Garth George: Lessons from yesterday applied today

Apart from those at Gallipoli in 2005, I attended my first Anzac Day service in more than 40 years in Rotorua on Thursday.

I guess my non-attendance over that time was a reaction to having to climb out of bed at an ungodly hour of the morning, every year for 10 years, to cover dawn services and later gatherings as a young reporter.

And now I have broken my Anzac drought I find little has changed, except the former servicemen turning out on parade are much, much fewer and much, much older, and there are a lot more children and young people paying tribute.

Back in the day, veterans of both wars turned up in their thousands, marching proudly in step with their fellows under their unit banners. Most of the World War I blokes were getting on a bit, but the World War II men and women were mostly still in their prime.

It was a more intimate affair back then because the survivors of the two wars lived among us. They were our bosses and workmates, our neighbours and storekeepers and school teachers and policemen. Some showed the physical and mental scars of battle or internment; most behaved as if nothing untoward had ever happened to them.

And I did notice as they gathered over drinks in the RSA club or a bar or at numerous parties, few ever talked of the wars they'd survived. It was almost as if there was a subconscious agreement between them to put it all behind them and get on with living, to let the dead bury their dead if you like.

They were there to honour their mates who didn't come home, not themselves.

The number of children and young people who attended Anzac services throughout New Zealand, at Gallipoli and elsewhere in the world on Thursday was a cause of great blessing to me.

They turned out in their thousands because, I perceive, they are desperate to connect with their nation's history, and some with their family history, too.

They have not been taken in by the milk-sop pacifism preached in their schoolrooms and lecture halls, or by the politically correct gaps in the laundered, Treaty-tainted history they have been taught.

They want to know where they came from so they can understand where they are now and see where they are going. It is wonderful to see and it needs to be encouraged.

If any proof were needed of the significance of the Anzac service in Rotorua, it was that so many children and young people could stay quiet for so long.

In his brief but highly pertinent homily at the service I attended, Father Mark Field recalled the epitaph inscribed at the Allied war cemetery at Kohima, in north-east India, where the fallen from the British 14th Army's bitter Burma campaign are buried:

When You Go Home,

Tell Them Of Us And Say,

For Their Tomorrow,

We Gave Our Today.

And it occurred to me it is long past time for all of us to take a close look at those tomorrows, which are our todays, things such as the irony of the report, just two days before Anzac Day, of a survey that reveals morale in the New Zealand Army is at an all-time low.

For the children, I pray at least some of the thousands who attended Anzac services on Thursday left with a new understanding of what concepts such as patriotism, duty, honour, courage and sacrifice really mean.

And, perhaps, come to realise just how rare and at a premium those timeless virtues are today, and resolve to reignite them in their tomorrows.