The chapel at the secondary school I attended stands as a memorial to former pupils who fought in the First World War; and many of its stained-glass windows are dedicated to those who fell in that conflict.

As a schoolboy, if my attention was ever diverted from the sermon, I’d look up at two of those windows, one depicting “The Good Samaritan” and the other “The Pharisee and the Publican”, and wonder why the phrase “And in their death”, beneath the first, could only be completed by the words under the second “they were not divided”.

“And in their death”, they were not divided”.

Joseph Keith Hunter and Ronald Douglas McLean lived near each other, in the same suburb.

They played together, and went to school together.

Ronald was Head Boy, and Keith Deputy Head.

There’s a photograph of them, seated together, on the steps outside their classroom.

They were best friends.

They enlisted to fight in the First World War; and, on the 15th of September 1916, in the Battle of the Somme, both were killed instantly by the same shell.

It’s believed the Headmaster of the day anonymously donated the money for the windows and wrote the simple inscription that links them together – forever.

Those windows remain as their memorial.

Directly beneath them is a Roll of Honour for those who fell in the Second World War.

My name of my uncle – my mother’s brother – is at the bottom left corner.

Like many New Zealanders of previous generations, he became a farmer; but also, like so many of his generation, he yearned to be a soldier. 

He was a volunteer officer in the territorial force; and when the Second World War began, was desperate to go overseas. 

He was frightened of only one thing: that the war would be over before he got there!

And, like so many of his generation, his life ended in the Western Desert at El Alemain; and he lies forever in what the poet Rupert Brooke called "some corner of a foreign field". 

That was his career; and it was all over by the age of 27.

Those stories are typical of, and could be repeated in so many Australian and New Zealand families.

As we noted yesterday at another service in the beautiful Anzac garden at the Rockefeller Centre, they are of “those women and men who gave their lives for their country … Men and women with our names on our faces, whose land and dreams we have inherited”.

They are those who “gave their lives for Australia and New Zealand, and for the freedom of humankind”.

They symbolise the unquestioning service of, and the sacrifices made, by the ANZACs.

Laurence Binyon was right; they don’t grow old; they are, forever, as in those photos, two happy teenagers seated on their classroom steps, a handsome young farmer in his soldier’s uniform.

But, when I hear place-names such as Benghazi and Tobruk again creeping back into our collective consciousness, I wonder how much we have learned from their stories and from their sacrifice.

By comparison with theirs, my generation was the first of the 20th century that was not called to fight in a world war. 

Just as the reality of global war shaped the two previous generations, so to did the lack of it shape mine; and, for that, and the peace that made it possible, I’m truly grateful. 

Most of us have been brought up in the tradition that the Dardanelles campaign was an ill planned disaster; but the truth is that, had it succeeded, it might have hastened the end of the war. 

The German Admiral Tirpitz wrote in his diary that “should the Dardanelles fall, the World War has been decided against us”. 

But, as we know, it achieved none of its objectives and 33,000 Allied and 86,000 Turkish troops died. 

New Zealand’s casualties were greater than the number of men who served because the wounded were patched up and sent back again and again, often to die. 

It may have been a military failure; but the word ANZAC now stands, in the words of one historian, "for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship and endurance.

Today the Gallipoli peninsular is a Turkish national park. 

Although Britain suffered even greater losses than the ANZACs, it is Australians and New Zealanders who visit it as a shrine. 

It is a humbling and ennobling experience to watch as young backpackers arrive, usually after many hours on a tour bus, to be at the place where their grandfathers - often great-grandfathers – fought, and where many died. 

Some do not even have a family link to Gallipoli; but all treat it with reverence. 

They walk, often in tears, to places that to others are just words on a map: Lone Pine, Hill 971, Chunuk Bair. 

As we know, before Gallipoli, Australia and New Zealand were seen - indeed, largely saw themselves - as British colonies. 

In the mud and blood of Gallipoli, both became nations.

Because there were always digging trenches, Australian and New Zealand soldiers became known as “diggers” (although today the term has fallen into disuse for New Zealanders, but not Australians). 

In 1918, a New Zealander, KL Trent, fighting in the French trenches summed it all up with these poetic words -

When I first thought of enlisting,
And courageously assisting
In this game the poet calls the sport of Kings,
I had dreams of martial glory,
Dashing charge with bayonet gory,
And a host of other brave and stirring things:
But, alas! for dreams deceiving,
And imagination weaving
Such a web of utter falsehood in my brain!
For my visions all are shattered,
And I have just become a tattered
Weary digger, working knee-deep in a drain.

War is a dreadful thing; even those fought, as was World War II, in a just and noble cause.

But war breeds heroes (often, ordinary people doing extraordinary things); it elevates service to nation and to a cause way above personal safety; it creates a national spirit that’s difficult, if not impossible, to replicate in peacetime; and war can breed great poets.

New Zealand and Australia had their share.

Banjo Paterson didn’t just do much to create the Australian legend; he also captured the spirit of 1914–1918, and particularly that of Gallipoli–

With all our petty quarrels done,
Dissensions overthrown,
We have, through what you boys have done,

A history of our own.

And, in 1941, Denis Glover, already an established New Zealand poet, found himself seconded to the Royal Navy, serving with distinction in Arctic convoys and later as a commander during the D-Day invasion, and was decorated for his bravery.

His poems from that period deal inevitably with war; and the title of one, written in 1945, captures all the pent-up feelings of a returning soldier: "On first sighting New Zealand after three years absence …".

I don’t think there could be two lines that better capture what we mark here, and are marking wherever Australians and New Zealanders can gather on this day that’s so special for us - the proud statement that “We have, through what you boys have done/A history of our own”, and the emotional, grateful moment of a returning a war hero, “On first sighting New Zealand after three years absence”.

It’s in thanks for what they “have done” in making nations of us, in giving us “a history of our own”, in gratitude for the sacrifice they made, in recognition of their legacy of freedom, and in appreciation of the fact that many did manage to make that emotional return, that today, right around the world, New Zealanders and Australians stand together and say, in beautiful simplicity, that “we will remember them, we will remember them”.

Hon Jim McLay
ANZAC Day Dawn parade Speech
25 April May 2011