I've mentioned before that we're not a family that expends a lot of effort on Christmas and birthdays and the like. The other day, I realised that ANZAC day has become the biggest day on the family calendar. All us kids make an effort to get together and do something nice with mum and dad. We don't go to the daytime festivities; they feel "too much like a sideshow"; but we always do the dawn service. This year, I think, was the first time we all did it together; mum, dad, me, all the boys, all the wives, and all the grandkids.
… Yep, even Terra.
If you've ever had to get kids out of bed and dressed and organised at three-thirty in the morning, you'll know how much fun we had. And when I say "we", I mean me, mum, and the sister-in-laws, who somehow seemed to have been gifted this task by divine inheritance. Meanwhile, dad and the boys given task seemed to involve little more than standing outside next to the cars and occasionally poking their heads through the door to ask "How're ya goin'? Nearly ready?"
To be honest, we probably picked the wrong year. We intentionally went to a service in an out-of-the way suburb, in an attempt to avoid as much of the centenary crowd as we could. I think the last time we'd been to a service in that particular place there'd been a turnout of around thirty people. This year, there were thousands. And I don't mean that figuratively. I'm estimating three thousand at a bare minimum. Probably five. Nobody except my one towering-stick-figure of a brother got to see anything more than other people's backs. The kids quickly grew bored … and restless … and tired … and grizzly. And of course, any aspiring politician or two-bit bureaucrat who thought they might be given a chance to speak had turned out to do so. By the end of it, I think we'd heard about a dozen slightly differently worded versions of the Gallipoli landing.
And you know what I noticed about all of them? They were all about how the heroic ANZACs fought and died to defend our freedoms and liberal, democratic way of life. Really? Look, if you wanna talk about second world war blokes defending the country from the Japanese, go ahead; but I don't remember ever learning anything about Australia being under threat from a Turkish invasion. I may not be an expert on the subject, but as far as I can tell, what most of those blokes in Turkey were fighting for was the bloody British empire. A foul establishment built on war and fueled by the exploitation of brown people. An empire that gave so little of a shit about its colonials that it wrote them off as expendable cannon fodder without a second thought. (And while we're on the subject of brown people, remind me again about how free, liberal, and democratic Australia was in 1915). I've found it especially interesting watching the news over the last few days; seeing stories celebrating hundred-year-old heroic Aussies doing whatever they could to get to the middle east so they could fight for a brutal foreign regime — and how those stories have been interspersed with stories condemning modern evil Aussies doing whatever they can to get to the middle east so they can fight for a brutal foreign regime. So far, not one note of self-awareness or irony have I detected.
Anyway, back at the dawn service, and the only relief we were getting from the tales of glorious martyrdom were comically over-the-top religious interludes. I couldn't see the woman who was delivering them, but she sounded like a shrill, bible-thumping crone, wailing about "the glory of the one true god". I almost laughed when she got to the bit about how the men had traveled far across the sea to die for us … just like Jesus Christ. We got roughly three prayers and two hymns worth of this treatment. By the end of it, dad had a foul grimace on his dial and Terra was hanging off my trousers with her face buried in my thigh.
As we turned to leave, the sun was coming up, and I looked out at the seething mass of humanity that had gathered behind us. That's when I noticed that some people had decided to mark the occasion by coming dressed in their full Australia Day regalia; by which I mean southern cross face-paint and capes made out of the flag. Yes, that was the icing on the cake for me. It took us nearly half an hour to get out of the car park.
We did manage to have a lovely breakfast in a park that was remarkably not too full of people. A friendly seagull came and did an adorable little song and dance for us in order to beg a few table scraps; and a cheeky ibis achieved the same result by wandering around and nibbling people on the bum. Both were a hit with the kids. At one point, they were lining up to "have a go" on the ibis.
In the afternoon, after everyone had had a midday camp, all the grandkids sat around with dad and asked him questions about the war.
- What was the worst part about the war?
- When I got dysentery.
- What's dysentery?
- It's when you have runny poos that don't stop for days. You get very sick and very weak. Some people die from it.
- From too much pooing?
- Yes.
- Did you kill anyone?
- Yes.
- Did you shoot them with your gun?
- Yes.
- Did any of them shoot you?
- No. But they tried.
- Did you know anyone who got shot?
- Yes.
- Did they die?
- Yes.
- Did you like shooting people?
- No. At the time you don't think about it. But later, when you do think about it, it's not very nice.
- Did you blow up any baddies?
- No. We weren't fighting baddies.
- Were you the baddies?
- No, there weren't any goodies or baddies.
- Then why were you fighting?
- Because politicians told us we had to.
- Why?
- Because that's what politicians do.
- But why did you have to do what the politicians say?
- That's what it means to be in the army. You have to follow orders.
- What if the orders are silly?
- No matter what. That's why it's very important that when you get older you watch the news. So then you'll know what's going on, and you can vote for the right people. That way maybe the army won't get so many silly orders.
Despite how it might look here, I like ANZAC Day. I think we should have a day when we have a good hard think about the men and women who have served in the armed forces, as well as the price of that service. The dead, the wounded, the shattered families, the ones who came home with missing body parts and the ones who came home with heads full of broken glass, the tormented alcoholics and drug-addicts and the violent raging hard-cases who couldn't hold a regular job, the partners and children who had to live with them and the ones who ultimately couldn't live with themselves. Yes, I absolutely do think we should set aside a day when we think about this stuff. What I don't care for is pompous self-serving military/religious/political/nationalistic celebrations of mythological bullshit about glorious sacrifice.
Tonight, I turned my telly on, and there was our PM, saying this:
"The story of Gallipoli is very well known indeed but the story of Australia on the Western Front should be much better known and that's what the Monash centre will be all about. It was an extraordinary story… valour and indomitable commitment but it was a story of success as well. Gallipoli was a splendid failure but the Western Front was a terrible victory and we should remember our victories as much as we remember our defeats."
Oh yeah, sorry Tony, you're right. That's the bit we really need to focus on more. Military victories. What was I thinking with all that "remembering the human cost of war" bullshit?
Cunt
