When the late Saddam Hussein flew into a hyperventilated rage following the Western Coalition's attack on Iraq in 1990, he famously promised to respond with "the mother of all battles". Had the dictator been a better student of history, he would have realised how flatulent his threat was.
This is because the inventory of "the mothers of all battles" is clogged with the names of campaigns from World War I - a conflict where New Zealanders did far more than their fair share of fighting and dying, often in places most of them had never heard of for a cause that seldom rose above glib one-liners like "For God, King and Country".
The bellicose euphoria did not last, though. By 1916, New Zealand had to introduce conscription as the stream of volunteers all but dried up. But how they got there made little difference to the soldier on the frontline. Brave, boisterous, or bullied cannon-fodder are, after all, still cannon-fodder, as the deaths of 2779 New Zealanders on an obscure Turkish peninsula 100 years ago demonstrate.
And here we are now, a century on from Gallipoli, bearing little recognition to the callow nation that was drawn into the "Great War." But as we commemorate the carnage, we should also spare a thought for those who did not go: the conscientious objectors, or "those bloody conchies" as they were branded.
There were exemptions to military service on the ground of religious beliefs, but only 73 objectors met this qualification. To put this figure in context, by the end of the war around 400 men had been imprisoned for refusing to serve in the armed forces, and 2600 conscientious objectors were subsequently punished in other ways, such as being prohibited from voting for 10 years, and being excluded from employment in government departments - all in addition to the sneers that they had to endure from their fellow citizens, often for the rest of their lives.
