I’M SURE this is a joke, but apparently an Aussie Army chaplain found himself lost behind enemy lines.This digger had been taught to be a brave soldier, but being a man of God, he wasn’t great with weapons. He comes to a clearing and finds himself surrounded by the enemy. Cannon to right of him, Cannon to left of him, Cannon in front of him, “volley'd and thunder'd” as Tennyson would say. The poor Aussie chaplain falls on his knees and cries to the heavens “Oh Lord! I don’t even know how to use a gun! I’m finished!”
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As he says this, the clouds open up and he hears a booming voice “You are not finished! Draw your revolver Friar and shoot your enemy’s Commanding Officer in the chest.”
The chaplain draws his service revolver and shoots the CO, who miraculously falls on the ground dead. The voice from above booms one last time “Now you are finished!”
I’m proud to say that military service is a strong tradition in my family. I’ll not name them all, but I would please like to mention to you my great uncle Harold (Sonny) Cole who fought in WWI and my great uncle Percival (Percy) Eugene Cole, an Anzac.
Dad and Mum remember Uncle Percy as always laughing; always joking.
It’s hard to know why really; he had shrapnel in him which caused him pain for the rest of his life after he was shot in the back at Gallipoli.
My grandmother (Uncle Percy’s little sister) used to say he had “a hole in his back you could put your fist in”.
We don’t consider Uncle Percy unlucky but rather, very blessed.
I’ve been musing on how unique our current Anzac Day commemorations are in comparison to other countries and even in comparison to ourselves in the past.
Overseas “Dodenherdenking” (Remembrance of the Dead) in the Netherlands, “Memorial Day” in South Korea and “Armistice Day” in France are more sombre war commemoration days than is our Anzac Day.
Here in Australia, by 1970s Anzac Day had become a bit of a non-event, probably because of the controversial Vietnam War.
By early 1980s Anzac Day parades had become a “protest fest” and I have vague memories as a child of the controversy over who could march and who couldn’t.
As a result, Anzac Day marches were gate-crashed by every political special interest group you could think of, and a few you couldn’t. They got so political that one year I was waiting for a hippy to run out holding up a protest banner that said “LAND RIGHTS FOR GAY WHALES!”.
Seriously, I am very glad those protesting days are over.
In recent years we have witnessed the largest attendances at Anzac Day services ever seen.
Why? I don’t know. One theory that seems to hold water is that, as time passes, progressively more and more Australians have not grown up during a war or suffered the atrocities of a war.
This being the case, they do not feel the same strong effects of the complexities of war.
This would explain the decrease in protests and the increase in youth attendance.
The Anzacs were like Jesus: they stood up against evil and they laid down their lives for their mates.
We’re enjoying peace because they went to war. I hope you attended a service, made a toast, cheered good old Collingwood, and had a few laughs at the same time.
I think that’s what Uncle Percy would have wanted.
