Remembrance Day, an opportunity for old mates to catch up and talk about maintaining values of decency and civilisation.
Things got off to a bad start. I missed the bus that had been arranged to pick us up outside pcbycp headquarters. Our mission was to distribute and sell poppies to shoppers at the local shopping centre. There’s nothing about Chaddy that would make you ashamed to gather, though the security guards didn’t look to keen about it. I supose in hindsight, Cecil who lost his false teeth at Nui Dat, and Clarrie who had his leg amputated after an encounter with the ride on mower at Tarin Kowt looked a little dishevilled. But not dangerous. And nothing like AFRICAN CRIME GANGS if you know what I mean.
‘A la rechercehe du temps perdu’, Statesmen gather to reflect upon Stormy Winters many years past.
To this day, Clarrie regrets his decision to “go over the top” and bother mowing the ridgeline, that separates the latrines from the laundry. But Clarrie ’s always been a stickler for tidyness, and the odd weed drove him to distracton. It’s the ANZAC spirit. One way or another he felt that if he couldn’t have a go at the Taliban, he’d conquer the last ridge.
On a smaller stage, little people gather.
After the mower capsized and took his leg off, we called it “Bloody Ridge”. Funny, it’s only a meter high, and about five metres at the base, so it’s more like a low, flat, mound more than a ridge. But we thought it was epithetic of the great sacrifice made at Vimy, Bloodseinde, Poizieres and Passchendaele. Still, when you’re in the field, a ride on mower, which is just like any other back home in Australia, can be lethal. And you have to have both experience and expertise to ride them safely. That’s Clarrie’s deepest regret. He should’ve volunteered for the “Tactical ride-on mower training course” on offer at Puckapunyal. But he chose to attend “ the non innappropriate touching in close combat’ courses being conducted by the “Centre for Human Resource, Management Team Conflict Resolution Unit”, at Broadmeadows. In hindsight, he’s philospohical. He knows that there’s a low ridge-line in Afghanistan that’s “forever Australia”. And when we pushed him at the RSL the other night when he won the one-legged hopping race around the club carpark he said; ‘He’d do it all again for Australia’.
Remembrance day is all about looking good, and expensively fashionable.
“That’s the spirit’!! We all said, and heartilly patted him on the back whilst we waited for his carer to pick him up in the disability scooter.
Uninformed people might not understand the nobility of sacrifice.
You’d thiink then that the secuity guards, who mind you “ also serve”, wouldn’t mind a few old diggers seling poppies outside of Myer, David Jones, or as Clarrie was proud to say a “possie just shy of the lingerie shop”. Though he’s bung in one eye he always seeks the strategic advantage. Funny thing then, when the security guard came over and told us to leave. We said; “Hang on a minute mate, we’re selling poppies so that our mates can be remembered for their sacrifice and their forebears who nobly sacrificed themselves so that pollies can go on junkets under the eternal unquestioned God- head of Anzackery”!. But the guard, spoke on his walky talky thing, and before you know what, we were booted off the site. Ungreatful bastards! Turned out they were all Afghani’s. Must’ve come over on the 457 . One of them was a Somali. You’ve gotta wonder what our sacrifice was all about?
But as Cecil said; “that’s the irony of war”. And that’s why we remember the “war to end all wars”.
The sacrifice,
The futility.
The wasteage.
The aftermath.
The broken lives.
Those that were left behind.
The blood and bone that contributes to make that part of France very good for agriculture.
All of this we were determined to remember.
The only problem is we forgot to get a permit.
Just like war, bureaucracy triumphs over sacrifice every time.
And we forgot.
On Remembrance day.
Previous winners of the one legged hopping race, and the legless arm wrestlers at the local RSL.
Lest we forget.