Foreign Minister Winston Peters' speech at the Anzac Day Dawn Service, Gallipoli

E nga reo, e nga mana, e nga waka
E nga pu korero o nga hau e wha
E rau rangatira ma
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa

(Representatives of nations from the four corners of the earth
Distinguished guests all
Greetings, greetings, greetings to you all)

It is an honour to have the opportunity to address this ANZAC Dawn Service on behalf of the government and the people of New Zealand.

History long ago cast Gallipoli as a failure, and not a particularly glorious one at that. It was planned in haste, poorly executed, poorly equipped, and achieved nothing that advanced the course of the First World War.

Ninety-three years ago, our soldiers came ashore here to enter a war of a brutal nature that few, if any, could possibly have imagined before leaving home.

On the eve of the landings, the British commander described the assault as “an adventure unprecedented in modern war”.

His name would not have come kindly from the lips of those who had to fight their way from this beach up the cliffs and gullies, through scrub, rocks and murderous fire.

It was, as one Kiwi trooper laconically put it, “rough country for infantrymen”.

Back home, newspapers reported our troops were “engaged in hard fighting but are thoroughly making good their footing”.

The reality was more prosaic: disorder and confusion added to the carnage.

Six hundred of the 1500 New Zealanders who saw action on the first day were lost, including every officer and NCO from the Auckland and Canterbury battalions.

Over the following weeks the situation got little better.

“The Otago battalion was reduced to scarcely 300 sound men. They had gone up the hillside the night before 900 strong,” wrote one soldier.

Another simply said: “The dead lay like stooks after a harvest”.

Within a fortnight of the landing, a New Zealand doctor would write: “There have been approximately 5000 casualties, about three men per yard of ground gained. An order came out naming this bay Anzac Bay ... Perhaps some day it will be called Bloody Beach Bay. God knows we have paid heavily for it.”

In total, eight and a half thousand New Zealand soldiers served at Gallipoli. Over 2700 died, and more than half the entire force was wounded.

It was a human tragedy on an unprecedented scale for a country with a population of only one million, and it touched nearly every family.

Standing here this morning, reflecting on what happened, brings to mind the epigraph for the unknown soldier, penned by W H Auden. It read:
 
“To save your world, you asked this man to die: would this man, could he see you now, ask why?”

If Auden’s man was a Gallipoli soldier, what would he think today?

It is 90 years since the “The War to End All Wars”, yet we still live in a world beset with conflict, suffering, and inequality.

Thousands of New Zealanders and Australian soldiers have fought and died in a second World War, in Korea, Malaya, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and other far-flung conflicts.

What would Auden’s man make of that?

Surely he would approve of the meaning brought to the carnage of 93 years ago. We have made peace with our former foes Turkey, and mutual respect has blossomed into warm relationships that mourn the losses on both sides.

We have never forgotten that suffering, and wherever possible we work hard at ensuring that differences between nations are resolved without resort to war.

We have found our own independent voices, and have stood firm against those who seek to deny freedom, justice and human rights.

We have built decent, strong societies, but would Auden’s man be satisfied that we still do enough to ensure that everyone gets a fair crack at life?

Would he see that education is a right, not a privilege; that the sick and frail get the care they need, and that the vulnerable and elderly are protected?

New Zealand and Australia have come to think of Gallipoli as the birthplace of a true sense of national identity that both countries wear with pride today.

The fighting here “bound our troops with loops of steel”, as one officer wrote, and created an Anzac spirit that will never be broken.

We would tell Auden’s man that the Anzac bond is as strong now as the day it was forged.

It is fundamental to the relationship between our two lands; to the way we often approach the world as one, and in an intense but friendly sporting rivalry of a kind that only exists between close siblings.

And surely Auden’s man would look with pride at the thousands of you who have gathered here today.

We have not come here to bask in the reflected glory of our soldiers’ bravery. We return here year after year to renew our debt of gratitude to them, and to ensure their memory will never dim.

That is the way that we can best honour the soldiers who fought, suffered and died here. And I think it would make Auden’s man believe his sacrifice was worthwhile.

Let’s finish with these words from New Zealand poet Julie Collier, which are sadly pertinent to countless towns and villages in Australasia:

A cold August morning in 1915
The mist was on the harbour,
The constable had been.
Our Mother clutching her apron;
Reported missing in action
They’d never come home to be heroes
Her boys from Rawene.

No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa