Abstract
This article sets out to challenge conventional descriptions and explanations of war and teaching about war. It draws on raw data from three qualitative arts-based projects to illustrate the complexity of cognitive and affective understandings of the place of war, past, present and future, through the jarring dissonance of ‘mash-up’ – a strategy that deliberately juxtaposes text from varying sources on top, around and side-by-side with other text. It is best read aloud – more than once.
Introduction
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
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Over the past 3 years, I have been involved in three different research projects, each of them focusing on the idea of how and what to teach about war. Part of the reason for my interest in this has been because of the century commemorations of the First World War. It is also connected to my own interest as a young pacifist who went on to become president of the New Zealand Foundation for Peace Studies. As I’ve got older and the flames of my passionate pacifist youth have mellowed, I’ve wondered how to teach in a way that honours the sacrifice of those who died in war and yet provide a space to respectfully question that sacrifice. I remember the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) ceremonies of my childhood when soldiers of the Great War marched and I remember newspaper and radio accounts of Gallipoli as told by ageing diggers. These men are long gone and the ranks of the Second World War veterans are diminishing fast. As a teenager, I was disgusted by the militarism and the celebration of the glory of war, as I saw it, in the annual 25 April grog fest. It was a time of protest against the Vietnam War, and any form of militarism was frowned upon by many in my generation who saw this conflict as futile and immoral. Now, as I get up pre-dawn and make my way down to the cenotaph to honour my grandfather who fought at El Alamein and Monte Casino, I recognise the world isn’t as simple, as black and white as a young man sometimes sees things. Now, as I struggle to teach about war, I attempt somehow to come to terms with what it is to be a New Zealander and live in, and with multiple inconvenient histories. What was so simple when I taught peace studies in the early 1980s now seems so much more complex and difficult.
Three interlinked projects
Early in 2015, during the lead-up to the commemoration of the landing at Gallipoli, I researched alongside a group of 16 young people to pass on the stories of seniors in a retirement village who had been teenagers in the Second World War and who had parents or family members in the Great or First World War. Seniors and young people performed a play they devised together. It wasn’t just about the war, but about ANZAC, Kiwis and Aussies together, mates and what that has meant since:
They sang, they danced, they laughed, they wept. The play opens with the seniors and the young people on stage talking around a table as they make poppies for the commemoration services ahead. Men and women in the audience wear poppies and we sell them at the door.
I am also working with the University of Sydney, the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia on another war project entitled Embodying historical consciousness: History and drama in schools.
In it, we are working with pre-service teachers looking at how we might teach about the First World War. In each country, we are using the poem In Flanders Fields as our springboard. We chose the poem for multiple reasons. In each country we are researching in, poppies are central to Memorial Day commemorations. The poem was written in 1915 by a Canadian, John McCrae, a medical doctor who served in the Western Front and who treated Kiwi and Aussie soldiers. In our first workshop, a young man asks, Why do you use this poem that celebrates the English: that celebrates the terror they have made on the world?
For a number of years, I have worked in my wife’s class with 7- and 8-year-olds leading up to Anzac Day. In one of the poorer schools in New Zealand, we have played with the poem In Flanders Fields and used it as a way to think, to talk and to imagine. We stood by the entrance to the school. The memorial gates have been there for nearly a hundred years. Generations of children have passed through them every morning:
I didn’t know the gates had names on them. How come?
Research as ‘mash-up’
In research terms, one might consider this article to be the results or findings of a cumulative case study of these separate but linked projects. It isn’t. Instead, I am attempting to realise a felt sense of what it is like to teach about war, in different but similar contexts, rather than present any research findings in a traditional sense. Different from a bricolage effect of stitching together the various aspects of the work to make sense or meaning of them through an ordered approach, I’ve chosen to use the notion of mash-up. In musical terms, a mash-up is where, for example, a sound track is made that comprises the vocals of one recording placed over the instrumental backing of another. It is difficult for the listener to discern necessarily in the final product exactly where each part of the final tune has derived from. Order and sense isn’t reached through research as mash-up, but instead the intended outcome is a felt resonance through the interplay between each of the constituent parts. The resultant piece of research seeks interconnection and simultaneously deliberate dissonance to highlight and counter-pose each part of the research. A mash-up recording attempts in its apparent seamless switch a jarring of the senses. I deliberately then confuse and mix up (mash) different parts of the data without ascribing them to any particular case. The underlying rhythm is found in the poem In Flanders Field which is returned to in various sections of this piece as a counter-point to the rhythms of the various cases. The mash-up distorts the dated sentimentality of In Flanders Fields and its patriotic call to arms with the concerns of twenty-first-century New Zealand. It is as if a classical piece of music sits now behind a rap, lost but still resonating a truth behind the new lyrics.
Mash-up becomes an analytic tool as well. In seeking for the ways in which the data might be deliberately layered or, where serendipity allows them to collide in ways that haven’t consciously been arrived at, in the seeking for patterns or themes, but instead for where the layers of the work might startle into a different awareness, the mash-up becomes a form of bringing together the cases into a sum greater than the individual parts.
Each of the research projects asks questions about national identity and how that is shaped through war. They separately, and mashed up, show the place of story, the manner in which drama and the arts might tell, retell and shape those stories so that we might better answer the questions of who we are, who we have been and who we are because of who we have been.
A mash-up
So at the end of the war day do the soldiers go home? Do you think their mums made them their lunches? Do you remember the war? What might you need to know to teach about war Courage Courage? To get it wrong To get it wrong? You can’t just teach things that you want to teach These things are tricky, aren’t they? You don’t want to glorify war All that marching about and dying I’ve been teaching for twenty years Don’t worry once that door is shut its all yours I’d like them to know about poppies and why we use them
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place
Tell us stories you have in your family about war The noise bubbles around the room, everyone has a story, every person and every family touched in some way War: The universal constant Stories of love It’s how my granddad met my grandma It’s stories of telegrams, of boats fleeing, Of refugee camps, Of drone strikes Of old photographs in big chests Of ration books, Of black out curtains Of detention camps Of changing your German name Of big brothers, Of Iraq Of my sister killed in Afghanistan, Of I don’t remember. My mum does. That’s why we live in New Zealand. He was in the home guard, a rifle and 1 bullet The siren testing for all clear My gran’s family housed evacuees My granddad was in the Vietnam war. He used to talk about how many he killed. He was a chef. He was talking about chickens. My grandad said it was easier being shot at by Germans than living at home with his mother-in-law. S.H. Brown, Sydney Herbert. In the war they called him Shit house Brown, Monte Casino, El Alamein. Got busted to private twice. I remember him getting drunk at my sister’s wedding. Sitting in the bedroom telling stories and I didn’t listen. I didn’t sit with him and hear the stories released under a barrage of booze. And now of course it’s too late. And what might we tell them about Māori in the First war?
Pokarekare ana
Pokarekare ana?
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Corn ball song. What Pākehā
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sing when they get drunk overseas to claim something about being from here. No, it was, it is more than that They sang it, Farewell, farewell, farewell, sung by Māori as the boats left. The first boats in the first war.
They are agitated
the waters of Waiapu,
But when you cross over, girl
they will be calm.
So, I can tell you a story? Us Māori we went to war alright. It was our chance to prove we were New Zealanders. And we died, lots of us died. Stan stood at the start of the play. Feet solid but his hands trembling at his side. The medals on his chest included the insignia of the 28th New Zealand Expeditionary force, the famed Māori Battalion. He spoke the words of the Ode:
E kore ratou e kaumātuatia
Penei i a tatou kua mahue nei
E kore hoki ratou e ngoikore
Ahakoa pehea i nga ahuatanga o te wa.
I te hekenga atu o te ra
Tae noa ki te aranga mai i te ata
Ka maumahara tonu tatou ki a ratou.
Ka maumahara tonu tatou ki a ratou
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them
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Māori Battalion
March to victory…
And we will fight right to the end
For God for king and for country
Aue ake ake kia kaha e
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The memorial in Waiuku It lists all those in the area who died All those who died But there are 16 names missing They’re all Māori names If you make the play tell them that, tell them that I sat with Stan, And as the words of the song to the Māori battalion died down A young Pākehā girl stepped in to the light 16 names missing They’re all Māori names I saw the tears on Stan’s face Aue, Aue, moe mai, moe mai
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Sleep now, sleep now
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Loved and were loved, The room stills as I show them the picture of the train pulling out of the station. Can you imagine a memorial and under it these words are written Loved and were loved In small groups make a series of images You can tap in to the feelings/ thoughts of people in the image and hear what they think and feel? I’m lost without you? I’m doing this for you? They say there’s a point? Are you the point? What does Anzac mean to you? My mum makes those biscuits It’s a day off It’s a remembrance, of all those lives lost The facts, just the facts, that’s enough. Teach them facts only. Alternative facts? In a post fact world, what facts might I chose?
Fact: By the time the campaign ended, more than 130,000 men had died: at least 87,000 Ottoman soldiers and 44,000 Allied soldiers, including more than 8700 Australians. Among the dead were 2779 New Zealanders, about a fifth of all those who had landed on the peninsula.
Fact: In the wider story of the First World War, the Gallipoli campaign made no large mark. The number of dead, although horrific, pales in comparison with the death toll in France and Belgium during the war. However, for New Zealand, along with Australia and Turkey, the Gallipoli campaign is often claimed to have played an important part in fostering a sense of national identity.
Fact: My father hated Churchill. It wasn’t just Gallipoli to hate him for, there was Ireland as well.
Fact: Stuffed it up, sent us colonials in as cannon fodder. Fact?
Fact: He said, ‘Quarter was neither asked or given; parties of Australians cut off were killed to the last man; no prisoners wounded or unwounded were taken by the Turk’
Fact: To Churchill, being cannon fodder for the British Empire was a glorious sacrifice – it fuelled his faith that the British couldn’t be beaten. Fact?
By mid-September, when the entire British war cabinet was finally convinced the only option was withdrawal, Churchill protested that the size of the sacrifice in human lives so far could only be justified by victory: ‘It would be very hard to explain, particularly in the case of Australia, a sacrifice which had been incurred with no result’.
Fact: Churchill later claimed history would vindicate him, ‘particularly as I intend to write the history myself’. Ah alternate facts aren’t necessarily new.
A new ANZAC mission 100 years later is announced; this time the destination is no longer Turkey but Iraq. It will be Australian and New Zealand troops fighting terror.
The Honourable Hekia Parata in the Houses of Parliament on 11 February 2015 said, As the Minister of Education, I consider that critical for young New Zealanders, because we have a curriculum that says to them that these are the values of who we are. We play our part. We want them to be travellers. We want them to be explorers. We want them to be mindful of risk. We want them to be relationship developers. We want them to be communicators. And we should not turn away as a nation when that responsibility looks us in the face and says: ‘Will you stand alongside the allies whom, in times of both war and trade, we look to for those relationships?’ So, no, this Government will not turn away from those responsibilities, and it is important that not only we confront them in a timely fashion but we demonstrate to young New Zealanders that that is part of who we are. We are descended from people who played their part, who took the risks, and who were prepared to do what was necessary. And so, as the Minister of Education, I believe that our schools are playing their part and are making those contributions.
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So, if I’m teaching about war, are these the values I’m teaching? The values of playing our part, of being prepared to do what is necessary. Killing in a war is about building relationships? Going to Iraq is about travel? Dying in Gallipoli was about being prepared to take risks? Be a risk taker, is that what I want to teach children to do?
Isn’t it best then to leave it alone, leave it alone.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch;
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Monday 4 December 1916
My dear little Marjorie, I have only just received your little letter which Mamma sent with hers on Nov 19th. Do you remember that you asked me to be home for Xmas? I only wish I could but there are many more soldiers in our Battery who are more entitled to the Xmas leave than I am, so am afraid you will have to do without Daddy this Xmas. Santa Claus will come as usual. I think your writing and dictation just splendid, and your drawings are getting funnier than ever. I have pinned your crayoned tulips on the wall of my dug-out bedroom beside your photograph. Daddy is as comfortable as possible. I expect even you would get tired enough to go soundly asleep in this dug-out. It would be a change from your pink bedroom. Write again soon, dear, + send another crayoning to help cover the sand bags. Heaps of love & kisses, which you must share with Mamma and Betty.
From your ever loving Daddy
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I wonder what Marjorie wrote back
How old do you think Marjorie is?
Oh, about your age.
Do you think you might write back to him?
So do I tell them this then as well?
(A photograph of Gunner Wilfrid Cove’s daughters and a letter from Marjorie were found in his breast pocket when he was killed in 1917)
Is that too close?
Or is that the point of teaching this?
How do I assess the writing?
Leave it alone, leave it alone, let them write, just let them write.
Coming home,
Teach them what it meant to come home.
I remember my dad; he was a soldier in the first war. He came home f***ed up, like seriously f***ed up.
Can you create a movement piece that matches this music and its words?
And the band played Waltzing Matilda, as the ship pulled away from the quay
And amidst all the cheers, the flag-waving and tears, we sailed off for Gallipoli
And how well I remember that terrible day, how our blood stained the sand and the water
And of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay, we were butchered like lambs at the slaughter. Johnny Turk he was waiting, he’d primed himself well. He shower’d us with bullets,
And he rained us with shell. And in five minutes flat, he’d blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia. But the band played Waltzing Matilda, when we stopped to bury our slain. We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs, then we started all over again.
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The young people lined up in rows and they fell down, once twice and again they lie on top of each other, then they tidy the dead away, they carry the wounded down the gangplank, Australian words, Australian boys dead, remembered 100 years later by Kiwi kids They turned their faces away, the auditorium felt totally stilled as they moved. In the front of the audience sat the men and women, some whose fathers and uncles had come home from the First War, some who had come home themselves from other wars. We imagined together, we imagined the hurt, the pain, the cost. From the letter you wrote to one who was loved and loved Underline the words that if they were the only words that he might hear, he would hear these from you left at home. Memorise them At Anzac Day services the family place their poppies at the memorial, These two chairs represent that memorial, Stand as you think your character feels at the first Anzac day. Say the words he might hear You promised you’d come back I miss you, I love you, Adventure, adventure, I begged you not to leave us Don’t lie and say you did this for us. I am so proud. What have we learnt about Gallipoli? It was a really sad place People died and maybe we don’t really know why The Australians went to war too Were they on our side? Poppies come from there It was about New Zealand and war People died and got hurt and that’s why we remember it The soldiers didn’t get to go home at night.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.