‘The poppies blow…’
Today the world remembers those who lost their lives during the battle at Gallipoli, Turkey, in 1915. They were chaps who landed at the beaches under hopeless odds and who kept themselves and their mates going even when they knew it was pointless…
For those of us in Australia, what we celebrate is the bravery and independence of spirit of those Aussies who went to fight. Not because we want to glorify war but more because we want to say that we shouldn’t have lost anyone on either side of the Gallipoli theatre.
We also want to pay homage to those men on that beach who refined and defined our national identity. It’s a spirit that has stayed with us ever since.
We are Australians who are proud, courageous, never take ourselves too seriously, will always help a mate out – and will mostly laugh at life.
I love owning that spirit.
I want it to be who I am, who my family and my family’s family are and will be, and so we trotted off this morning in awful weather (they say our weather always changes to winter on ANZAC Day) to watch the Defence Forces gather and to marvel that in a city of 200,000 people, so many turned out to pay their respects.
We walked up to Saint David’s Church past the poppy trail at Parliament House…
part of a jovial but respectful crowd who cheered all the different battalions of men, women, dogs and horses who marched.
It wasn’t a sombre parade, although I did have a tear in my eye when the elderly Returned Servicemen and Women went past in cars, waving out the windows.
But we all had moments where we wondered why lessons aren’t learned through history and why men’s avarice and intolerance is still as strong now as it has ever been in the past.
As we walked back to the carpark, we noticed a huge Royal Australian Navy ship HMAS Canberra moored in the place reserved for the summer cruise ships…
and I recalled one of last night’s news stories where Cunard’s QE II
is currently in the Dardanelles with families of the fallen and how handfuls of red poppy petals were cast from the ship across the water to honour ‘the centenary of ANZAC Day’…
lovely words Prue
Thank you so much, Libby.
I think that’s great that the folk of Australia recognize the bravery of their Servicemen and Women, and what it cost them.
I wish I could say the same for the USA. In general, the bulk of the population support the vets. but the scandals in the VA, mistreatment, and the public insults by some students and others are despicable. The treatment of those who insure their freedom show a callous disregard for what they sacrifice in order to protect. They don’t realize that anyone who goes into the Service essentially signs a blank check, that can be cashed at any time for anything up to and including their life! Those unhappy with our wars should realize the military goes where and when the National Command Authority tells them. Reminds me of Kipling and TOMMY and THE LAST OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. My Dad served in the British Army in WW 1 in Palestine, and I served in USAF in the “50s. Luckily, we diidn’t have that problem.
Gordon, lest you think our government has support of returned servicemen and servicewomen sorted, I would say they haven’t. Personnel returning from theatres of war around the world – chiefly Afghanistan – are not served as well as they could be and should be. Likewise, when our service personnel returned from Vietnam, there was a disgraceful lack, and worse, a PUBLIC lack of recognition.
To see the people in the streets on Saturday was a sign, I think, that the voting public (and voting inAustralia is compulsory) expect so much more for defence personnel than they are getting. If the government could take any message at all from the crowds across the nation who turned out for ANZAC Day, it is that they vote and they also ‘expect’. But governments being governments will continue to send our men and women to war for political gain and then not follow it through.