Editorial: The day that makes us what we are

Opinion

Ninety years on, the landing of New Zealand and Australian troops on a rugged stretch of Turkish coastline continues to exert a powerful grip on our national consciousness. Indeed, it has probably never been stronger.

The growing impulse to attend this most poignant of commemorations is a particularly distinctive aspect of the hundreds of dawn parades throughout the country. Likewise, it has compelled an anticipated 25,000 people to assemble today at Gallipoli for services at Anzac Cove and other of the main battlegrounds.

The reasons for the rejuvenation of this once-threatened commemoration are complex. But the consequences are not.

Parades and services are being swelled by the increased attendance of the great-grandchildren and grandchildren of those who fought in World Wars I and II. Their presence provides a new dimension, in numbers and in sentiment. Most feel an awe at the sacrifice and sense of duty of those who died willingly serving their country.

This sentiment, rather than withering in a more pragmatic age, seems to be becoming stronger, even as the years of peace grow longer. Such will surely continue to be the case for each new generation appreciative of being spared the terror and terrible cost of war.

Rarely does this new, youthful dimension lead to any lessening of reverence, or the solemnity of the commemoration. Certainly not in the case at the dawn parades throughout New Zealand. In the past few years, however, there has been a growing alarm at the alcohol-fuelled antics of some young New Zealanders and Australians at Gallipoli. It has even been suggested that the services there on this day lack meaning for some who go there; that, in effect, Gallipoli has become another stop on a backpackers' party circuit which encompasses the likes of the Oktoberfest in Munich and the Running of the Bulls at Pamplona.

This, in turn, has led to the suggestion that a greater effort must be made to teach children about the campaign, and its significance, in high schools. Only those unaware of Gallipoli's importance in the shaping of the two Anzac nations could, it is argued, act so appallingly.

But that is an over-reaction. The dim-witted behaviour of a few, thousands of kilometres from their kith and kin, should not cast a longer shadow than the impeccable conduct and increasing interest at home of their peers and of those of an even younger age. Or subsume the fact that an increasing number of young people go to considerable trouble to make the pilgrimage to this remote area of Turkey.

Indeed, the young today seem to harbour a deeper appreciation, and perhaps knowledge, than many of those educated generations earlier. The myths perpetuated in the classrooms of yesteryear - that, for example, the Anzac troops were landed a huge distance from where they should have been, and that anything involving the British turned quickly to dust - have taken a long time to die. The 90th anniversary invites a more realistic assessment.

Yet a greater, and more accurate, analysis of Gallipoli in schools would not necessarily translate into increased interest in Anzac Day. Young people's attendance at commemorations has little to do with such minutiae. Rather, it is founded on the same emotion that fostered an astonishing response to last year's repatriation of the Unknown Warrior. People queued to visit the casket, and as many as 10,000 lined the streets of Wellington to see the Warrior's carriage make its way to the National War Memorial.

They watched as one, united people. Just as they gather today as one people to commemorate those who played such a pivotal role in the forging of a shared New Zealandness.

The sacrifice of those who fell at Gallipoli, and those who failed to return from other conflicts stirs them. As it stirs an ever-increasing sense of national pride and history.