ANZAC Day and My Dad

It's ANZAC Day in Melbourne. It's wet and cold.  I know I'm not the only one who has been a bit overwhelmed by all the focus on ANZAC Day this year.  The media hype has been unrelenting.  And you know what, I don't like it.  I don't like war.  I particularly don't like that I'm made to feel unpatriotic because I don't get teary when we talk about Gallipoli.

I am saddened by the lives that were lost at Gallipoli, all those young men heading off into a horror that they did not understand, fighting in a country that we had no quarrel with.  Killing tens of thousands of Turks for no good reason and losing thousands of young Australian lives.  Causing untold misery to the people left at home, the mothers, the fathers, brothers, sisters and lovers.  Causing long term trauma to the villages and local Turks who were witnesses to the carnage.

And for what?  Because some hare brained politician thought it was okay to send soldiers off on some wild goose chase to forge a path through the Dardanelles.

From Dad's photos from the Middle East

However, ANZAC Day is an important day in memory.  My Dad always marched whether it was in Melbourne, Albury or wherever he happened to be at the time.  As a kid I would go and stand on the sidelines and watch.  As I got older often Mum would take Dad into the march then come to our place and we'd watch it on television and wait for the 2/23rd to appear.  Once we saw Dad marching, medals clinking, surrounded by his mates we'd turn the tele off and enjoy ourselves until it came time to pick Dad up from he reunion.  He'd always be quite happy, a bit pissed as were most of his mates and we'd bring him home, often dropping off a few of his mates on the way.

He loved coming back to our place, loved it best if it was a cold day and we had the fire going.  He didn't talk much about the war but he'd give us the goss on all his mates and sing some of the old songs - my favourite was:

 Around her head she wore a yellow ribbon, she wore it for a paratrooper far far away, far away... 

Yes he started off his war service with the paratroopers, but for some reason he couldn't leave with them so he joined the 2/23rd an infantry battalion based in Albury.  He went to the Middle East and was in Tobruk.  I am lucky enough to have some letters that he wrote back to my Mum while he was over seas.

HIs letters show me a man who was a bit bamboozled by it all, who didn't cope well with regimentation and who maintained his sense of humour all the way through.

My favourite bit in one of his letters is about a time he'd been injured:

I happened to be in the vicinity of one of Jerry's shells when it came over.  Thought i had joined the Air Force for a while, but when I came down realised I was still in the footsloggers

He goes on to talk about his recovery and the hospital then says:

When you are in the trenches you hate the Ities and Jerrys like poison, but once you capture them or they surrender you feel quite sorry for them.  I came down in an ambulance from the front alongside a wounded Itie.  A few of my cobbers had been killed the night before, and although I felt like shooting the Itie at first, before we got back to hospital we were quite good cobbers.  Couldn't understand a word he was saying, but we had some fun.  He used to call me 'Tom Mix' don't know why though.

Seems to me to sum up the craziness of war, fighting someone who has been designated an enemy for whatever reason, then realising that really they are no different from you.  

Anyway Dad. thought of you today, the fire's going there's a leg of lamb in the oven and I wish I could share it with you and Mum.  I'll have a glass of port afterwards to toast you and try to avoid all the reports of today's tourist invasion of Gallipoli.

My brother Harold, has sent me this history after reading this blog and responding a question from one of his daughters. Both he and my other brother Frank were in the army at different times.  So this gives the correct history, interesting how I got things quite confused......

He was then around (when a photo my niece asked about was taken) 24 or 25, in 1940-41 He was a temporary sergeant in 2/22nd Battalion when he was sent to Portsea to do a PTI (PHYSICAL TRAINING INSTRUCTORS), when he returned his Battalion had left and he was transferred to 2/23rd Battalion reserves, and as there was no posting for him as a Sgt, he became a private again and went to the Middle East with a large group of reinforcements. He arrived after the Tobruk siege but took part in the pivotal battle of El Alamein, and many other important battles. He was wounded twice in the arm, but after treatment in field hospitals, returned to fight.

He travelled to M East on the Queen Mary and returned on the Queen Elizabeth. 

He then volunteered for the newly formed Paratroopers, and after training in NSW was based at an airstrip In FNQld at Mareeba. His Paratroop Battalion, was held there in reserve if the Japanese had landed, but they were not needed in combat. After Mum (Nana) was attacked late at night in wartime Melbourne he was transferred back there on compassionate grounds. They were married on 6/5/1944 almost a year before I was born. Dad had a clerical posting in Melb until he was discharged.

saying goodbye to a good woman

If you don't like reading about death or dying don't read this post.  This post is a tribute to my mum who died a little over a month ago.  She died after lying in hospital unconscious for just over a week, after having a cerebral haemorrage.  Her life was hard, she was one of twelve children in a family that was far from comfortable, her mother died when she was 18, she helped look afer her younger sisters and brothers, she was attacked by a man with an axe on her 22nd birthday and sustained injuries so serious she had to learn to talk all over again.  But she went on to get married, and had me and my two older brothers, travelled overseas for the first time by herself in her 70s and generally had a full life full of love, joy and hardship until she died at 90 .

We  recently had a celebration of her life, where her remaining brothers and sisters gathered with our extended family of grandhcildren, great grandchildren and assorted family and friends to say goodbye.  We made speeches, drank champagne and danced the Pride of Erin.

Mum (wearing the hat) with some of her brothers and sisters

So as I was sitting in the hospital with Mum and watching every one of her grandchildren visit her and talk and share memories of her with each other and share memories of their times together, it made me think of the stuff that binds us together as family, as friends, as part of a community.

Mum with my grandchildren

And I thought that family is about those threads that connect us, that are made up of shared memories, of stories, of times of sadness and loss, times of frustration and sometimes anger, times of great joy and celebration.  I thought that the threads are created by love, by friendship,  by shared activites, by caring, or just by being a friendly face when you walk down the street.

Sometimes those threads hold us tightly and warmly, sometimes they feel like chains that we want to break free of, sometimes they fray a little bit and the connection is lost for a while, but what is important, is that the threads are always there, waiting for us to pick them up.  They are the memories that are woven into our lives. 

For me mum was the start of the thread, the one that gave me and Frank and Harold and Patrick life.  She was, for our family, for the grandchildren, the great grandchildren, the one that bound us together, that would wrap around us when we were sad or lost and that would be a bit looser when we needed to move out or on, that would wave up and down with us when we were celebrating and that would just lie quietly around when we were all okay.  

Mum's remaining brothers and sisters

The threads of Mum’s life brought people together to celebrate her life, whether that connection was as a sister, a brother, a daughter, a son, a grandchild or great grandchild, a niece or nephew or a friend or carer.  And those threads extended out to those who were not with us for the celebration – her grandchildren, Emily, Simone and Rhowena, to the lovely Michelle who should still be with us but who is maybe now sitting with Mum and Norm, my dad, with Christine, with Patrick the child they lost and all Mum’s brothers and sisters who have gone before, Lil, Glen, Stan and Bell.

Maybe it's worthwhile to stop and refelct about the threads in your life, to think about the ones that you want to hold tightly and remember the ones that you may have let go of for a while. I know that wherever we go and whatever we do, the threads that connect us to the people who are still here and the ones who have gone, continue to weave themselves through our lives so that no-one is ever truly not with us, they live on in what we do, in how we think, they live on in our hearts and our memories and they help make us who we are…..

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