Perhaps the time is right to remember all of these wars we have fought - overseas and in our own back yard - on the same day.
Peeling back the pages of war is a painful learning experience, especially when you start to open up the local volumes of what went down and why, during our land wars.
For me what happened on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915 and what happened here in Tauranga on the Te Papa Peninsula, where Gate Pa stands today, are no different other than degrees of latitude, attitude and casualties.
War is war and for those being invaded like the Turks or Tangata Whenua, they had everything to lose and were always going to fight to the death to protect their whenua (land).
Ironically, they were battles both lost by the invading forces.
More and more we are seeing other past battles woven into the korowai (cloak) of war worn by those who have only medals and memories to hold on to.
April 25, 1915marks the landing of New Zealand and Australian soldiers on to the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Back here at home, only 51short years earlier on April 29 1864, the Battle of Gate Pa was a war right on our own back doorstep.
Forty-three after Gallipoli, the First Battalion of the New Zealand Regiment landed in Malaya, and five short years later in April 1963 our first New Zealand armed services in the form of surgical teams arrived in Vietnam, where one million soldiers and two million civilians perished.
Tucked in between all of these wars like a cherished photo in a frightened teenage soldier's chest pocket was the one my father fought in and never really came back from, other than donning his medals and marching with his mates on Anzac Day.
For the rest of the year it was 364 days of distancing themselves from everyone outside of the RSA, who could never know what war was like.
For most of us, we will not - and can never afford to - forget what happened in the wars our founding fathers fought. As a nation facing up to our own wars, we have started the long walk back through our past, and only now have we startedto accept and understand that the wars fought in our own back yard were no different to those fought in Flanders or on the killing fields of Vietnam.
Lives were lost, lots of lives in all of the wars we have fought overseas and over the boundaries and border lines of our own country, and the consequences of their outcomes are still being felt today by those who lost whanau, family, friends and whenua.
Just like all wars and their day of remembrance, we try to make sense of their military madness as we stand in silence besides memorials and cenotaphs up and down Aotearoa New Zealand to reflect.
More and more I find myself rewinding past the World War my father fought in back to the local wars my forefathers fought in, on both sides of the trenches.
Tomorrow, on a day when we will remember our fallen heroes and fathers who, by the grace of God returned shell-shocked but safely home, let us not forget the wars fought in our own back yard.
Gate Pa, Te Ranga, Whakamarama, World War I, World War II, Malaya, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and others, will all register on the radar of remembrance for me as the unknown soldier stands and calls out to his fallen foe.
As we gather at our local cenotaph on Anzac Day, and listen to the haunting lament of the last post, may it be a reminder to make sure every day of freedom fought for by our forefathers is lived, loved and laughed, in honour of their heroic deeds.
Kei wareware tatou - Lest we forget.
