Warning: This post contains graphic language and descriptions of conflict and violence.
My father's middle name is also mine. Dad was named after 2 of my grandfather's (Pops) mates from his Australian Army service during the Second World War. My middle name, my father's, and that of my own child are in remembrance of that man, my grandfather, and many others.
I imagine that my father is not the only person of his generation (or indeed any other) to be named for fallen mates, but out of respect for these men and their families, I will not include their actual names.
Pops, the grandpa we saw every week, almost never spoke about his service as 'A Rat of Tobruk'; the following is cobbled together from what little he did say to different people over many years.
Warning: They landed by sea at night into a surrounded Tobruk and went immediately forward to where they thought the trenches were, but in the rubble, confusion and darkness, ended up actually in the German lines. The first indication they had of their mistake was their 'squad leader' (sorry, I don't know the correct term) being shot through the head from behind.
Warning: They spent the rest of that night fighting their way back into the Australian trenches, and then two days fighting to get back to the point where they could retrieve his body. When Pops grabbed his dead mate by the ankles to drag his body back to the main trenches, both feet came off in his hands; the body had decomposed rapidly after two days in the desert sun. (I believe they then may have used a blanket to retrieve his body.)
Warning: On their first night in Tobruk, one of his best mates was killed shot through the head right next to him, and then retrieving his body to have that happen...Pops barely mentioned the hours of fighting to get back into their own trenches, the fight for his own life, because it meant nothing to him compared to what had happened.
I know the "Thousand Yard Stare"; I saw it up close as a young child in a man I loved and trusted as my gentle grandpa, and understood from a very early age the reality of the violence and the horror. It is unquestionably a major factor in my 'avowed pacifism' (for lack of a better term).
Warning: The other mate died a decade after the war in the Daws Rd Repatriation Hospital. He had a lower leg wound that became gangrenous, and across many years, suffered a series of amputations from ankle to knee to hip, to eventually die without ever leaving hospital after the initial wound. My father was nearly 8 years old when the man he was named after 'Died of Wounds'.
These things did not happen to me; I cannot begin to understand how these things really affect a man, but I grew up looking at a man who did.
Pops never attended an ANZAC Day march or ceremony; to him the day was an un-neccesary reminder of the loss of good men, a memory that was with him every day. He was openly critical of the whole process and those who participated, but then ultimately embraced them all with the observation 'but if that's what they (veterans) need to do to deal with it all, then I understand' (paraphrase)
He did not want to hear about it and be reminded of it, and he was deeply critical of politicians and others he perceived to be 'unworthy' participating, and the subsequent posturing and pontificating, but he knew what it was that others (veterans) might need to talk about and commemorate, and that those lost must never be forgotten.
In his honour, I challenge the reality of 'ANZAC' and Gallipoli that we are presenting to our children. Media commentary has gone part way there, 'this was us invading Turkey' and 'it was in the wrong spot', etc, but still falls well short of the reality.
I wish I could have afforded at the time or exactly remember the title of a book called 'Greatest Mistakes in History' (something similar) that on the back sleeve made a reference to Winston Churchill's disasterous Gallipoli plan.
Gallipoli itself was technically the wrong landing place, for an attack on Turkey, that was designed to distract from other landings. Troops from many nations of the Empire, not just Australia and New Zealand, were effectively sacrificed to make things easier for British troops elsewhere.
I'll leave it to proper historians to define the European Imperial aspirations, alliances and conflicts that had waged for centuries that led to young Winston sending men to Gallipoli, but there-in lies the truth.
I know I'm a deeply cynical person, but I genuinely reject the notion that this sacrifice is to be celebrated as 'The Birth of a Nation'; I believe this is itself a cynical manipulation to foster the sub-concious 'nobility' of sacrificing oneself for ones nation and/or the Empire.
It is simply not my place to tell others how they do or don't feel or what right they have to feel that, etc, this is just my experience and stated out of respect for my own ancestors and what they believed and what they experienced.
My uncle was drafted to Vietnam on the 'Birthday Ballot' but then failed the physical, and Pops said it was the happiest day of his life, bar none.
My Pops was a hero like any other. I think of the people lost and those still losing children, partners, parents, etc in the modern age, and of Pops, and I weep.
Lest We Forget, but it's alright to not want to celebrate, or even participate. And the band played Waltzing Matilda.
This Arvo: TFTIM A War Hero - My Papa, Group Captain Charles Nicholls
No sarcasm, no nonsense, by any definition, by any label; Papa was one of New Zealand's most highly decorated pilots during the Second World War, but almost never spoke of his experiences, and also never attended ANZAC Day.
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