My apologies to paid subscribers. I had placed a paywall in this article but it just didn't feel right restricting access. Rest assured the next newsletter will be for paid subscribers who fund it :)
Thanks for this Nick - it was particularly valuable to be reminded of the Armenian holocaust. I had not known that it began the day before and was proceeding while our men caught and died as did the Turkish soldiers. But other Turkish soldiers savagely killed innocents in Constantinople and elsewhere in a huge massacre. Nor did I know that New Zealand has not acknowledged it. Gallipoli resulted in Churchill being stripped of his Lord of the Admiralty and he was given a desk job in the “Civil Service” in Whitehall. He didn’t take but chose to serve as a trooper in the trenches. Where he rose through lower ranks to become a significant commander relatively low in the British Army.
No worries Nick, a good article for sharing. I also enjoyed re-reading "As fast as a leopard", which I had saved and read a number of times.
I am old enough to remember my father leaving for war duties. He was RAF, and had been sent to NZ with 5 other RAF personel to train aircraft engineers for the then newly minted RNZAF.
I had one grandfather who worked as an aircraft engineer, or similar, in the Pacific. My other Grandfather, Sid who I have spoken about in previous newsletters, fought in Italy.
I'm glad that you enjoyed "As fast as a Leopard", and that it is being read more.
While I knew of the Armenian genocide, I was unaware of the links to other wartime events involving our country. I have no time for war, past or present, it is so rediculously abhorrent I'd have been CO and gone to prison for ny stand.
My father fought in WW2 in Italy and North Africa.
My son married into a Japanese family.
War is a destructive expression of power, and ultimately pointless.
Tēnā koe Nick, I knew a little about the massacre of Armenians by Turkish soldiers, and in fact their displacement from what they regarded as their homeland. My understanding is that to survive many Armenians left on foot, a long March to find a safe haven ,badly clothed,and with little to sustain them,and of course many did not survive. I have heard that some NZ soldiers at Gallipolli did encounter a group of Armenian people in distress,and helped them out. I'm not surprised that the USA finally ,formally acknowledged the massacre of Armenians as being genocide.There has been a lot of lobbying for this from high profile Armenian Americans such as the Kardashians. Some Armenians living in NZ are unhappy that we pay respect to Ataturk in our Anzac Commemorations. To them he is a monster. I guess we are in a tricky position given the nature of our relationship with the Turkish government. And given the fact that we were part of an invasion force of their homeland,as a result of Winston Churchill's bright idea to "take the Dardanelles" . An exercise that failed horribly , at the cost of thousands of ANZAC, British,and Turkish lives. My father arrived at Gallipolli on a NZ troop ship at the tender age of sixteen. He had turned sixteen while in camp-15 when he joined up. Like many others he had put his age up. Coming off years of hard labour growing up on his grandparents farm, including working in their sawmill, he would have looked, and acted older than his age. He never actually left the ship to fight. I am not sure how long they stayed at obviously a sensible distance from the Turk's guns. Long enough for him to be awarded two different medals for those who served at Gallipolli. Eventually the decision was made to withdraw. I guess they did their job then evacuating the surviving soldiers off the beaches. From Gallipolli he was sent to Egypt, and straight into the frey. From the NZ made series NZers at war, Egypt was absolutely terrible. My father spent the whole of World War 1 in combat. He was gassed, and shot. He would be evacuated, patched up in hospital, and sent back to the frontline. From his war records we learned he had one stint in hospital with an STD. Quelle surprise.! I can't help feeling cynical about the countries you have listed as recognising the Armenian Genocide Nick. I know it is important to many Armenian people so for them it is fair enough. On the other hand most of those countires born through colonisation have pretty awful histories. The colonisation of the USA was most definitely genocide. From my reading it is claimed there is only 2-4% of the indigenous, Native American population left. The day an American President publicly acknowledges the decimation of the Native American population as genocide, as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the face of the earth for the land they inhabited. As a kid, I used to go to Saturday matinees with my brothers, which were usually comedies,or Cowboy and Indian movies where the cowboys were the heroes, and the "Indians" were terrible savages. These days we have movies like Wind River,and series like the Taylor Sheridan researched and written 1883,1923, prequels to Yellowstone ,and of course Yellowstone where some of the reality of how Native American people were treated is exposed.
This reporting of the Armenian Genocide gives me the shivers. In Trump’s US -and NZ if his extreme anti-intellectual anti-science views continue to get traction- who would be hunted down and killed?
The wise, the compassionate, the learned, the scientists, the teachers, the climate activists?
That’s all of us- the readers of Nick Rockel , Josh Drummond, David Slack, AJ Hendry, Emily Writes, Michael Moore etc.
The logical, intelligent, caring population would be destroyed. Leaving what ?
My apologies to paid subscribers. I had placed a paywall in this article but it just didn't feel right restricting access. Rest assured the next newsletter will be for paid subscribers who fund it :)
I’m a paid subscriber and truly don’t mind at all - a piece well worth sharing and I enjoyed a re-read of last years piece
Agree
Thanks for this Nick - it was particularly valuable to be reminded of the Armenian holocaust. I had not known that it began the day before and was proceeding while our men caught and died as did the Turkish soldiers. But other Turkish soldiers savagely killed innocents in Constantinople and elsewhere in a huge massacre. Nor did I know that New Zealand has not acknowledged it. Gallipoli resulted in Churchill being stripped of his Lord of the Admiralty and he was given a desk job in the “Civil Service” in Whitehall. He didn’t take but chose to serve as a trooper in the trenches. Where he rose through lower ranks to become a significant commander relatively low in the British Army.
I'm glad you enjoyed it Don. Yes, a seldom spoken of part of history considering the scale of what happened.
No worries Nick, a good article for sharing. I also enjoyed re-reading "As fast as a leopard", which I had saved and read a number of times.
I am old enough to remember my father leaving for war duties. He was RAF, and had been sent to NZ with 5 other RAF personel to train aircraft engineers for the then newly minted RNZAF.
Thanks for your thoughtful articles.
I had one grandfather who worked as an aircraft engineer, or similar, in the Pacific. My other Grandfather, Sid who I have spoken about in previous newsletters, fought in Italy.
I'm glad that you enjoyed "As fast as a Leopard", and that it is being read more.
While I knew of the Armenian genocide, I was unaware of the links to other wartime events involving our country. I have no time for war, past or present, it is so rediculously abhorrent I'd have been CO and gone to prison for ny stand.
My father fought in WW2 in Italy and North Africa.
My son married into a Japanese family.
War is a destructive expression of power, and ultimately pointless.
Thanks for this Nick, I didn't know. Very good programmes today on the Maori channel (always brilliant coverage on Anzac Day).
Tēnā koe Nick, I knew a little about the massacre of Armenians by Turkish soldiers, and in fact their displacement from what they regarded as their homeland. My understanding is that to survive many Armenians left on foot, a long March to find a safe haven ,badly clothed,and with little to sustain them,and of course many did not survive. I have heard that some NZ soldiers at Gallipolli did encounter a group of Armenian people in distress,and helped them out. I'm not surprised that the USA finally ,formally acknowledged the massacre of Armenians as being genocide.There has been a lot of lobbying for this from high profile Armenian Americans such as the Kardashians. Some Armenians living in NZ are unhappy that we pay respect to Ataturk in our Anzac Commemorations. To them he is a monster. I guess we are in a tricky position given the nature of our relationship with the Turkish government. And given the fact that we were part of an invasion force of their homeland,as a result of Winston Churchill's bright idea to "take the Dardanelles" . An exercise that failed horribly , at the cost of thousands of ANZAC, British,and Turkish lives. My father arrived at Gallipolli on a NZ troop ship at the tender age of sixteen. He had turned sixteen while in camp-15 when he joined up. Like many others he had put his age up. Coming off years of hard labour growing up on his grandparents farm, including working in their sawmill, he would have looked, and acted older than his age. He never actually left the ship to fight. I am not sure how long they stayed at obviously a sensible distance from the Turk's guns. Long enough for him to be awarded two different medals for those who served at Gallipolli. Eventually the decision was made to withdraw. I guess they did their job then evacuating the surviving soldiers off the beaches. From Gallipolli he was sent to Egypt, and straight into the frey. From the NZ made series NZers at war, Egypt was absolutely terrible. My father spent the whole of World War 1 in combat. He was gassed, and shot. He would be evacuated, patched up in hospital, and sent back to the frontline. From his war records we learned he had one stint in hospital with an STD. Quelle surprise.! I can't help feeling cynical about the countries you have listed as recognising the Armenian Genocide Nick. I know it is important to many Armenian people so for them it is fair enough. On the other hand most of those countires born through colonisation have pretty awful histories. The colonisation of the USA was most definitely genocide. From my reading it is claimed there is only 2-4% of the indigenous, Native American population left. The day an American President publicly acknowledges the decimation of the Native American population as genocide, as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the face of the earth for the land they inhabited. As a kid, I used to go to Saturday matinees with my brothers, which were usually comedies,or Cowboy and Indian movies where the cowboys were the heroes, and the "Indians" were terrible savages. These days we have movies like Wind River,and series like the Taylor Sheridan researched and written 1883,1923, prequels to Yellowstone ,and of course Yellowstone where some of the reality of how Native American people were treated is exposed.
This reporting of the Armenian Genocide gives me the shivers. In Trump’s US -and NZ if his extreme anti-intellectual anti-science views continue to get traction- who would be hunted down and killed?
The wise, the compassionate, the learned, the scientists, the teachers, the climate activists?
That’s all of us- the readers of Nick Rockel , Josh Drummond, David Slack, AJ Hendry, Emily Writes, Michael Moore etc.
The logical, intelligent, caring population would be destroyed. Leaving what ?