Chaplains in the army, navy and air force are an often overlooked body, but one whose efforts have brought incalculable solace and guidance to generations of service men and women.
Selected from across Christian denominations, chaplains provide pastoral care, counselling and spiritual guidance for all New Zealand Defence Force personnel and families. They work in military bases here or on active deployment overseas.
Chaplains are commissioned officers, although in reality they eschew rank to ensure there are no barriers between them and those, religious and non-religious, who seek their support. While they carry small arms for self-defence, they are officially non-combatants. The NZDF currently has 24 full-time chaplains and also a team of part-time reserve chaplains.
Eleven New Zealand chaplains have been killed while serving in battle or have died afterwards from injuries, eight of these occurring during World War 1.
Chaplain-Major William Grant was the first, shot and killed in August 1915 at Gallipoli while tending to injured soldiers of both sides with Chaplain-Captain Charles Dobson and while wearing a Red Cross armband.
According to the latter’s diary, Chaplain Grant had been ‘‘dressing a Turk with a badly shattered thigh and shoulder’’ when they fatefully decided to look for New Zealand wounded a bit further ahead from the trench they were in.
During World War 2, Chaplain Allan Charles Keith Harper was killed by a shell at Monte Cassino in February 1944.
At a 2015 memorial service, his daughter, Suzanne McPherson, said during three-minute lulls between shellfire he would ‘‘rush out into it to minister to his men who had been wounded and not worry about getting out of it himself’’.
The moral and ethical dilemmas of war, and its intersection with religious belief, have been brought sharply into focus by the recent actions of United States President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Iran and Lebanon, not to mention the razing of Gaza.
Mr Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and War Secretary Pete Hegseth have embarrassed themselves and their country with their infantile view of war as a computer game and by trying to argue the ‘‘just war’’ thesis with no less a figure than Pope Leo XIV. Mr Hegseth’s so-called biblical passage was actually from the movie Pulp Fiction.
Put simply, the ‘‘just war’’ theory is that war can be justified if it is a last resort using proportional force to defend against aggression or to intervene on humanitarian grounds, and one ultimately seeking peace not the seizing of others’ land or assets.
There are always the age-old questions: why does God allow wars, with all their violence and killing? Why doesn’t God stop them? Why doesn’t God sort out the truly guilty parties?
Such theological questions are way beyond the scope of a humble newspaper editorial. But their very existence reveals the beliefs of many people that wars and religion are linked.
That view also extends further for some — that religion is the cause of many wars and without it, perhaps, humans would be able to live in some kind of paradise.
It is hard to argue against that interpretation when we see what is happening in the Middle East.
However, it is generally recognised that many conflicts are far more to do with greed, fights over resources and land and water, the bolstering of dictatorships or their fall, or colonial expansion, than religion, even if that is often the Trojan Horse used to justify violence.
The chaplains of New Zealand and the world are among the real heroes in these awful conflicts. Their work is often overlooked and under-appreciated, precisely because that’s how they want it. Their humility and relief fully deserve widespread recognition.
As the sun comes up on another Anzac Day, let us especially remember all those quiet heroes of war, whose words of comfort and acts of kindness on the battlefield gave succour to their injured and dying comrades.
