Thank you.
Lest we forget.
A solemn day for me too, with family currently serving. I had a father and a father in law that served. They taught me that real men don’t shit on their mates. When you are in hell, that is all a man has, his mates and the value of their word. Ray also muttered a couple of times when we were pissed hanging off the bar at the West End Hotel, that the Owen Gun he was issued with in 1945 became a good friend too, after he had learnt to keep it clean. I have known plenty of old Diggers, some that suffered badly from their memories. No matter what, my father in law Ray, was always pretty happy, except for Anzac day, a great example of what a man can be. He never told anyone what they should do, he just lived his life how a man should live it.
At the end of his old age, cancer ridden and on the gear, he for the first time spoke of his earlier experiences with the enemy in Papua New Guinea. The enemy that he had no other choice, than to dispatch with his Bayonet. It was a time when I saw true sorrow in a man’s eyes, even though he had hated them with a nearly quite passion for their barbaric atrocities, lest we forget, the truth. He did his job and then carried the burden throughout life quietly, never loading it on to his beloved wife of nearly sixty years.
Needless to say, I, as no doubt we all are, am totally in gratitude to those who enlist and those who have stood and fallen before them, so not only can we can live, but live with a freedom of choice.
Brave Men and Women, we are in ore and we humbly thank you.
and thoughts for the families and freinds of all involved in todays NZ tradgedy.
