Remembrance Day 2008
G'day all!
It is still Remembrance Day here in the States, except they call it Veterans' Day instead. (Dangit, I forgot my minute's silence at 11am today.) The newspaper back 'ome has been educating me about the Western Front in The Great war, the War to End All Wars. Except it didn't. Anyway, the population of Oz back in 1915 was just under 5 million. Then a whole generation of young men up and went to war. 5% of Australia's then population. The ones that came back were never quite the same.
(I think this bombed out building, shown in a postcard sent home by Pop, probably sums up how many of the men felt.)
Take my Pop. He may have been a little eccentric, though we have no evidence of this whatsoever, before he went to Gallipoli and thence to the Somme (Western Front) but after having been gassed several times and having half his face blown off, with his own teeth and shrapnel presumably in his brain, he could be described as a little odd. He came home with one kidney and effectively half a lung. He met my Granma whilst convalescing from a stomach operation. They lived across the street from each other and could look into the other's room! Ooo err! Anyway the rest is history leading to my family and the oddest of the bunch, aka me! There is a fine history of being a bit loopy in my family, though Mum tried her best to be a normal 1950s housewife.
What's my point? Well it is the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI, and I just wanted to dip my lid to those who went, fought and came back to help create Australia as it is today. OK, they are all dead but without them, we would prolly not be here and the world would be a very different place. I dips me lid to WWII vets too - did my fellow Aussies know how many times Darwin was bombed? Or that the Japanese commander who set up the Pearl Harbour raid also organised the Darwin ones? I knew Darwin had been bombed but not so many times. I guess they were being thorough.
One day I will go to France and see Flanders fields and the poppies, maybe track down some of the places shown in the postcards Pop sent back, and I will go to Turkey, particularly Gallipoli, and pay my respects to those who went before.
Lest we forget.
(ps. I have finished objects! But I don't have pics. I've been a bit busy these last few days. Soon, though, soon you can see my pretties!)
anon!
It is still Remembrance Day here in the States, except they call it Veterans' Day instead. (Dangit, I forgot my minute's silence at 11am today.) The newspaper back 'ome has been educating me about the Western Front in The Great war, the War to End All Wars. Except it didn't. Anyway, the population of Oz back in 1915 was just under 5 million. Then a whole generation of young men up and went to war. 5% of Australia's then population. The ones that came back were never quite the same.
(I think this bombed out building, shown in a postcard sent home by Pop, probably sums up how many of the men felt.)
Take my Pop. He may have been a little eccentric, though we have no evidence of this whatsoever, before he went to Gallipoli and thence to the Somme (Western Front) but after having been gassed several times and having half his face blown off, with his own teeth and shrapnel presumably in his brain, he could be described as a little odd. He came home with one kidney and effectively half a lung. He met my Granma whilst convalescing from a stomach operation. They lived across the street from each other and could look into the other's room! Ooo err! Anyway the rest is history leading to my family and the oddest of the bunch, aka me! There is a fine history of being a bit loopy in my family, though Mum tried her best to be a normal 1950s housewife.
What's my point? Well it is the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI, and I just wanted to dip my lid to those who went, fought and came back to help create Australia as it is today. OK, they are all dead but without them, we would prolly not be here and the world would be a very different place. I dips me lid to WWII vets too - did my fellow Aussies know how many times Darwin was bombed? Or that the Japanese commander who set up the Pearl Harbour raid also organised the Darwin ones? I knew Darwin had been bombed but not so many times. I guess they were being thorough.
One day I will go to France and see Flanders fields and the poppies, maybe track down some of the places shown in the postcards Pop sent back, and I will go to Turkey, particularly Gallipoli, and pay my respects to those who went before.
Lest we forget.
(ps. I have finished objects! But I don't have pics. I've been a bit busy these last few days. Soon, though, soon you can see my pretties!)
anon!
It is hard to imagine what it must have been like. Scares the willies out of me. My dad never talked much about the war, but I don't think it made him eccentric. (Though maybe me??)
ReplyDeleteIt is still so emotive. I watched some celebrities talking about their families' participation and it was all horrific.
ReplyDelete