Honouring the dead

What a thought-provoking Anzac Day special (Listener, April 24). Especially moving was David Mahon’s essay on his father’s war. Like his father, my father, Robert Patrick Murphy, served as a soldier with the 21st Battalion and was also reluctant to speak of the war, realising his children would have no understanding of it.

But he did write an account, on newsprint with a pencil, of his experiences in 1944 near Florence. I read it after his death. My brother, who had it in his possession, had not considered it particularly well written, but as I transcribed the fading writing, my tears flowed. It told of the terror these soldiers faced in battle as their comrades were wounded or killed and of the physical hardships they endured.

I had always imagined them to be forever brave and that they just returned home and got on with life. Obviously not. At least Dad wrote some of it down and maybe that was cathartic. His account is now in the Alexander Turnbull Library. I think he might have liked that.

Tamsin Webb
(Gisborne)

The Anzac Day edition was comprehensive and moving, a classic