By: Barry Soper | Tuesday, August 07, 2012 6:00 AM

War is a terrible thing, it's usually caused by leaders squabbling about ideology or about territory.

It extracts a terrible toll, particularly on a tiny nation like ours. Today our politicians will be unveiling plans for a War Memorial Park to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, where my grandfather fought with the Otago Mounted Rifles.

He had nothing good to say about war and even less to say about the British Generals - who he reckoned used our boys as cannon fodder. His own son went off to the Second World War, much to his absolute horror.

Helen Clark made pilgrimages as Prime Minister to the big battlefields where we sent our boys to fight and die in their thousands. Gallipoli, El Alamein and Monte Casino to name but a few of theatres where our men served, and some of them were there with us, visiting the graves of the mates so many decades on.

It's often been said they fought for king and country, but ask them and they'd tell you they fought for a sense of adventure, never knowing the full extent of the danger that lay ahead.

Even one of the old troopers was happy to meet a Rommel tank commander who was staying at the same hotel as him and who he'd fought against 60 years earlier. They happily walked along the beach at El Alamein together, talking about the futility of it all.

Over the weekend we've seen the futility of another two young men, shot in the prime of their lives, fighting in a country they would have known little about 10 years ago. It's a war that was initially backed by the Americans to get rid of the Russians in Afghanistan. At the time they preferred the inhumane Taliban who went on to rule a country that got the blame for breeding terrorism.

After the Twin Towers attacks the Americans decided the Taliban weren't what they thought they were and they were driven out of office.

New Zealand once again playing its part as a responsible diplomatic citizen and a friend of America joined the effort to steer Afghanistan along the road to democracy and over the past two years that road's cost seven young lives. The international forces will have left in just over two years time and the Taliban have shown they haven't given up the fight.

That's the futility of war - the only ones to see the end of it are the dead!

Photo: Getty Images