Jim Hopkins: This is your home not mine, says the Unknown Soldier

COMMENT


I am the Unknown Soldier (the one you call Warrior) and you have brought me home. Or that is what you tell me.

You tell me that you've brought me home but, in truth, you haven't. This is not my home. My home is like me. It's gone. The place you have brought me to is your home.

I hear you say I gave it to you but I do not own it. I don't even know it. Your home is another country. And I am a stranger in it.

When you took me to Parliament (something I don't recall happening before) I heard the chaplain call me a son of Aotearoa-New Zealand. Well, that's news to me. I don't think you'll find that on my papers.

Still, you can say what you like. I'm your soldier now, just as I was the King's soldier some 90 years ago.

You seem surprised. But that's what I was. Oh, I was other things, too, of course - we all were. And we all said things the King would not have wished to hear. But I was the King's man. I served not only a country but an Empire.

If you've read my letters and newspapers, if you've heard the speeches my politicians made, you will know this. You might even understand it.

But I wouldn't expect you to approve. You've moved on. You don't have the old country we had. My country is your old country. And my King is your anachronism.

For some of you, anyway. Some of you don't want to have a monarch. You want to be republicans. You want to have a President, a leader whom I imagine you would install in a dignified and harmonious fashion - much as they do in America.

And I salute you for this - although you don't seem too keen on saluting in your country. It's not the done thing, apparently. You seem to be a lot keener on handshakes, especially when they are golden.

No, don't apologise. We might have taken them too, had they been offered. But they weren't. So we took the shilling instead.

As some of you may do in the future. Although it won't be a shilling. And it may not come from the King. Your coin may come from a president, and it will surely be the better for that.

Even a newcomer like myself can see that replacing one system of government invented by other people with another system of government invented by other people is a sure and certain sign of maturity. It is the sign of a nation growing up.

Which you will have to do on my behalf.

I wish you well, of course. When your country was my home we were not afraid of change.

Some of the things you take for granted are a legacy of that. Not all, of course. In some respects, your country has become a place that would horrify the most progressive members of my generation.

A good thing too, you might say. As I might if I were you.

Every generation looks kindly upon itself. We did. You do. That's always been the way of the world. Every generation regards its own victories as the finest ever and every generation is blind to its own failings.

That is why things change. And why they stay the same.

Now, this may not sit well with you, for yours is a generation that seems to find no good in the past. You seem determined to transform everything, even those things you say you wish to honour.

Take the flag on my coffin. It's not good enough for some of you. Or so it would appear. I hear people say that you need a new flag to reflect your unique brand. Look, it's been a long time, but I don't think we had a "brand". I think we had something more than that. I think we had a country.

Uncertain and imperfect, I admit, but that's what I thought it was - and probably always will be.

Please forgive me. I am your guest, after all, and I wouldn't wish to offend. Yet I confess I'm puzzled. Even in my distant grave, I heard you speak of the importance of culture and heritage and even spirituality. I heard you say it was essential to preserve and foster these things.

But only some of them, it would seem. For you bring me back at a time when you are interring much more than my remains.

So put me in my tomb and go about your business. You have things to do: constitutions to change, abortions to perform, children to teach. Maybe some of them are mine - I'll never know.

But I know you'll teach them your truths about me. I can't stop you doing that. Because I'm yours now. I'm your soldier. I may be "home" but I'm still on active service.

And you will use me actively. You will say what I felt and why I fought and what it meant and you will take my life and my country and my war and make them your creations.

Let me just say this before you do: if you're going to remember me then you have to understand me. Not as you want me to be but as I was. That is the soldier you should know and respect and admire. Warts and all. I ask no more.

And the real measure of your admiration and respect will be the substance you give to your future, not the pomp you offer to your past.