ANZAC Day 2010

ANZAC Day in Belgium

This year I spent the big day in Ypres, Belgium, which is practically on the western front. The day started off (very early) at the New Zealand Embassy in Brussels. We got there at six am, and after revelling in the lovely kiwi accent for a while we headed off by coach to Ypres.

Before Ypres (or Iepers, depending on whether you're wallone or flamand) we went to Mesen. When we got there we listened to a prayer at the Municipal War Memorial, apparantly this was to commemorate the Belgians who fought too, as a respect kind of thing. I was still effectively asleep at this point so my understanding of that little moment is blurry.. Haha.

Oh by the way, Mesen is the sister town of Featherston.

Then we went to the New Zealand memorial on the other side of Mesen. There was a prayer, and then some soldiers laid wreaths, and a wreath was laid there from the Government and the people of NZ by the ambassador HE Peter Kennedy.

This is the NZ memorial at Mesen with the wreaths under it. We sang the anthem too, it was cool (: and the Buglers sounded the last post as well. It was really eerie because we also got a very brief explanation of what went on there in that exact place, and it just freaked me out a little cause it was where they actually fought.

This is the sign that says:


Next we went over to Ypres. Once there, we all got together and walked to the Menin Gate. We were lead by the Ambassadors of NZ, Australia, Turkey and also the Mayor of Ypres. Once we were all under the gate, we had a lot of speeches and prayers, a kiwi sang 'a lamentation' and the buglars played the last post. Then we had a moment of silence.

This is the Menin Gate. The names of all the soldiers who died round there are written on the walls. Its really powerful to see all the names just listed like that, its huge so there are HEAPS of names.
There you can see the names of the soldiers. After the silence, people laid wreaths. First was the ambassadors, and in the end after all the official folks my Kiwi friends Anneke and Nouzar (both Rotary students also) laid a wreath on our behalf; here it is:

So after that ceremony we sang our anthems again. It was really cool, except the Aussies weren't too happy cause the band cut out like two thirds of their anthem. I don't know why.

Next we all marched back to the Belgian Memorial and the Kiwi and Aussie Ambassadors laid wreaths there to be respectful. They then sang the flemish and belgian anthems (and, just quietly, I can safely say by the lack of knowledge of the words of their anthem that the Belgians are not even nearly as patriotic as we Kiwis)

Following that we went back to the Ieper town hall. Mayor of Ypres, Luc Dehaene gave a speech, the Kiwi Ambassador and Aussie Ambassador respond to the speech, then Erin and I gave our speeches too. Here's me giving a speech (video to come) :

After the speeches Erin (the Aussie exchange student who spoke) and I got given a present from the Mayor of Ypres. The NZ Ambassador gave me a present too but that was in secret as to not show up the Aussie Ambassador. The one present was a book about Ypres and it's history and the other was a book of New Zealand War Photography.

Next we went to Zonnebeke; and this was mostly for the Australians but there was some small kiwi aspects:
So here's a tombstone thing for a Kiwi Soldier: "A New Zealand soldier of the Great War" and at the bottom it said "Known Unto God"

And here's a picture of a lot of graves. This blew my mind a little bit, I'm not sure if they were all ANZAC graves but quand meme, that's an enormous amount of deaths.

So overall it was a pretty awakening day. I think we as Generation Y are kept in a kind of shelter from what the war was really about, especially World War One. We don't (and will probably never) know much about the reality of the big wars and I hope we never get to find out for ourselves, but de tout facon I was glad to be there and was a very proud Kiwi that day.