Recently I visited the Australian War Memorial with the Lindfield Year 5 and 6 boys. As we were looking through, I was talking about how my grandfather fought at Gallipoli, 100 years ago. One of the boys asked … “Did we win?”

Nobody really wins in wars. It’s more about who loses less. Nobody wins because on all sides good people die, innocent people die, civilians die, and families and individuals are damaged forever. Does anyone win? Not really. Some people survive but their hearts and minds are scarred for the rest of their lives. Did we win? 60,000 Australian soldiers lost their lives in WW1 including 111 Newington Old Boys and 2 teachers.

Perhaps a better question is what did we learn?
At first glance not much. WWI was called the war to end all wars but 20 years later WW2 commences and even though the Australian casualties are less in number there were 6 million Jews killed. Civilians not soldiers. 6 million people the entire population of NSW killed. Since that time there have been wars in over 50 countries.

What did we learn?
Turkish Australian Friendship Wall in Auburn shows that it is possible with time, effort, forgiveness and goodwill for former enemies to come together in peace.

The Bible says that God’s desire is that our weapons of war be transformed into farming equipment and that there will be no more wars.

I guess the most important question we can ask is … what can WE do?
We can start by choosing wisely each day and helping each other to choose to do good each day. We can choose … talking over fighting. We can choose … forgiveness over revenge. We can choose … kindness over hurting.

We can choose to bring the things of heaven to earth, to Wyvern. Simplistic? Perhaps but these small choices produce peacemakers, which is what we all want our boys to be.

Peter Morphew
Chaplain

Reginald Stamp – Peter Morphew’s Grandfather who fought at Gallipoli