Dominic George: Knowing the right buttons to press

New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli.

"War is a nasty, brutal, expensive business." This quote is from an interview I conducted during the week with one of this country's pre-eminent war historians, Christopher Pugsley. The topic of the interview was his latest book, A Bloody Road Home -- World War Two and New Zealand's Heroic Second Division.

It's a brilliant publication and you can hear the resulting interview with the former senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst this Saturday morning on Farming First, as well as at farmingshow.com.

Indeed, the more I read about the two world wars, the more I'm struck by two things. One -- Bernard Freyberg is probably my favourite New Zealand hero, and two -- we should avoid entering any war if we can in the future.

Let's start with Freyberg. Born in London but educated in New Zealand, he packed an enormous amount into his life. As a trained dentist, he left these shores in 1914, reportedly stopping off in Mexico to fight in its civil war. After hearing another war had broken out in Europe later that year, he made his way to Los Angeles where he won a swimming competition, then to New York where he won a prize fight; both victories earning him enough money to continue his travels as he eventually made his way across the Atlantic.

Freyberg first came to prominence in 1915 for swimming ashore at Bulair and lighting flares on the beach in an attempt to deceive the Turks about where the infamous Gallipoli landing would take place.

Despite being wounded twice, he led from the front, personally responsible for rallying and re-forming his own men as well as others detached from their units. He would be wounded twice more in the next week.

It's believed one of these wounds eventually killed him later in life but, in the face of a total of nine war wounds, he even managed three attempts at swimming the English Channel, drawing on the ability he nurtured as the winner of four New Zealand national swimming titles as a youth.

In World War II, Freyberg committed to the role of commander of the 2nd NZ Expeditionary force, abandoning any chance of promotion among the British ranks in the process. He had to make tough calls such as bombing the centuries-old Benedictine Monastery atop Monte Casino in 1944 -- a key point in the German defensive line and also a virtual museum of priceless artefacts.

The playwright JM Barrie, who penned Peter Pan, once singled out Freyberg to students at St Andrew's University in Scotland in an address he was giving on the subject of "courage".

Pugsley said what made Freyberg a great soldier and an even better leader was the fact "he understood men". He knew what buttons to press in any given situation to get the best out of his troops and invoking a sense of nationalism and jingoistic pride was one of the strings he tugged on from time to time. Another celebrated Kiwi war hero, Howard Kippenberger, also understood this. He rallied his troops under heavy fire at Galatas in 1941 with the cry, "stand for New Zealand".

Which brings me to my second point. Prime Minister John Key has invoked this sense of nationalism in recent weeks as a selling point for involvement in the war against the Islamic State. In a potential move to join forces with the Australians, he said: "It would be in part to try and pay tribute to the service and sacrifice of the Anzac forces that lost their lives in Gallipoli."

And yet as we prepare to commemorate 100 years since the landing at Gallipoli, I can't help but think we need to avoid any situation in the future that throws the lives of young New Zealanders so needlessly to the wolves. I find that comment a tad disingenuous. Everything I've read in the past couple of years on the subject, including Pugsley's account of the Great War, part of which was republished earlier this year, makes it abundantly clear that we were staring the darkest parts of human nature in the face and it stared straight back at us.

Farming Show correspondents such as Jim Hopkins have decried this attitude as effectively "soft", arguing the current situation with IS is akin to Nazism and, with hindsight, it was clearly the right decision to join in the Allied defence against Hitler's tyranny. He has a solid point here. But as our dairy farmers face a battle of a very different kind in the face of Fonterra's forecast payout of $4.70 for the upcoming season, I can't help but think of those words, "war is a nasty, brutal, expensive business ..."

Dominic George hosts Farming First, 5am-6am weekdays on Radio Sport. He vents his views here every Thursday