ANZAC day - 2017

[mrpackethead]

ANZAC thoughts.
Very proud and thinking about the family members who I knoew served in areas of active conflict. Grand-dad Williamson who served in the NZ infantry in Palestine and Egypt, ( loosing his brother at his side ). Grand-dad Frazer who served in the Pacific with the RNZAF, with Gt Uncle George. Also Grandma Frazer who served in the WAF ( i think with her sisters? ). I know in more distant times there were family who served in WW1 at both Gallopi and Passchendaele.
More recently I also remember my Dad, who served in Iraq after the 2003 invasions in Basrah, in a humanitarian roles, trying to make life better for the innocent people who had got caught in between the craziness. He was born on ANZAC day, so he always joked he got a holiday on his birthday, but actually in later years the joke was turned on him, as he was the officiating Chaplin at the ANZAC service in Tonga for a good number of years.
As i now am very 'middle-aged', the likelihood of me ever going to the front seems more and more distant. My thoughts turn to the younger generations of our family.. Could they ever have to face the terror that my grandfathers did? This world has become a crazy place and the risk of a mis-calculated strike is a real possibility.

I hope for a better, safer world. Was the effort of our forfathers in vain?

[Muttley Snickers]

ANZAC thoughts.
Very proud and thinking about the family members who I know served in areas of active conflict......

I hope for a better, safer world. Was the effort of our forefathers in vain?

I remember my late grandmother telling me once how my late grandfather was missing in action believed dead whilst serving in Borneo, she explained that he crawled out of the jungle months later riddled with bullets in his back but did survive and made a great recovery, he never spoke about it to me but had many close mates through the local RSL and also a radio group for returned servicemen, very well respected he was.

They were a bloody tough bunch back then.   



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[tautech]

Yeah, impossible for us of another generation to comprehend the misery and suffering they sacrificed for us.
My grandad served in WW1 in Egypt and lost an eye in a spud fight on the troop ship on the voyage home. 
In training the command wanted him to be a sniper such were his shooting skills but he would have none of that and stayed as an infantryman.
He still was a crack shot and won a # of prizes at clay bird trap shooting clubs.

Lest we forget.

[VK3DRB]

One grandfather fought the Germans in France in WWI. He got shell shock, but I remember him as a terrific grandfather, always kind and generous and a real character. A very practical man who was much loved.

Another grandfather fought the Italians in Libya in WWII. After fighting there, they shipped him of a New Guinea to fight the Japanese where he got malaria and dysentery. Before the war he was a whizz with maths apparently, and a good family man. During the war, he was a signalman. But New Guinea wrecked him. There was no support for PTSD back in Australia. I only remember seeing him as a hopeless drunk when I was a kid. He was so drunk, I'd see him crying into his grog regularly, urinating on the kitchen floor. My grandmother suffered a lot with this alcoholic. Shortly before his death in 1972, he fell under a moving train in Hawthorn, presumably drunk.

An uncle of mine was in the AIF and went to Hiroshima to help clean up after the USA dropped the atomic bomb on the good citizens of Hiroshima. Some days later he was posted to another place called Nagasaki. He never talked about what he saw, not even to his own family. We knew about Hiroshima, but only found out about Nagasaki at his funeral. Even his daughter (my cousin) was not told about Nagasaki.

We own ANZACs a debt of gratitude. IMO, it is disrespectful that if ANZAC Day April 25th falls on the weekend, there is no pubic holiday in lieu of the date, but the Australian government declares the day off for everyone to celebrate the old Queen of England's birthday every year on a Monday when it is not even her birthday .

On the other side - literally - my wife's uncle fought against the Allies in Libya and was killed in action - no body found. The Poms bombed a train station in Italy where crowds of civilians were going about their business, where my wife's aunt happened to be at the time. There was no trace of her body to be found after they obliterated the train station. My father-in-law fought the Russians in the Ukraine and Russia, where he almost starved to death. When he returned to Italy, he became a partisan and fought against Mussolini. From those days on, understandably, he only had contempt for all politicians and after he emigrated to Australia insisted the way forward for his family was hard work and education.

Australia allows the former enemies - the Turks and Italians - to join in the ANZAC day marches. The Japanese however are not allowed. The Turks even have an RSL right here in Melbourne.

Politicians cause most wars, and I guess there would be far fewer wars if politicians were somehow forced to send their own kids or siblings to the front line first.

[SeanB]

Dad was a POW in Germany, shot down over Lake Constance, going to deliver a parcel. Recovered in a Austrian hospital ( now a hotel on the lake, he went there on business, and saw his old room again 50 years later) and escaped with the help of the staff, stole the commandants car and hightailed it across the border with a friend of his. Then got arrested in Switzerland as they wanted to send him back, so he punched the cop and tossed an inkwell at him, which got him in front of a judge as he wanted. Landed back in the UK and went to North Africa and from there to Burma.

Mom was born in Poland, 12km from the Russian border. She was a POW from 1939 to 1944 when Stalin closed the camps, and had to walk with the family to Tehran from somewhere in Siberia. She hardly ever talked about that time.