anzac day

[StormInateacup]

They shall grow not old
as we who 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 remember them.






LEADER
Lest we forget.
ALL
Lest we forget.








But we did forget, you know.

We forgot the most important bit. We forgot to nourish the intention with which this day was first commemorated.

We forgot that those who founded this day of national mourning on April 25th 1919 were the returned men - the veterans of Gallipoli and the Somme. Of The Dardenelles and Ypres. Of Amiens and Villers--Bretonneux. All the bloody, bitter, pointless campaigns of that Great War - the war to end all wars, so they had hoped when they got back.

We have forgotten that they meant to make it a day when we all recalled that never again ought we to go to battle for a corrupt and hierarchical foreign administrator.

It was our first war as a nation. It helped define who we were and who we might become.

How utterly we have betrayed the memory of those men who founded this day to warn us all not to be fooled as they had been. To never again take part in a Colonial bun fight for more possessions that the old European hegemony could leech for the gold and minerals and human labour they had sought so ravenously for so long.

It was all they could hope I suppose, to keep them sane. In a word where PTSD had not been yet recognised. In a world where you got back and got on with it. Where men didn't cry and scream their terrors into the nights of sleepless drunken flashbacks.Well thsy did, but no one spoke of it. It was shame to speak of it. It was weakness and weakness is not a thing Australian men have ever been allowed to indulge themselves in.

It was a world where they coughed their gassed lungs up and died at 30 of its effects and no glorious soldiers death to comfort their loved ones. Where they ate the .22's and drank their livers to the point where one day they simply shat it out their arseholes. They screamed on the inside and those around them, friend and stranger alike, pretended they heard nowt.

If there had been any point at all to the suffering, the loss, the appalling jettisoning of human dignity, human compassion, human kindness that had been that war these returned men thought, then it must have been that no one ought ever to go through it again.

The poor deluded bastards.

[BadBeast]

I guess we all died a little in that damned war.

[admin]

Of course people forget.

"What has that ancient war to do with me?"

"It's a part of your Heritage, where you came from."

"Hey, want to grab a beer?"

That which does not affect us directly is of no consequence, until the time comes, that because of our repeated ignorance, we pay the price of repeating the same mistake.

[StormInateacup]

Apr 24, 2012 13:53:41 GMT -5 BadBeast said:

I guess we all died a little in that damned war.

Being high scorer on Black Hawk Down don't make you a veteran of owt but the PlayStation Olympics, sweety.

Just sayin'.

[StormInateacup]

Trench Sing-A-Longs were popular.

They knew a thing or two about antiwar songs on the Western Front and Turkey too.




Pity we're still having to sing them:
ETA: This clip is actually the blokes of the Royal Ulster Regiment
who have served extensively in both Iraq and Afghanistan.They sing alright I reckon.


This really happened on the western front.

[bigwillybear]

Here in the Fen we celebrate Prozac day instead cos its less depressing.

BTW
What do you call and Australian in a suit

The defendant

[StormInateacup]

Apr 24, 2012 18:05:25 GMT -5 @bigwillybear said:

Here in the Fen we celebrate Prozac day instead cos its less depressing.

BTW
What do you call and Australian in a suit

The defendant

Q:How do you know you're on a flight full of English people??
A: When the engines are turned off you can still hear loud whining.

An Australian woman and an English lady are travelling on a bus together.
The Australian woman says "Who are you traveling with?"
The English lady says "One should never end a sentence with a preposition dear"
The Australian woman says "OK. Who are you traveling with, bitch?"



And may I just point out in closing, that this here below is an actual photo of an extant restaurant in Suffolk..

.and you've got the unmitigated gall to condescend to me?
You're a right





oh and willy

[admin]

[StormInateacup]

I want to take the time to commemorate a real war hero here. Not a man who took out a machine gun emplacement or successfully stormed an enemy trench. He took no prisoners of great note who revealed great secrets and shortened the war.

He did something far more remarkable. Far more rare. And a thing which took far more courage.

He quite simply lay down his rifle and walked from the field of battle.

He was Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick. The man depicted in the photo of the statue above me, with an injured soldier on a donkey.



John Simpson Kirkpatrick was born in Britain but later moved to Australia. In August 1914 he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, serving at Gallipoli the following year as Private John Simpson in the 3rd Field Ambulance, Australian Army Medical Corps. He served from the time of the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April until he was killed in action on 19 May.

Simpson became famous for his work as a stretcher-bearer. Using one of the donkeys brought in for carrying water, he transported wounded men day and night from the fighting in Monash Valley to the beach on ANZAC Cove. He did so, according to Charles Bean, through "deadly sniping down the valley and the most furious shrapnel fire". He was killed by machine-gun fire while carrying two wounded men and was buried on the beach at Hell Spit on may 19, 1915.

The war diary of the 3rd Field Ambulance commended "the excellence of the work performed by Pte Simpson continuously since landing". Simpson was posthumously Mentioned in Despatches. His first donkey was known as Abdul, Murphy, or Duffy. Reports on that name vary.

From then on he became a part of the scene at Gallipoli walking along next to his donkey, forever singing and whistling as he held on to his wounded passengers, seemingly completely fatalistic and scornful of the extreme danger. He led a charmed life from 25th April 1915 until he was hit by a machine gun bullet in his back on 19th May 1915.


In these amazing 24 days he was to rescue over 300 men down the notorious Monash Valley. His prodigious, heroic feat was accomplished under constant and ferocious attack from artillery, field guns and sniper fire. Quoted from some of his officers:

"Almost every digger knew about him. The question was often asked: "Has the bloke with the donk stopped one yet?"

"He was the most respected and admired of all the heroes at Anzac."
Captain C. Longmore, in 1933, remembered how the soldiers "watched him spellbound from the trenches... it was one of the most inspiring sights of those early Gallipoli days."

Colonel John Monash wrote

"Private Simpson and his little beast earned the admiration of everyone at the upper end of the valley. They worked all day and night throughout the whole period since the landing, and the help rendered to the wounded was invaluable. Simpson knew no fear and moved unconcernedly amid shrapnel and rifle fire, steadily carrying out his self imposed task day by day, and he frequently earned the applause of the personnel for his many fearless rescues of wounded men from areas subject to rifle and shrapnel fire."

Jack was recommended for the Victoria Cross, officially, through his unit, on June 3rd 1915. He was also recommended for the highest military honours by Colonel (later General Sir John) Monash, Australia’s greatest commander of the First World War. Monash, commander of the 4th Brigade at the time (where Jack was operating) was an eye-witness to his activities and sent in a lengthy submission to Divisional Headquarters on May 20th.

Unfortunately, the senior medical officer at Anzac, Colonel Howse VC, had given faulty instructions to the junior officer preparing Simpson’s citation.

He was recommended under the wrong category of heroism and consequently his VC request was denied.

This may have been a deliberate "error" on the part of the CO. Little known in the official version of the legend passed down to all Australian school children is this fact:

Simpson refused to fight at the times when he was deemed by the Commanders to not be needed as a medic. To his mind - quite rightly - there was no moment during which some man or boy did not need him to tend their wounds or transport them to the waiting evacuation ships.

He was harassed so much about this requirement to fight that at last he lay aside his rifle and walked from the Australian trenches. He took up residence with the Ghurkas, who regarded him as mad and therefore as a Holy man.

They protected him from the ire of the Australian military commanders and it was from their trenches he set out each day to do his humanitarian works. He was loved and admired by everyone on that hellish Peninsula - apart from the Senior Commanders, who saw him as a dangerous subversive and a bad influence on other troops who might follow his lead and lay aside their weapons.

It was only over time as they observed the man's heroism and came to realise quite how many lives he had saved and how good he was for the morale of all the troops that the commanders softened in their attitude to him.

Officially he was listed as a deserter. It was the court of public opinion which in the days after the men returned from that horror and spoke of him with love and reverence which cleared him of this heinous and erroneous charge. The Army chose to co-opt his legend as a handy tool of propaganda. For recruiting purposes.

You see the poor, dumb bastards from Australia were a 100% Volunteer force. The only ones in the conflict that could be said of. We never had conscription here until well into WWII.

In July 1967 Australian leaders tried to correct this tragic error by sending a petition to the British War Office, signed by Prime Minister Harold Holt, the Governor General, the Chief of the General Staff, and other leaders on behalf of the Australian people, requesting that a posthumous Victoria Cross be awarded to Private John Simpson Kirkpartrick. The request was denied, on the grounds that it would be setting a dangerous precedent. This was incorrect. The precedent had already been set. In 1907 two British officers, Lieutenants Melvill and Coghill were posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for their actions in South Africa, twenty-eight years previously.

It is now almost four decades since this petition was tendered by Australia’s leading citizens. The denial of the request by a handful of people in Whitehall was an unconscionable slight on Australia’s Political and Military leaders and of the people they represented.

It begs the question: "Why is an award from another country more important than any honour we may bestow on our own heroes?".

The Victoria Cross is the highest Military honour which can be bestowed on any member of the armed forces in a Commonwealth Country. Its inscription reads simply

For Valour.



I cannot envision anyone, from any war who more rightly deserves that phrase being applied to them.

[admin]

Fascinating story.

[marisol]

You made me teary!

[StormInateacup]

Apr 25, 2012 16:38:34 GMT -5 marisol said:

You made me teary!

Makes me teary too. It is one of the saddest and yet most inspiring of war stories the world over. For it shows us all that humanity may survive and even thrive in the most appalling of situations. It gives me hope for us all that people like him have existed. That if we come to recognise and honour such men as he we may even find more to emulate him.

That's why I told it here.
He sought no military honours on his short life. He commanded the love of ordinary people in an appalling place and in an appalling time for his courage and his beautiful, defiant spirit.

I think no military award can honour his memory so well as the lasting approbation of ordinary people. It is quite important to me that his memory lives on for the RIGHT reasons...that his legend is not co-opted to serve the spirit of military colonialist aggression .

Not when it was this spirit which he so represented the antithesis of.