Anzac Day 2011

[Miss Chicken]

Since last Anzac Day, my uncle Bill, who served in New Guinea during WW2 has passed away. He is the last member of my family who actually went off to war. The generation that followed were too young for either Korea and Vietnam.

So I will remember those old soldiers in my family who are no longer with us

Uncle Bill
My Dad Roy (served in the Navy in the closing months of WW2)
My Uncle Ernie (WW2 vet)
My Uncle Bert (WW2 vet)
My great uncle Russell (WW1)

Also to my great uncle Roy. He arrived at Gallpoli on the first day. He was seriously wounded but returned to Tasmania only to disappear in about 1919. We believed he probably died in the Great Flu Epidemic aged around 25.

 

[Candlelight]

The one remembrance day I never forget.

Largely cos it's my birthday.

My great grandad died in the Battle of the Somme.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

http://www.smh.com.au/national/port...d-in-booze-brawls-and-sex-20100801-111f3.html

"Part of the reason for the terrible discipline of the Australian troops, Stanley says, was that ''these men were volunteers who brought with them into uniform the same ideas, attitudes and beliefs they had had as civilians. Right to the end of the war, the Australians still responded to the army as if it was an annoying employer''.


Ill-discipline and insubordination were the flipside of the famous mateship, larrikinism and independence of spirit that is celebrated in Anzac mythology. ''They were enterprising in battle but they were also enterprising in getting out of the things the army wanted them to do.''"

 

[opali]

In honor of the soldiers in your family, Miss Chicken.

...All words except those words were drowned
in the fresh babbling rush of spring.
In summer's dream-filled light one sound
echoed through all the whispering
galleries of green: Remember me.

Gwen Harwood

 

[donners22]

Pleasing to see it still has the support of the public. There was always a bit of doubt that it would have the same strength as the veterans of the world wars passed on, but the new generations have really picked it up.

 

[Captain_Nick]

They wear our flag like dresses and use the day as an excuse to bash muslims or black people. They've picked it up all right.

Anyway

Some wag came up with this gem at the game

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will have smashed Essendon."

And we did

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

They wear our flag like dresses and use the day as an excuse to bash muslims or black people. They've picked it up all right.

Anyway

Some wag came up with this gem at the game

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will have smashed Essendon."

And we did

Nick. How incredibly offensive to demean the deaths and sacrifices of young, gullible, naive boys in the service of a far off empire that didn't give a fuck about them.

 

[Captain_Nick]

It wasn't me! But I wish it was