Will technology overpower guns?

  Last week we commemorated Anzac Day, the landing of the Australian and New Zealand forces at Gallipoli. Of the 100,444 men who landed in the Cove, almost 17,000 were killed and during the war we suffered a 58% casualty rate. This was a huge price to pay by a country of just one million people. As I grow older I realise what an enormous sacrifice our soldiers made.

Since then they have done it again in World War Two and in numerous battles since.  I know it would be easy to say, ‘it’s not our war,’ but that would be like standing by while the neighbour’s house burned down.

On many occasions I have pondered how the Second World War affected my family and changed the way my parents’ stories played out. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why my father was so old when he married – 50. Then I realised that the First World War interrupted the normal course of things… university, marriage and family. He was too young to fight in that war but it shaped his thinking and he joined philosophical orders which preached peace rather than war. His family (English) were of a similar mind and they settled in New Zealand, in part to be away from the restless stirrings in Europe. He enlisted in the Medical Corp when the Second World War broke out. This was a non-combatant option without the stigma of being a conscientious objector. I also think he could not, with a clear conscience, ignore what was happening in Germany.

I will always recall reading a letter my uncle wrote to my grandmother just before Hitler declared war. It was a moving assessment of the situation in Europe and a pledge to move to New Zealand with his new wife so they did not get caught up in it. My father, meantime, was in Egypt attending to injured soldiers. I recall him saying, ‘I could never kill a man but being in the Medical Corp meant I could heal him.’ Although he never talked about it, I expect he also found there were those he could not heal.

So by the end of the war he was, like many others, without a base. I imagine he was asking himself what life was really all about. He had, in his time, seen two horrific wars that took its toll on his friends and family. His response was to join a religion that preached world peace. From then on, he was a dedicated follower of that religion and any philosophy that preached peace.

He believed that for world peace to be achieved, all that was needed was for everyone to dedicate their lives to it. Well, we all know how futile that belief was/is. I guess he believed that at the heart of all people lies a nugget of good. But so much of this naive belief relies on everyone thinking the same way and defining world order in similar terms. Most people know that while we might have an idealistic vision of how the world should run, there is a reality that usually runs counter to that.

But, I wonder, how many people failed to live the lives they dreamed of because war got in the way? Many, I would say. My parents included.

For the first time in my life, I understand fully what people mean when they speak of the sacrifices our parents made for us. I just wish my father’s dream of achieving world peace was realised, but the Middle East, Afghanistan and now Ukraine threaten all that. So I wonder how many dreams are being lost right now or how many lives are being diverted from fulfilling dreams they have.

All this makes me value the time I have, the freedom and the support I have to pursue my goals and my success without the interruption of war. We baby boomers are, without doubt, the lucky generation. So how do we make the most of that? I think we owe it to our families and future generations to do all we can to create a world that those who went to war on our behalf will proudly declare, ‘all the pain, all the sacrifice was worth the effort’.

Perhaps my father’s legacy to me is for me to appreciate what he lost to two wars and then to value the fact that my world has allowed me to follow my dreams. As we introduce the Style Guide™ to markets where English is a second language I get a thrill out of enabling people to communicate across cultures. Perhaps technology will do what war could never achieve - a world at peace.