ANZAC Day Centennary: NZEF Trooper 203453 by Leigh Vickridge
NZEF Trooper 203453
He was born at Longton Avenue
in London
not far from Crystal Palace
High tea on Sunday evenings
with the mater and the pater
then minor public school
Gallipoli washed away all that –
carnage at Chunuk Bair
flyblown corpses in the sun
His number was not up:
a shrapnel wound and fever
saved his life
Rehabilitation came
land impossible to farm
near the Bridge to Nowhere
The Depression brought ruin
too old to fight
in a second war
Crumbling health
memories of friends
long dead
His ashes cast
on the cleansing waters
of a mountain stream
In Aotearoa
on Taranaki Mountain
not far from Dawson’s Falls
.
© Leigh Vickridge, 2008
Published in The Christchurch Press, 23 April 2008
—
April 25 is ANZAC Day—ANZAC standing for the Australia New Zealand Army Corps—and today marks the hundredth anniversary of the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli:
“Gallipoli washed away all that –
carnage at Chunuk Bair
flyblown corpses in the sun”
I first posted this poem in 2011, but re-post it again today, both because it addresses the Gallipoli experience, but also, as I said in 2011: “The poem has an elegaic quality that I always feel “speaks” quite profoundly to the ANZAC experience.”
To read other poems that speak to the ANZAC experience, click on:
Ellen’s Vigil by Lorna Staveley Anker
Ellen’s Vigil is inscribed in NZ’s national memorial to the Unknown Soldier. I featured it as part of my 2013 war poetry series:
“Benjamin……..Isaac…….Tom
Passchendaele…..Ypres…and Somme
…………….three ovals float
…………….on the cold wall
plastered whiter
………………………………..than their bones…”
Also:
Lijssenthoek by Joanna Preston
.
There. Red brick and white stone; an archway anything but triumphal. We wheeled our hired bicycles through the gate-building, blinking at the transition from light to shadow to light again as we stepped out into the garden. And garden it was. Rows of lilies, ranged in front of the crosses that marked the Canadian graves. The New Zealand graves. The South African graves…”
Excellent ANZAC Day poem, Helen. I like the ending, those ashes spreading forever on that mountain. An everlasting image…
It also give’s a sense of the life of one Gallipoli veteran, where he came from and later came to, in a uniquely “Kiwi” story.