{"id":5104,"date":"2011-04-26T06:30:11","date_gmt":"2011-04-25T18:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=5104"},"modified":"2013-04-24T20:04:57","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T08:04:57","slug":"tuesday-poem-nzef-trooper-203453-by-leigh-vickridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/04\/26\/tuesday-poem-nzef-trooper-203453-by-leigh-vickridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: NZEF Trooper 203453 by Leigh Vickridge"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>

ANZAC Memorial (Inglewood)<\/p><\/div>\n

NZEF Trooper 203453<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was born at Longton Avenue
\nin London
\nnot far from Crystal Palace<\/p>\n

High tea on Sunday evenings
\nwith the mater and the pater
\nthen minor public school<\/p>\n

Gallipoli washed away all that \u2013
\ncarnage at Chunuk Bair
\nflyblown corpses in the sun<\/p>\n

His number was not up:
\na shrapnel wound and fever
\nsaved his life<\/p>\n

Rehabilitation came
\nland impossible to farm
\nnear the Bridge to Nowhere<\/p>\n

The Depression brought ruin
\ntoo old to fight
\nin a second war<\/p>\n

Crumbling health
\nmemories of friends
\nlong dead<\/p>\n

His ashes cast
\non the cleansing waters
\nof a mountain stream<\/p>\n

In Aotearoa
\non Taranaki Mountain
\nnot far from Dawson\u2019s Falls<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Leigh Vickridge, 2008<\/p>\n

Published in The Christchurch Press<\/strong><\/em>, 23 April 2008<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

April 25 is ANZAC Day—ANZAC standing for the Australia New Zealand Army Corps—and primarily commemorates the participation of New Zealand service men and women in the First and Second World Wars.<\/p>\n

This poem was written by Leigh Vickridge, the father of one of my school friends, in commemoration of his father who served in the NZ Expeditionary Force in World War 1. The poem has an elegaic quality that I always feel “speaks” quite profoundly to the ANZAC experience. I submitted the poem to The Christchurch Press<\/em> on Leigh’s behalf, but sadly he himself passed away shortly before it was published on 23 April 2008. I reproduce it here today for ANZAC Day, but also in memory of both Leigh and his father, the latter whom I knew only—schoolgirl fashion—as “Old Mr Vickridge.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2013 carnage at Chunuk Bair flyblown corpses in the sun His number was not up: a shrapnel wound and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5104"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5116,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions\/5116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}