Like a splinter in the heart - Anzac Day memories

When Daria Malesic was six, war broke out in what was then called Yugoslavia. She lived in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, and spent the next two years in the middle of a war zone.

“On any given day, depending on how heavy the bombing was, we would walk to a place that we called school,” Daria says. “It was just basically someone‘s apartment, where one of the teachers would sneak all the kids into and try to teach.

“We would be there for maybe an hour or two, before the bombing got too much, or the grenades, and we would be snuck back to our homes.”

While her peers in New Zealand – where she would come as a refugee as an eight-year-old – were playing in their backyards, life in Sarajevo was riskier.

“All the buildings in Sarajevo have little yards that are usually enclosed. We were allowed to play outside until you hear the snipers going and then you had to get behind somewhere where you don’t see hills. Because if you see a hill, that means a sniper sees you.”

Daria and her family had lived in Levin for a year when they arrived in New Zealand, which she describes as “absolute freedom”. “I could run around, and you don’t even think about maybe that hill has a sniper in it, or if there’s a big boom, it’s not a bullet.”

For someone who has, since, wanted nothing to do with war, it’s surprising that the writer and film editor has ended up working on a project that is all about the history of New Zealanders’ experiences in conflicts overseas. She was first the researcher and then the editor on the Wellington City Council’s WW1 Remembered: Sound and Light. The show features imagery, video and animations projected onto the facades of the former Dominion Museum and the Carillon.

The show is one of many tributes all over the country that mark the centenary commemorations of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli.

WATCH: Radio New Zealand’s ANZAC interactive.

“There’s a certain look that people get,” Daria says, “when everything is lost. It was really hard seeing that in a photograph.” She found photographs most startling, especially the pictures of the ‘Berry Boys’.

“I don’t know if shocking is the right word – but they stick with you. It’s like a splinter in the heart. Because some of them have this crazy excitement in their eyes, and the other half are there with their wife and child, and know what’s coming. It just breaks my heart every time I see them – and they look sixteen. They look like your friends and your brother.”

The youth of those men is something that hits home for James Costello Ladanyi, 29, who is one of 25 youth ambassadors in Gallipoli.  On Anzac Day, he’ll be one of 2000 New Zealanders who will stand on the same soil where even more of the country's soldiers fell.

The youth ambassadors will each carry the story of one soldier back to Gallipoli. James found a namesake, James Lawrence Costello, a farmer in North Canterbury who fought in World War One. James the soldier had a sister, Catherine, which coincidentally, is the same name as James the youth ambassador’s sister.

“Pure coincidence I guess you could say, but it just makes you realise when you’re trying to picture these young men going off to war being the same age as you, when there’s someone with a very similar name, and for him to have a sister with the same name as my sister, it just makes you sit back and go ‘wow, if I was the same age back then, that could have been me’.”

James says Gallipoli isn’t just significant because of the loss of life. He believes that it forged the Anzac relationship with Australia and was New Zealand’s first real step onto a global stage. “Us standing up as a nation and saying ‘we’re just as important, even if we’re a small size, here we are, we have a role to play in a global conflict’.”

David Moger, the Chief Executive of the RSA agrees. “I don’t think it’s a loose connection to say that that is happening today. Today we are on the UN Security Council, we have a voice right at the top of the world. And in the same way we are stepping up and our troops are again heading overseas to put themselves in harm’s way.”

Photos like those that Daria mentioned, David says, often show faces full of excitement at the adventure they were about to face. It’s very different for troops heading overseas now, he says. “The nature of the conflict is different, but still we are standing up as a nation and saying yes, we have a role to play in making sure the freedoms that have been hard fought for over many years, that we continue to enjoy them.”

The only thing I knew about Anzac was Anzac biscuits, so to get an opportunity to get to explain it in your own words, it’s pretty big.

Sone Tuutalafua, 18, has just finished school, and will also be joining the youth ambassadors at Gallipoli. He empathises with the young soldiers - especially those that lied about their age to be allowed to fight.

“They were young, they were kids. They probably didn’t think that they would die there, they just wanted to travel, to see the other side of the world….They were probably scared off their face.” 

Sone thinks it’s important to remember those who fought in New Zealand’s wars; he points out that those who died were “sons and fathers and brothers and sisters…they all died for a purpose”.

“We’ve got to make the youngsters remember, because what they’re worrying about now is things they don’t really need to worry about. Like Facebook, so that’s why we’re trying to chuck the whole experience on Facebook.”

“I’ve heard a lot of speakers talk about Gallipoli and the War when I was young. Listening to them, I was like ‘I don’t even know’,” Sone says. The only thing I knew about Anzac was Anzac biscuits, so to get an opportunity to get to explain it in your own words, it’s pretty big.”  

That’s something the RSA is keen on too. David Moger says he doesn’t know what Anzac day will look like in 100 years, but he’s willing to bet that people will be engaging with the Anzac stories in a lot of different ways. Last week, the RSA launched the Shadow Battalion – a website where people can publicly honour the troops who landed at Gallipoli. 

More and more young people have become involved in Anzac Day services, David says, and that’s down to a change in the way that people commemorate the day, largely powered by technology.  He says more than 25-thousand mostly younger people have joined the shadow battalion.

ANZ funded the Shadow Battalion, giving rise to questions about the commercialisation of the day. Last week in Australia, Woolworths launched a campaign inviting people to create a #freshinourmemories meme, complete with their logo. It spectacularly backfired.

“There’s a big difference between a company like ANZ who are funding us a charity to run a project that helps people to engage in some remembrance in a very personal and individual and new way,” says David Moger, “from what Woolworths were trying to, which was to have a whole range of products named after Anzac on their shelves. So Anzac stubbies, Anzac t-shirts, Anzac beer openers, Anzac beer coolers.”

Here in New Zealand, you wouldn’t get away with that – and in fact, it looks like Woolworths won’t in Australia either. The term Anzac is protected by law against being used in business or trading. Don’t worry though, your grandmother’s biscuit recipe is safe – it’s specifically allowed for in the registration, provided it follows the “traditional recipe,” David says.

There are plenty of things that make Anzac Day contentious. There’s the politics of who gets remembered and who doesn’t. And every year, people question the very fine balance between remembrance and the glorification of war.

“When I stand there on Anzac Day at Dawn Parades and look around, I am not seeing people glorifying war…What I see is a real sense of wanting to commemorate and recognise and honour that service, and that’s what we come together to do.”

LISTEN: An outbreak of war commemorations: What are we remembering? 

Another of the youth ambassadors, Micaela Meder points out that coming to the centenary of Gallipoli, there’s a lot more awareness of Anzac Day. “These soldiers,” she says, “they deserve to be remembered for their sacrifices. They were so young. Why should they be forgotten, because the peace we have now is because of them.”

Micaela also found a soldier who shares her name – George Herbert Meder, who along with his brother Phillip served with the New Zealand Tunnelers. Only Phillip came home.

“How can we know why we’re living the way we are, why the world is the way it is now, and how we can go into the future if we don’t know how we got there,” Micaela askes. “Even though is seems like it was a very long time ago, and it was a very long time ago, there’s still impact now.”

WATCH: Radio New Zealand follows one family back to Gallipoli. 

That question is echoed by Jessie Chiang, 19. She has no personal connection to Gallipoli, but felt that she should learn its history. She says often people who are immigrants to New Zealand don’t feel like they belong. “I wanted to prove that you don’t have to have a personal connection to care about ANZAC day….Also, my Dad served in the Taiwanese Army, and my brother is in the navy.”

Jessie says bringing out the personal stories of the people affected by war is important. “It’s who we are, I think. This isn’t something that happened ten-thousand miles away from us – well, it is, but these are people we know…If we don’t remember them or their sacrifice, then why are we living here? Isn’t that what they fought for? And wouldn’t we do the same if we were placed in their position?”

Those personal stories are what Daria Malesic found too, working on WW1 Remembered: Sound and Light. She found photos of New Zealand soldiers standing in front of walls spray-painted in her own language in Trieste. “That’s a weird surreal thing just thinking ‘maybe my grandpa met the Maori Battalion’.”

She says she’d never have worked on a project she saw as “glorifying” war. “I hope that people see that we didn’t want to focus on just the bad, or any kind of glory or any kind of horrid mind set. It was more of the human element…So not the everyday ‘here’s a tank’, but more ‘who did this effect, and how did that affect them?’ And just giving a nod to the fact that it happened.”