So crown him with memorial bronze

From James K Baxter's Elegy for an Unknown Soldier

So crown him with memorial bronze among
The older dead, child of a mountainous island.
Wings of a tarnished victory shadow him
Who born of silence has burned back to silence.

Tomorrow we do not glorify the war. We remember the dead, and the living, who fought in wars, and drove ambulances, and cooked dinners, and lanced wounds, and held men who cried in the sleep for years afterwards. We remember children whose questions were never answered, women whose fiancees and brothers and husbands never came back, or came back transformed. We remember brave men who stood up for their beliefs and refused to fight. We remember brave men who stood up for their beliefs and fought. We know that war is hell. But those people who fought deserve our memories. This is my grandfather, Vic MacKenzie, who died before I was born.

All he would really say about the war was that it was terribly cold at Monte Cassino. In our family we also remember Bill Apperley, who served in the Pacific and was grateful to have managed to never encounter 'the enemy'; Ken Pomeroy; who was an aircraft mechanic due to his pre-war training, and also served in the Pacific and in Japan; Reuben Hannah, who like Vic fought through North Africa and Italy. And Hywel Wynn Hughes, who, like his University mates, considered registering as a conscientious objector. Instead he joined the Navy, and his ship was lost off Tobruk in 1942. He was 23 years old.

In our family, you tuck your poppy inside the Navy Wreath after the Last Post has played.

Tomorrow, Felix will put on his great-grandfather's medals and march in his Cubs uniform in St Heliers. The Cubs and Scouts will serve the returned service men and women tea and Anzac biscuits in the War Memorial Hall. We've done this since he joined Cubs. Before that, we went, each year, to the Auckland War Memorial Museum service. For, "How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?"

Tomorrow we will make Anzac biscuits and feijoa crumble and sit in the sunshine and read war poetry and listen to angry young men singing about old men sending young men to fight and die.