Old soldier who never faded away

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Alf Hartnell would rather be in his garden. He's a vege man really, he says, but in his retirement he's discovered flowers. Although he says he struggles sometimes to convey just what he means, the names roll off his tongue like perfect little poems: petunias and zinnias and marigolds.

He loves his flowers, plants them in pots, buries the pots in the bark. This way he can move them around, make sure he's always got a good show. "People are kind enough to say I have, some times of the year, a pretty special garden."

He likes making things that will give other people pleasure.

He's an orderly gardener, an orderly man.

You can tell that from studying the paper piles on the battered old desk in the shabby downtown building that houses the Auckland Returned Services Association. The files are as straight as a row of soldiers. Hartnell runs his finger down a list of names of very important people. There is a scar on his left hand where the bullet went through.

In the room outside Hartnell's office a garden of bright red poppies is growing.

He believes in duty. Which is why, at 79, he is sitting behind this desk on a beautiful clear autumn day, a day God made for gardeners, ticking off names of VIPs.

He was 61 when he retired for the first time. He was the secretary and manager of the Auckland RSA. The job involved doing what he's been coerced back to do: organising the Anzac Day dawn service, and the more ceremonial 11am service, up at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. He says he's a "retread from days gone by".

When Hartnell did this job fulltime, he'd begin organising the services in December. When he stepped in, in March, because there was "illness in the office, that sort of thing", nothing had been done. "To be quite honest, I'd rather someone else was doing it, but there is no one else. And that's not boasting."

So, here he is, he says, making a wry face, "dragged back out of the bush".

There will be worse to come. We want to drag him up to the Cenotaph at six in the morning to have his picture taken. He looks appalled. But he does it. It's duty.

Alf Hartnell, I tell him as we stand in the cool morning watching a turquoise and pink and silver dawn drift through the mist, you'll go straight to Heaven for this. He laughs and says, "The things I do for Anzac Day ... "

That is not boasting. It is quite a bit more than duty, too.

The dawn service begins at 5.30am. Hartnell will arrive, he thinks, around 3.30am. This is still a matter for discussion. "Because your wife and family think you're a bit old for this sort of thing, and they're probably right."

The day after we meet at the Cenotaph is Poppy Day. His wife, Mae, and two other volunteers are in charge of feeding the CBD poppy sellers. Hartnell's job is to carve the cold meats and go shopping. He's got a long list. "These women take their sandwiches seriously."

This is how seriously New Zealanders now take Anzac Day: In 2000, a crowd of 4000 turned up for the dawn service at the Auckland Cenotaph. Last year, there were 7000 of us. This year, Hartnell has had 10,000 orders of service printed.

He noticed, when he came out of retirement for the first time seven or eight years ago, that the phone calls he was receiving were changing in nature.

"I detected an earnest inquiry in the minds of young people about that time." They wanted to know "something about their uncle, or their father, or it might be their granddad". They wanted to know: "Where did he die? How did he fight? Was he brave? Did he get any medals?"

They'd say to Hartnell, "Granddad never spoke to us about this. You know, he never said a word".

He has some thoughts on why New Zealanders are flocking to Anzac Day services. "Some say it's a search for identity, and maybe people have got to a stage where life's got complicated and they feel as though they want to identify with something definite. They want to embrace their past heritage, perhaps."

Immediately after the war, the connection was personal. Then, he thinks, "Maybe those people started to fade away", they returned to the business of living.

Hartnell's war. You have to ask. "New Zealanders," he says, "I'm sorry, we're just reticent people. We would think to come back and start talking ... It would have looked like we're skiting, and we don't like skites."

He was a member of the 24th New Zealand Infantry Battalion, a unit who have held their final reunion six times. His war started in 1944. He was 21.

"The reason I'm here is that I was one of the younger ones. An infantryman doesn't last long. He's either killed, wounded or drawn out because he's done a good job for a long time."

He joined the battalion in Rimini, in Italy. He got shot in the hand one muddy winter's day. The bullet went in one side and out the other. It was "pretty superficial", and he got to go to a base hospital where there were nurses, "so that was very civilised".

The 24th fought their way up to Trieste, where "the war ended".

On Anzac Day, he'll wear his medals. "I think there's five. What they are doesn't really matter, they only come out of the drawer once a year."

What is effectively tattooed in memory is his Army number: 448867. "No one ever forgets their Army number."

On Thursday, Hartnell will remember. "Without being emotional, you see people killed. You see people killed beside you, and they're very good friends. And you know that, okay, you're commemorating them.

"And then it's wider than that: anyone who has given their life in time of war, for whatever reason."

He thinks for a bit about that. Then he says: "Given is not really the right word. Snatched away, isn't it really?"

He will do a silent name check in the pre-dawn, to the accompaniment of the footfalls of the returned servicemen as they shuffle through the dark. "Particular names in my head. They are the names way ahead of everybody else."

He talks about memory as a haze; it is wrapped in a scratchy Army blanket of recollection. There is pain and fear but he also hears distant laughter. He remembers "quite a few of the good times. You're not fighting all of the time. You're young. It's a time of intense experience. You don't get that kind of reality in friendships too often."

He hopes this will be his final tour of duty. After the 11am ceremony, he and some of his mates from the 24th will have a couple of beers: "Very nice, after a time like that."

He'll probably attempt, once again, to define what he calls the "certain magic" of that particular battalion, of those peculiar times.

"I don't think I do it very well, but everybody knows what I'm talking about anyway."