November 8 2014
I’ve just come back from a service of remembrance at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery on Mount Scopus.
The service was unusual in two ways. We remembered the beginning as well as the end of the Great War; we also rededicated the mosaic that lines the Memorial Chapel.
Laid in 1927 as a tribute to the New Zealand soldiers of the Egyptian expeditionary force who served in the Sinai and Palestinian campaigns, the mosaic had suffered badly at the hands of the winter rain but has now been splendidly restored by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. At the unveiling of the mosaic, Dr Tim Williams, on behalf of the government of Aotearoa New Zealand, made an equally splendid speech.
Below, Tim says he is not sure we can balance the books of war by equating the camaraderie it engenders with the horrors it inflicts.
Me neither.
Nor am I as confident as the mosaic designer, Robert Anning Bell, of the nobility of the aims and motives that inspired the Allies in the Great War – if by Allies he means the governments and not the men.
But Bell was writing in 1925; and besides, all that is for another day.
There is more to be said about remembrance, and I shall say it on other occasions or in other places, beginning with our own Remembrance Sunday service tomorrow.
Here, for now, is Tim’s speech. I like it for its use of Māori – we language minorities must stick together – and for the sheer exoticism of the Singapore and Hong Kong Mountain Artillery. But mostly I like it just because it’s touching.
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E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi o ngā hau e wha Tēnā koutou, Tēnā koutou, Tēnā koutou katoa.
To the authorities, to the languages and to the people of the four winds represented here. I greet you, I greet you, three times I greet you all.
This place is only one of the 33 cemeteries, memorials or individual graves in Israel and the Palestinian territories where the soldiers of the Commonwealth are commemorated – those who died in World War One, others in World War Two, and the British service men and women killed in the troubles between the wars and up to 1948. They range from Deir al Balah, Gaza city and Beersheva in the south, through the several cemeteries in Jerusalem, to Ramleh, and north to Haifa and Tulkarm.
In World War One – the war whose end has given us this Remembrance Day – the army here was that of an Empire. English, Irish, Scots, and Welsh, of course. But also Indians – and that was British India, now encompassed by Bangladesh, Pakistan and modern India. There were Aussies, Nepalis, Cook Islanders, and Kiwis. The Singapore & Hong Kong Mountain Artillery battery fought beside soldiers of the British West Indies regiment from Jamaica. In these cemeteries you can see headstones that bear the Crescent of Islam, the Cross of Christianity and the Star of David. They truly were nga iwi o nga hau e wha – the people of the four winds.
The army they faced was also that of an empire. We call it Turkish but it also included soldiers from Germany and Austria-Hungary, and even “Turkish” is a misnomer. The Ottoman empire, even in its fading days, stretched from the Aegean Sea to the Arabian Peninsula as far south as Yemen, and drew its army from that huge area. Soldiers from the Ottoman province of Palestine – from Kudus, Al Khalil, – fought and died at Gallipoli. 35 men from Nablus alone are buried there.
However let me focus on one small part of one of those empires and one ordinary man’s part.
Cervantes Jason Bell, a cousin of my mother, left the small New Zealand town of Hokitika to join the Canterbury Mounted Rifles regiment, part of the NZ Mounted Rifles Brigade. In Egypt in 1916 the Mounted Rifles – those who had survived Gallipoli and reinforcements such as Trooper Bell – formed, with the 1st and 3rd Australian Light Horse brigades, the ANZAC Mounted Division in General Allenby’s army. They rode and patrolled and fought from the Suez Canal, across the Sinai to Rafah; they experienced defeat at Gaza, victory at Beersheva and again at Ayun Kara; they were the first British troops to enter Jaffa; they rode through Bethlehem and Jerusalem; they fought at Nabi Moussa and into the Jordan Valley, and they held the line at Al Auja, just north of Jericho. They crossed the Jordan on a bridge the Turks called Goranyeh, the one we now know as Allenby Bridge, and fought across the Jordan again at Damiya bridge, and rode up to take Amman close to the end of the war.
Trooper Bell left NZ in December 1916 and returned in August 1919. The army doctor who signed his discharge papers tersely rated his “overall physical and mental health” as “good” – luckier than some. After the war, he returned to his work in the Hokitika Post Office but he and his friends did not forget.
It is sometimes said that the camaraderie, the love, the deep empathy, that people can have for each other through shared tough times – and none can be as tough as war – can redeem at least somewhat for the horrors encountered. I’m not sure I agree with that equation but it was this camaraderie that led Trooper Bell, and his mates who also returned, to want to leave a personal mark – something more intimate, more modest, more ‘kiwi’, than grand formal memorials – a Kiwi memorial for their friends buried in this brown, hard and unfamiliar landscape.
At their request the New Zealand Government funded the creation and dedication of a mosaic that now lines the walls of this small chapel behind me. The mosaic, in beautiful greens and blues, reflects the colours of the softer New Zealand landscape, our Māori heritage, and commemorates the fortitude and contribution of New Zealand men and women – both in this region and in our homeland at “the uttermost ends of the earth”.
The mosaic designer, British artist Robert Anning Bell, wrote in 1925 that its imagery was “intended to express the spiritual aims and the physical, mental and moral qualities of the New Zealand Force, in a scheme which should be restrained, sober and serene, without boastfulness or vainglory, but with confidence in the nobility of the aims and the motives which inspired the Allies in the Great War”.
Recently the mosaic suffered from the persistent intrusion of winter rains. It was in a sad state of disrepair until several years of extensive and painstaking restoration work by Paul Price and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The mosaic has now been restored to its visual and contemplative beauty. My very sincere thanks to Paul and his people for their efforts, and thanks also, to His Excellency Dr Alastair McPhail, for allowing those of us from New Zealand this special opportunity to re-dedicate this mosaic to the memory of the New Zealand soldiers who died here so long ago. Thank you Alastair.
When we close this ceremony I suggest you take a few minutes – or perhaps come back on another, quieter day – to spend time appreciating this very touching memorial to those who fought in the Palestine campaign; to those who died here, and in its way a memorial too to those who survived into old age.
Ka maumahara tonu tatou ki a ratou.
We will remember them.