May He Rest in Peace - The Unknown Warrior

The Green Party is pleased to support the motion. On this, the 86th anniversary of Armistice Day, we are here to honour and respect those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the First World War, the wars before that and those since then. We are here to grieve for the families and loved ones of those who died, especially those for whom there is no tangible link to the men and women who were tragically killed. We are not here to glorify war.

I am only able to make this speech because both my grandfathers survived the First World War. Lance Corporal William Fernley Rogers was a machine gunner in Egypt and at the Battle of the Somme. Rifleman Eric Walter Donald also fought in the Somme, and at Passchendaele and Messines. They survived the war with few physical scars but, like many of their fellow soldiers, they carried the horrors of the mud and blood and guts of serving on the Western Front to their graves.

The grandfather I knew personally did not like to talk about his wartime experiences. But at least he survived. Over eight and a half million people died in the First World War. Of these, over 17,000 were New Zealanders.

Gallipoli took the highest toll: 2,721 dead and 4,752 wounded out of a total of 8,450 men — a staggering 88% casualty rate. It was thought at the time that nothing in warfare could surpass the rigours and the horrors of Gallipoli.

But as Michael King wrote in "New Zealanders at War": "this was not so. In April 1916 New Zealand troops were committed to the Western Front in France and Belgium for another round of carnage and squalor, this one lasting two and a half years. In the trenches New Zealanders encountered swamp-like mud, duckwalks, snow and ice in winter, frightful slaughter in offensives such as at Passchendaele and the Somme, the stench of unburied men and animals, and new refinements in technological barbarity such as poisonous gas. Advances were measured in terms of hundreds of yards and in four years of allied effort the front moved no more than fifty miles".

Altogether 13,250 Kiwis were killed and 35,000 wounded on the Western Front. As King says, "it was shocking; and, considering the negligible result, utterly wasteful of human life."

For a country with a population in 1914 of less than one million King observed that the New Zealand contribution to World War One was massive. "The percentage of eligible manpower recruited was 19.35. Of all the allied countries, only Britain's was greater; the other dominions fell considerably behind. The number of New Zealanders sent overseas was more than 100,000 and of these nearly 17,000 were killed and more than 41,000 wounded. This casualty rate in proportion to population was the highest in the Empire."

The impact of that loss of life can be seen in every small town, at otherwise deserted country cross roads and on park gates and other public places in our cities.

The names of the fallen, sometimes "a family's entire fine crop of young manhood" feature on those war memorials and on the roll of honour in memorial halls. But sadly, for 9000 of them there is no identifiable grave to mark their sacrifice.

Here in this House, surrounded by plaques naming the theatres of war where New Zealanders have fought overseas we are finally honouring the thousands who are still buried in foreign soil with the return home of one New Zealander. Because we do don't know his identity he has come to represent all the unknown and unfound Kiwis who did not come back.

There is immense symbolism in this occasion but, for me, what is most tragic is that the conflict this unknown warrior was killed in was not the 'war to end all wars'.

If that was the cause for which this man and the eight and half million like him were killed, then succeeding generations, including our own, have betrayed their sacrifice in the most brutal way.

By the year 2000 the death toll for the 20th century directly attributable to war and oppression reached 188 million people.

There is little point in honouring the victims of war if we do not also learn from their deaths. What lessons did the generation that survived the First World War learn?

That rampant nationalism — "my country, right or wrong" — was a lie, foisted on the gullible by those with vested interests to protect?

That brave soldiers were not just the ones who obeyed suicidal orders without question?

That God couldn't be on everyone's side?

That a vanquished nation must be helped back into the international community, not made to pay and pay for its defeat?

None of those lessons were learned and twenty years later the world was again forced to pay in blood for the sins and greed of the few and the ignorance and compliance of the many. Could our Unknown Warrior — and all his fallen friends and foes — have ever imagined that within a generation of their sacrifice the world would be inflicted with the horrors of Auschwitz, Dresden and Hiroshima?

We still haven't learned. Rwanda, Congo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq: a recent roll-call of shame and proof of George Santayana's observation that "those who forget the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them".

As we honour this Unknown Warrior today and reflect on his sacrifice I hope all New Zealanders will also spare a moment to remember the real lessons from the bloodiest century in our history. Lessons that many leaders around the world today have either forgotten or never learned: there is no glory in death-in-battle and no victory in war.

They would do well to read Archibald Baxter's book 'We will not cease'.

Baxter was one of 14 conscientious objectors who were forcibly transported to the front line in France where they were subjected to a variety of disciplinary measures including the barbaric "No 1 field punishment". Baxter, the father of James K, wrote his book in London at the beginning of the Second World War but the first edition was mostly destroyed during the Blitz.

When it was republished by Caxton Press in 1968 he wrote in a preface "a greater barbarism than any of the human race has known in the past has risen among the nation. In the First World War multitudes of conscript soldiers were buried alive in the mud of France. Villages were also annihilated. But the greatest number of casualties were among the conscript troops. In the Second World War the wholesale slaughter of civilians — by high explosives, by firebombing, and finally by atomic weapons — became a matter of course. Reports from the present Vietnam War indicate that 80% of the casualties are occurring among civilians. War has at last become wholly indiscriminate. The Military machine has turned against that communal life that is the seedbed of future generations of mankind. The only apparent justification that war ever had was that by destroying some lives it might clumsily preserve others. But now even that apparent justification is being stripped away. We make war chiefly on civilians and respect for human life seems to have become a thing of the past. ……… all wars are equally atrocious and no war can be called just." The same could be said of Iraq today.

I share Baxter's sentiments and take inspiration from them. I know I am not alone.

Baxter took his inspiration from a Dunedin lawyer, Alfred Barclay, who went on to become a member of this parliament. Twelve of Baxter's fellow objectors were broken into submission with three becoming stretcher bearers. One, William Little, was killed in action. Only Mark Briggs remained defiant with Baxter until the end. In 1936 Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage appointed Briggs to the legislative council as "a symbol of all those who had fought against war".

I hope the tomb of the Unknown Warrior will become a powerful symbol for peace. It is not enough to acknowledge the futility and obscenity of war. For the sake of all those who died and all those families and friends who lost their loved ones we must all strive to overcome the causes of conflict and build a peaceful world.

In closing, I admit to struggling with the term "warrior" because it conjures up someone who goes gallantly, willingly, into battle. The truth is, many of those who went to war were unwilling or frightened conscripts who fought rather than be branded cowards. Our unknown warrior may be a soldier, but he may also be a stretcher bearer and there are other non-combatants, including women with no grave to remember them by, who this man now represents. May he rest in peace.