Where to next for guardians of history?

Mark Dawson, Editor of Wanganui Chronicle WGG 23Apr13 - Mark Dawson WGP 26Jun14 -

TODAY is a big one ...

One hundred years on from Gallipoli and the horrors and sacrifice of World War I, Wanganui and the rest of New Zealand will be keenly feeling the emotions.

Tears, memories, pride will mingle and flow like the river.

The turnouts will be big - maybe record-breaking for those who keep score. Many have commented on the numbers of younger people now attending Anzac Day services and they will be an important part of today's throng.

The profile of Anzac Day has rarely been higher, and it did not need a Saatchi & Saatchi marketing guru or an expensive logo re-design to place it uppermost in the nation's consciousness.

But where to from here? Will the torch continue to be passed on?

Next year's crowds are almost certain to be thinner and, while 2018 will mark 100 years from the end of the Great War and the signing of the armistice, one wonders how Anzac Day will sustain as the past disappears into history and generations die away, replaced by new ones with a more tenuous link to the battlefields of Turkey and Europe.

Faced with falling membership, the Returned Services Association has, quite rightly, opened its doors to all.

Less a veterans' haven and more a focal point for the community at large, it is a sign of the passage of time.

So it will be interesting to see how the keepers of this flame of nationhood keep it burning over the coming years.

Today, however, such matters will be put well aside as tributes are paid, valour saluted, hardship recalled and stories told.