Heather Roy's Diary

Lest We Forget.

ANZAC Day
This Friday is ANZAC Day, and I'll be attending the Dawn Service at the Wellington Cenotaph before joining my Territorial Army unit - 5 Wellington, West Coast, Taranaki Battalion Group - as part of a firing party for the service at the Johnsonville RSA.

This is becoming routine for me as a territorial soldier, and it is quite something participating in ANZAC day in uniform.

ANZAC Bridge
The rest of the weekend will be anything but routine. I will fly to Sydney as part of a group of New Zealanders attending the unveiling of a statue of a Kiwi soldier that will join an Australian 'digger' that has stood lonely guard for years at the western end of what used to be Sydney's Glebe Bridge - the bridge was re-named the ANZAC Bridge in 1996 and Australian residents of New Zealand origin asked to have the NZ put back in ANZAC.

The statues are huge bronze sculptures standing 14 feet high. The Kiwi, however, will be two inches taller - a little artistic licence taken by sculptor Alan Sommerville, who was born and bred in New Zealand and farmed in Central Otago for 30 years before jumping the ditch to work in a Sydney foundry. A foundry is useful training for a sculptor - Mr Sommerville also produced the first statue of the 'Digger'.

Both soldiers will be dressed in Gallipoli uniforms so the most obvious difference will be the hats: a slouch hat for the Australian and a 'lemon squeezer' for the New Zealander.

The New Zealand government made a significant contribution to the cost of the Kiwi ANZAC sculpture.

Nancy Wake
It is well known in New Zealand that the most highly decorated man in the British Commonwealth Forces was Charles Upham, whose Victoria Cross and bar was - and still is - a source of considerable national pride.

What is less well known is the fact that Nancy Wake, the most highly decorated woman on the Allied side, was born in Roseneath in Wellington.

At age two, Nancy moved with her family to Sydney. While this means that the Australian's could claim her as their own - as they did with such Kiwi icons as Phar Lap and pavlova - New Zealand's claim is anchored by Nancy's Maori ancestry.

Nancy's father was a journalist who abandoned the family when she was young, leaving her mother unsupported. In these difficult circumstances, Nancy grew up and developed something of a reputation as a rebel.

At age 16, she ran away from home and found a job as a psychiatric nurse. She worked quietly at her profession until bequeathed 200 pounds by her Aunt Hinemoa - previously the black sheep of the family. While the story of how the black sheep acquired such a large sum of money remains untold, Aunt Hinemoa did the world a great service when she left her legacy to Nancy Wake.

Nancy left for Europe where she joined a wealthy, cosmopolitan set. It wasn't all parties, however, with Nancy working as a journalist and travelling much of Europe. It was in Vienna that she saw Nazi cruelties firsthand and was left in no doubt as to which side she was on.

In those days, Nancy's main asset seems to have been her beauty - she married a wealthy French Industrialist and they settled in Marseilles. She might have lived on quietly as Madame Fiocca but for the onset of war.

No one - not even Nancy - knew what steel lay beneath the surface, but it was revealed by the cataclysm that was about to be unleashed. After the fall of France, Nancy became involved in smuggling pilots into neutral Spain. To her great credit, the Gestapo put their highest bounty on her head. Few who came under the suspicion of the Gestapo survived and, in 1943, Nancy had to smuggle herself out of occupied France. The Gestapo came for Nancy but took her husband Henri, who died under torture rather than reveal her whereabouts. She didn't learn of this until it was all over.

In Britain Nancy re-trained and parachuted back into France for combat missions, but ran into a problem straight away. She became caught in a tree and the Maquis agent who was charged with finding her commented as she swung helplessly in the air that he wished all trees bore such beautiful fruit.

Nancy was awarded high decorations for valour by Britain, France and the US - the last was for saving US airmen.

In the 1990s it was drawn to the Australian Government's attention that Nancy had never received an Australian medal. Apparently, the reason was that she was still a New Zealand citizen. Perhaps it is time for an ANZAC medal?