For the love of our country
It’s a time for remembering those lost to wartime but for some, the memory of war and hardship is a more fresh wound.
David Roberts, a former army sergeant who was attending the Riverton Anzac Day service, said it was important to remember those who had gone before us.
‘‘I think for anyone whose served it’s [reinforced] of how much we love our country,’’ he said.
‘‘[They] set the way [for remembrance] and we have to maintain it and not let it go – it’s special.’’
Roberts returned from Afghanistan in 2010, his third tour there. He has also completed two tours in East Timor.
His chest adorned with medals for his service defending New Zealand, he said the Anzac tributes were an emotional event, but he tried not to let it show, especially standing alongside other veterans who had fought in previous wars.
The older returned soldiers had it much harder in decades past, he said.
‘‘It’s always quite touching and you don’t want to let [the older veterans] down, you almost don’t feel worthy to be there.’’
Meanwhile at the Drummond Anzac service, it had already been quite a morning for Sergeant Royden Brown.
He has been the piper at many services in his 40 years of piping. This year included the Otautau and Tuatapere services and he was also the speaker at Drummond.
‘‘The fingers aren’t too bad; it’s the rest of me that’s shivering,’’ he said of the chilly Western Southland morning.
His piping duties have taken him many places during his years of service with the army, including an Anzac commemoration at Monte Cassino in Italy in 2004.
The site of a Benedictine monastery, it was bombed in 1944 and mostly reduced to rubble.
Upon his visit many years later, Brown took back some pieces of rubble which some of the returned soldiers had brought home as grim souvenirs and placed them back into the slots on the murals which had been reassembled from the ruins.
‘‘You could see bits from where they’d taken it,’’ he said.
Brown said the few pieces the group took over slotted right back in.
‘‘Fifty-four old vets were taken [over to Cassino], it was quite moving,’’ he said.
There was an eerie silence in Otautau in the dark of the morning as dawn rose with the Last Post resonating, people lined up at the cenotaph to pay respects and lay a poppy; some for family, some simply as an act of gratitude for the sacrifice given by those who went before us.
A small but solid crowd of people gathered in Drummond for a service, with The Last Post played by 12-year-old James Hargest College student Florence McKenzie.
At Riverton, hundreds of people lined the streets with the Waimatuku pipe band leading the procession to the cenotaph on the hill, some older returned servicemen already waiting at the top.