities that lived on in the collective memory of generation after generation.

"They live on not simply to keep alive our patriotism or our sense of national identity, but because they remind us again and again, in the midst of so much that is shallow, of what it is to be human - courage, loyalty, obedience, comradeship, care for others, generosity, self-giving, friendship, love," he said.

"All these qualities are exemplified in the lives and example of the men and women, service personnel and civilians, who struggled, at huge cost to themselves, for a cause they did not always agree with or understand.

"Many of them died for those causes, and for this country, and we remember them, because unless we remember them, and the human qualities they embodied, we die, spiritually and morally.

"Remembrance should be a way of saluting the memory of the brave, but it should also be a way of coming to terms with the past and helping us to take our past into the future in order that we may avoid the terrible mistakes of the past."

Other speakers included Mayor John Carter, who said Anzac Day was not about glorifying war but recognising the sacrifices that had been made in the name of current generations.

"They put their country, their comrades, their ideals first, and I am so grateful that they did so," he said.