Lest We Forget by Nick Karaitiana i had a dream last night, a dream so realistic and fantastic that I hardly know what to do about it. I have decided to put it down on paper. It is nearly three days since this occurred, and I have finally decided to go ahead with it. I have been back in town for nearly a week, having recently returned from the North Island, where my wife and I attended the unveiling and opening of the 28th Maori Battalion Memorial Hall at Palmerston North. To begin my story. It is Monday evening and I have just lit the fire in our lounge grate, and placed my TV in its usual place in preparation for an enjoyable evening's programme. I have made myself a light snack so that when it is supper time I have no need to go out to the kitchen and make it. So after all is prepared, I am settled down comfortably. My friends, please bear with me a while longer. The programme is ended, I have eaten my supper, and now for a pipe of my favourite aromatic before going to bed. But I am destined not to get to bed until the early hours of morning. I remember finishing my pipe, then waiting to see the fire go down a wee bit more. The embers in the grate are glowing and my tired eyes are gazing sleepily into the red coals. My thoughts make pictures down there in that glowing fire-box, pictures that take my mind back over the events of the past few days. My thoughts carry me across the sea, to a place where I see a great concourse of people gathered together with singleness of purpose: to pay homage and to honour a famous New Zealand fighting force, the 28th Maori Battalion. There is a strange expression on the faces of the kuias or elder wahines, and the middle-aged wahines, as they cry their lamentations and make their gestures of welcome in the powhiri: an expression of great pride and greater regret, mingled with a calm, unselfish humility. A funny thing is happening to me, everything seems to be changing. I am somehow being transported to somewhere in the bush; my chair has vanished and the room has faded away, and I am standing near a great timber sawmill. I am dressed as a lumber-jack. I do not know this place, but I have a feeling I have been here before. I can hear the hum and howl of great powerful saw-teeth tearing their way through the tall stands of timber which stretch for miles into the hazy distance, and I am pulling huge slabs of timber off a moving bench. Funny thing, I know I have never worked anywhere on a job of this kind. There are hundreds of men and machines working here, great log-hauling trucks of all descriptions. I am working in a very wet job. I am thinking of getting a change-over to something better, perhaps I may get into one of the trucks with my friend Robbi. Ah well, there is the whistle for lunch. I had better get cracking in case Mum goes rude. I am always late. So long. I live just a stone's throw away from the mill. Here we are. ‘Hey, no you don't, out you go, not on my clean floor. You boys seem to think that we mothers are here just to scrub and clean the house, so as you can walk in any time of day with your dirty boots on.’ ‘Aw break it up Mum, I'll be late. Oh, all right Mum, anything for a quiet life.’ ‘You are just like your Dad Wi. All you think I am here for is to slave all day and night.’ ‘Aw come off it Mum, you know that you are the sunshine in Dad's life.’ ‘You are just like your Dad, full of ballyhoo. He knows how to get around me. Come on now son, you'll be late as usual. Clean up, and sit up to the table. Quickly or the food will get cold, hurry now.’ ‘Gee, smells good too. You know Mum, the boss said….’ Hey the table, the whole place, everything is folding away, I must be going crackers. Everything is misty and hazy and now I am in the middle of a great plain or swamp, no it is a lake-side place. It seems to be different here, it is a sort of tourist resort. Hello, here is a building or hall. No, it's a meeting-house.