Very hard to imagine the youth of today (the all about me generation) stepping up for their country today, sad fact isn't it. :(
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC)
Rest In Peace
Our heart felt Thanks to all- for our freedom.
we just had an agressive attack here at work, AKs, shotguns and hand grenades...
Rossco
Not completely so Hoony. My boy stepped up for 8 month war zone duty in middel east. Yes stepped up. He had a choice.
Lets also remember those on active duty as well.
Many many thanks for a hugh dept we owe the ANZAC's.
Thank you.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.
Lest we forget.
We lost 4 aircrew in a crash heading to the dawn service in Wellington today, makes the day even more sombre around here
Rest in peace guys
Very hard to imagine the youth of today (the all about me generation) stepping up for their country today, sad fact isn't it. :(
Not completely so Hoony. My boy stepped up for 8 month war zone duty in middel east. Yes stepped up. He had a choice.
Lets also remember those on active duty as well.
Many many thanks for a hugh dept we owe the ANZAC's.
We are the lucky ones enjoying the lives that they gave theirs for. And also to the ones who carried the scars of what they went through, we can only imagine.
Lest we forget.
Very hard to imagine the youth of today (the all about me generation) stepping up for their country today, sad fact isn't it. :(
Not completely so Hoony. My boy stepped up for 8 month war zone duty in middel east. Yes stepped up. He had a choice.
Lets also remember those on active duty as well.
Many many thanks for a hugh dept we owe the ANZAC's.
I agree with Hoony, we aren't talking about your boy, it's the youth of to day, I wouldn't give you 2 bob for them.
I always find it difficult to hold composure when I hear the Last Post played, the throat tightens and the eyes swell.
I grew up. I do NOT attend. I will NOT clap. You will not understand. I don't care.I can understand that and I can respect that but I think you are focused on the war and the violence. I don't see that. I see a bunch of guys who were prepared to serve their country and were prepared to give up so much for the greater good. They gave up their youth, their health, their comfort, so much more and were prepared to give their life.
we just had an agressive attack here at work, AKs, shotguns and hand grenades - I shit myself I can tell you - these guys truly earned the title heroes because of what they did/went through - I learnt the other night I couldn't do it - and my hats off to the guys/girls in Iraq/Afghanistan etc as we speak!
Rossco
it saddens me the "lukeb1961" has such a poor attitude towards the men who gave him the ability to express his opinion. if it was not for them, you might not be here! have you give that some consideration?I am proud to here those words Nada coming from the heart, your grandfather would have been so proud of you, its a shame you didn`t meet him, he died to young, thank you to the men that saved our country, We will never ever for get. But as for you Likeb1961, you need to re-think your comments.
we need to take pity on uneducated people such as "lukeb1961" and maybe help him understand what has been sacrificed for him.
"Lest we Forget"
My family has had men killed in three wars, and others who endured the Japanese. As a small boy I spent alot of time with a man who had served at Gallipoli and France and suffered shellshock and hideous nightmares for 60 years.
It doesn't take an Einstein to realise WAR ruined that young lad on a camel in front of the pyramids for the rest of his entire, tormented life. My mother hated the Japanese until the day she died. Did that help bring her young uncles back?
Is any of that a reason to clap and cheer WAR?
Luke
I don't agree AJ in recent times the 'Spirit of Anzac' has been a repeated theme in the general media. Very little discussion is devoted to the ugly reality of wars. Today's view of wars is of weapons with 'surgical precision' drone strikes and the 'war on terror'(what ever that is) That is that mostly civilians not soldiers die. Yet we have no monuments to them.
Is any of that a reason to clap and cheer WAR?
Do we parade our Doctors and Nurses? Our school teachers, our Professors? Our Civil Engineers? Do we get an epic telecast each year of our Surf Life Saving Clubs through the city?
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.
ANZAC Day not for faggots and towelheads
Posted on April 28, 2011 by geoff
At least, not according to the Australian Christian Lobby. Sure, their main man Jim Wallace used slightly more careful language, but that was the sentiment of what he said. “Just hope that as we remember Servicemen and women today we remember the Australia they fought for – wasn’t gay marriage and Islamic!” was the thoughtful missive he left via Twitter on the 25th.
I generally couldn’t give two shits in a waffle cone what people have to say on Twitter, the place where relevance goes to pick out its funeral clothes in pale blue. But once in a while you get something juicy, someone reposts it, and suddenly giant kerfuffles are exploding over everyone. (They’re kind of like soufflés.)
....
He went on to explain that this revelation of his came about after sitting with his father, a veteran of Tobruk and Milne Bay, who said that he didn’t recognise this Australia as being the one he fought for.
....
The extra-bad taste in the mouth from all this, though, is his invocation of the ANZACs to back up his point. We shouldn’t have gay marriage because ‘the ANZACs’ didn’t fight for that. We should keep an eye on dodgy Muslims because ‘the ANZACs’ sure as hell didn’t fight for them either. It was in the same vein as a particularly lunk-headed individual named Mick (natch), commenting on my pokies article, that restrictions on people’s gambling meant “the anzacs would be turning in their graves.”
To quote another commenter’s rejoinder, “Everyone loves making the ANZACs say what they want them to. They’re kind of like Jesus like that.”
And spot on. As recent years have ticked by, I’ve increasingly come to loathe ANZAC Day. Not the soldiers it honours, but the modern way of supposedly honouring them. Before you get all down on me for my disrespect, check my credentials. Through high school, my uni major, and my honours year, I specialised in Australian First and Second World War history. I’ve read dozens of biographies and memoirs by servicemen, I’ve interviewed numerous WWII vets, and spent countless hours in archives here, in Canberra, and in Singapore. I spent a year in Thailand and Borneo researching prisoner-of-war camps, walked across northern Borneo to retrace a forced march of Aussie soldiers, then drove back and forth several times to follow up on leads. I wrote a book of poems based on some of the stories I found, and I’ve read from it far and wide to try and make sure those stories are heard. My best friend since primary school is an infantry corporal. I probably have a more direct emotional connection to that history than just about anyone who now chooses to invoke its name when April rolls around.
The fact that I do care so much is why ANZAC Days have increasingly become a time to cringe. It’s the resurgent nationalism and mythologising championed by Keating and Howard. Sentimental crud like ‘the ANZAC spirit’, gets thrown around by every chump with a lectern. People get tagged with it for playing football. The modern understanding of the phrase makes it more and more synonymous with a kind of Aussie boganeering. Thousands of young Australians go to Gallipoli to pay their respects by getting shitfaced, watching rock concerts, unrolling their sleeping bags on the graves of the dead, and forking off the next day leaving the place completely trashed for the Turks to clean up. Much like 1915, but with more piss. It’s a short step from this ‘spirit’ to the Aussie pride that saw flags tied on as capes down at Cronulla a few years ago. It seems to appeal to the same demographic that have made “fork off, we’re full” such a big seller down at Bumper Sticker Bonanza.
The most recent dawn service I went to sounded more like a school assembly, with the officially-voted Most Boring Prick on Earth conducting the service, then the tokenism of some Year 12 from an all-girl’s private school reading us her revelations after a trip to Gallipoli. The same myth-heavy sacred-worship shite. The ANZACs were this, the ANZACs were that. No, Hannah Montana. The ANZACs were a bunch of different people. The ANZACs weren’t one thing. ‘They’ didn’t believe in this or that, ‘they’ didn’t have these characteristics. They were a group of individuals.
The sanctity shtick is also popular with politicians who want to push a particular view. ....
All of which brings us, bereft of a segue, back to Mr Wallace. His Twitter post, he said, “was a comment on the nature of the Australia [his father] had fought for, and the need to honour that in the way we preserve it into the future.”
So let me just make sure I’ve got this, Jim. Because soldiers fought and died in 1943, we need to maintain the values they had in 1943. Or do we maintain the values of the ones who fought in 1945? But hang on, they fought and died in 1915 as well… and 1914. So do we wind our values back to then? Do we bring back the Australia Party and the Northern Territory Chief Protector of Aborigines?
Let’s settle on the 1940s in general – Milne Bay and all that. And look at the values of the 1940s. This was an era when it was ok to smack your wife around a bit if she gave you lip. If you went too hard on her too often, then people might tut disapprovingly, like they did with a bloke who kicked his dog. But the odd puffy cheek was nothing to be remarked upon.
This was an era when women were supposed to show respect to men as the heads of the households and their natural superiors.
This was an era when you could pretty casually rape a girl who ended up somewhere alone with you, because if she’d got herself into that situation she was probably asking for it. Girls who said no or changed their minds were just playing hard to get. You know women, right? So fickle, so flighty. It was an era when the Australian occupation troops sent to Japan post-war were involved in the consistent rapes of Japanese women. Not traumatised vengeful former combatants, mind you, but fresh recruits, straight out of training.
This was an era when capital punishment was legal, and conscription was encouraged. This was an era when dodgy foreigners were kept out of the country by being made to sit a test in a language of the examiner’s choosing. Oh, you don’t speak Aramaic? Sorry, you failed. This was an era when Aboriginals weren’t recognised as people. Despite having been here when everyone else rocked up, they weren’t even given citizenship till 1967. Twenty-two years after the war had ended.
Were these the values that our Aussie heroes fought and died for too? Or were these not-so-good values, ones that we can discard? Where’s the distinction, Jim? Where do your values end and your values begin?
Well, guess what. I don’t want to live in the 1940s. I don’t want to live in 1918. I don’t want to brush off Vietnam, Korea, Malaya, because they were morally ambiguous. I don’t want to be part of a culture that makes people saints. I want to respect them for being people. I don’t want to live in a society where people are encouraged to hate each other, either. That kind of hatred is one of the most corrosive things in existence.
Well thank you Nathan for that crap. ::)
Once again you have shown clearly that you are NOT one who I would like to be associated with. :o
less words and greater silent RESPECT is needed, " Lest We Forget"
so if you dont agree dont respond.
Brings it all home doesnt it Firko, we are so lucky to live here.yes we are mate
I met a lovely Vietnamese family at this mornings dawn service. The granddaughter of the 80 odd year old dad of the family (who spoke little English) told me that he had insisted that his family attend every Anzac service since he'd been in Australia. She said that Grandad fought alongside Aussies against the Vietcong and felt that he "owed" it to his Aussie mates who died trying to unite his country. The old fellas 10 year old great grandson proudly wore all of his Vietnemese medals but Grand dad wore just two medals, one he's received from the Americans and the other from Australia. I would have loved to have known why he'd been honoured by three countries in the same war but I don't think the old bloke would have talked about it, even if he had posessed a better grasp of English. The pride on the old warriors face when a small group of Aussie Vietnam vets came up to shake his hand and give him a hug was priceless. His sons and grand daughters were all crying with pride...........and so was I.
I met a lovely Vietnamese family at this mornings dawn service. The granddaughter of the 80 odd year old dad of the family (who spoke little English) told me that he had insisted that his family attend every Anzac service since he'd been in Australia. She said that Grandad fought alongside Aussies against the Vietcong and felt that he "owed" it to his Aussie mates who died trying to unite his country. The old fellas 10 year old great grandson proudly wore all of his Vietnemese medals but Grand dad wore just two medals, one he's received from the Americans and the other from Australia. I would have loved to have known why he'd been honoured by three countries in the same war but I don't think the old bloke would have talked about it, even if he had posessed a better grasp of English. The pride on the old warriors face when a small group of Aussie Vietnam vets came up to shake his hand and give him a hug was priceless. His sons and grand daughters were all crying with pride...........and so was I.+1 more
Well Put Firko ,
Not afraid to say it Made me tear up
Grand dad wore just two medals, one he's received from the Americans and the other from AustraliaI was reminded by my friend who went with me to the service that I'd made a mistake. The two medals the old fella wore were one from Australia and the other from France, not America as I said.
I'd like to follow up on these medals and gather more info, but no idea where to start..
Thanks Diggers ;).
Tough blokes back then. they sacrificed lots for our freedom. many of them 18 years old too
Very hard to imagine the youth of today (the all about me generation) stepping up for their country today, sad fact isn't it. :(