Backbencher

On April 25th, a story reported on Radio New Zealand called War Stories in Stone; commemorate fallen soldiers that are memorialized in stone on ANZAC day. The report focuses in on two men who have both written books on two small communities around Otago. On man, Doug Makeye researched a war memorial stone that had the name of one man that fought in the Boer War, sixty in World War I and nineteen in World War II. He stated that there were ten people according to a roster, of soldiers in these wars that were not listed on the monument for reasons unknown. It started as a small project and with time, as people found out about it, suggested that he included more people then just the first few that he wanted to research. Another author, Keith Scott started to do research on a family member who had served in New Zealand military. It was after finding thorough records of men from a small town near Otago, which he decided that their story was worth telling. He looked at the question of what was going on in their community during the war. It was the general idea that in such a small community, where all the soldiers had grown up together and knew each other well, that the community would get behind them and support them in a time of war. His research proved otherwise. Conflicts in the community arose but it was the bonding of the soldiers and their lives are patriots for New Zealand that made a different community. Scott's idea behind this book was reintroduce a collective memory of this lost group of men. Like many of the monuments nowadays, they have become pieces of stone and metal that list dates and names but rarely tell the full story. What these two authors are doing in New Zealand is not only honoring past veterans but also giving more meaning to a monument.