Speech
ANZAC Day National Commemorative Service
E nga mate, nga aitua, o koutou, araa o matou, ka tangihia e tatou i tenei wa. Haere, haere, haere.
To the dead and to those being mourned, both yours and ours, we lament them and farewell them.
Tatou te hunga ora, tena tatou katoa.
To us, the living, greetings to all of us.
89 years ago, after the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps suffered terrible losses in the Gallipoli campaign, our countries chose to mark the anniversary of the Gallipoli landing each 25th of April to commemorate those who had died.
Since then ANZAC Day has been a special day because of the size of the losses we suffered. In both our military histories, there had never been anything comparable.
In that one mission at Gallipoli alone, 2,721 New Zealanders died - more than during the 25 years of fighting, now known as the New Zealand wars. More than 4,700 New Zealanders were injured.
What New Zealand didn't know at the time was that worse was to come. Other battles in World War I, particularly on the Western Front, then World War II, Korea, Vietnam, right up to recent times. The last New Zealand soldier to die in action, Private Leonard Manning, died in East Timor in July 2000.
Today is the day we grieve for all those New Zealanders who have died or been wounded, sacrificed to this deadly disease called war, for those who gave a precious part of their youth, who saw and heard things we cannot imagine.
We are devastated by the deaths of those close to us. But we feel anguish too for all the thousands and thousands of soldiers we do not know by name or by face who died in action.
Many families never got the chance to bury the bodies of their dead sons. Too many of our soldiers never returned home, even briefly, to say goodbye and to feel the ground from which they came.
Today is a day of many emotions, among them sorrow, guilt, pain - and pride. It is also a day of disquiet, a day when we think of a new generation of young men and women who serve our country in nearly twenty places of conflict around the world, from the Solomons to the Middle East.
Today we pray that our nation, our soldiers and our future generations will be spared the terrible fate of those New Zealanders who died for us and for our country. And today we renew our commitment to protecting and promoting peace here at home and in those places around the world where we work to help achieve that elusive dream.
Lest we forget.
No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.