Hi 32bravo,
IIRC we used to get mailings for donations for veterans that included address labels that had poppies printed on them. And in the early 90’s I remember older veterans handing out artificial poppies for $1 donations, but I haven’t seen either in a long time…years probably.
The buglers are playing “Last Post”, I take it that that is something like our “Taps” for the US military? And are you in the group wearing greatcoats with white belts, or the group wearing the bearskin hats that weigh like 50 pounds?
I doubt you’re in the group of old-timers.
On the 25th.
Public holidays may occur on a different date where weekends are involved, but the day itself and what it stands for is commemorated on the 25th.
Here is a great speech commemorating the ANZAC history and more, given by a prominent New Zealand politician at the annual dawn service at Gallipoli. http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=3beEVemEFpc&feature=related
Unfortunately that link is viewable only from the UK.
I suspect the village which loves Australia is Villers-Bretonneux. Here’s a summary of why there is such a strong liking for Aussies in that village, despite it being pretty much wrecked in the battles for it, the second battle occurring on what is now Anzac Day.
The First (4 April) and second Battles of Villers-Bretonneux were fought in 1918, the second battle taking place on 24 and 25 April and involving a night-time counter-attack by the 15th Brigade of the AIF under Harold ‘Pompey’ Elliott in a desperate attempt to recapture the town of Villers-Bretonneux. The successful counter-attack by the Australians during the second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux was described by Brigadier General Grogan VC as ‘perhaps the greatest individual feat of the war’. The words ‘Do not forget Australia’ are on a sign in the playground of the Victoria school in Villers-Bretonneux that was rebuilt after the war with money raised by donations from Victoria, Australia. The school plaque carries the following words:
This school building is the gift of the school children of Victoria, Australia, to the children of Villers-Bretonneux as a proof of their love and goodwill towards France. Twelve hundred Australian soldiers, the fathers and brothers of these children, gave their lives in the heroic recapture of this town from the invader on 24th April 1918, and are buried near this spot. May the memory of great sacrifices in a common cause keep France and Australia together forever in bonds of friendship and mutual esteem.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/anzac/western.htm
As an aside, Pompey Elliot was a great leader revered by his men but, like so many men ruined by that awful war, he came to a sad end, by suicide in 1931 in his case. http://history.law.unimelb.edu.au/go/people/soldiers/harold-pompey-elliott/index.cfm
Sadly, I’m among the old geezers
We’ve previously discussed ‘Taps’ elsewhere. Both the Last Post and Taps are very moving.
It’s a rare occasion that I can listen to the Last Post without becoming a little choked up. Particularly in the middle part, which, to me, sounds very much like the Cookhouse Call. Something as mundane as the Cookhouse Call breathes life and spirit into the memory of all of those fallen Tommies.
“Come to the cookhouse door, boys,
Come to the cookhouse door!”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand out and my eyes begin to glisten.
For my money, the best of the UK Forces bands is that of the Royal Marines, particularly when the drummers perform their stick-beatings, simple but effective – fabulous.
Here’s a link to a Youtube clip of the Marines in action at the 2006 Festival of Remembrance, performed at the Royal Albert Hall:
http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=Wydt1RXgCdU
Stick-beatings:
That’s a pity, it was a very good docu. Rolf was tracing the history of his father and uncle in WW1. I don’t know if you’re able to see the damaged helmet Rolf is holding, but it belonged to his father and carries the shrapnel damage which caused his father’s first wound.
yes, you are quite right regarding the village.
Sorry to remind you of your age 32bravo.:( That’s okay, I get reminded every time I creak out of the bed each morning. So I guess you’re retired military then? Just curious.
Yes. I am retired from regular Army service, but I’m not out to pasture, as yet - not reached the creaky stage, just the grumpy one.
The UK is an ancient kingdom with many old customs and traditions which might seem a bit queer to those that don’t know us. We rarely have national holidays to celebrate our history, partly because there is so mush of it (particularly wars and campaigns - why not have a Trafalgar Day or Waterloo Day?), and partly because we have a strong sense of who we are. Younger nations deliberately focus on their national holidays to reinforce a sense of unity and identity as much as anything else, and that, to me, seems quite reasonable.
The first Remembrance Day in the UK took place on the 11th November 1921. After that it was changed to the second Sunday in November. At the time, Britain’s economy was based on labour-intensive production and, so, Sunday was considered a day of reverence and rest. It was thought only fitting that Remembrance Day be held on a Sunday as this would focus peoples’ attention on it. This has become a tradition in our country and I doubt there are many that would seek to change it.
There are other ways than creating a national holiday of raising the profile of Remembrance Day and assisting those that have been broken by their service to our land. It is my belief that this has begun. The Tommies of the current conflicts receive much more publicity than others have in conflicts since Korea. Of course, it does help to have the two young princes in uniform and doing their bit to promote public awareness.
Consider this: Kitcheners Army was a volunteer army where many young patriotic lads responded to the call of the drum, in good faith, to their bit. They were slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands. Since that time, it has been seen as being somewhat crass to be jingoistic about patriotism. It is only in recent times that the younger generations have begun to reclaim the flag of their country from those that would use it and abuse it for their own ends, and not a moment too soon.
The scars of those great wars remain and are not forgotten. They affected practically every family in the nation.
Must be early 80’s.
I was in a large chain hardware store, in a wog area.
Announcement came over loudspeaker it’s eleven o’clock etc and two minute’s silence from now.
Sweet FA response from the wogs, apart from staring in wonderment, which only increased the jabbering, at the few Anglo Aussies in the store who all stopped and stood at loose attention for the two minutes.
A few of us made pointless comments to the wogs in a foreign language, being English, to little effect.
Actually, I can’t remember whether it was two minutes or just cut to one for commercial convenience.
Did you intentionally post that at 11:11AM? 
No. Didn’t even notice.
Good karma, though.
Like RS I have experienced similar incidents on Rememberance Day, and today of all days. For two minutes I absolutely refused to acknowledge customers no matter how much they stared, growled, tried to interrupt my solace.
After the two minutes silence one of the wog boys remonstrated very loudly and threatened to complain to management about my attitude. I told him to fuck off. I’ve had relatives fight and die in wars so these ungrateful bastards can stomp around treating everyone like crap, because they will own this country one day.
So this bloke went off and complained to one of our better managers who also told him to fuck off. About time some people learnt respect.
Digger.
Bore it up em, mate.
Reminds me that maybe ten or twelve years ago I came back to my office on Remembrance Day not long before 11 a.m.
My secretary says there’s two blokes outside waiting to see you. They’re standing outside the front door. I look out and see two Asians.
I go out and it’s just before 11 a.m. so I’m going to make them observe the silence.
Joy of joys, there’s an RAAF flyover that comes pretty much over the top of us on the way to the Shrine.
So I point at the planes and say something like
“We remember the war now.”
And I make sure we all keep our heads down for a couple of minutes.
I know, I was childish, racist, petty, unreasonable, arrogant, unfair, humiliating etc etc
All of that.
Turns out the two blokes were Japanese, which makes it so much better.
Well, fuck em.
Their lot were childish, racist, petty, unreasonable, arrogant, unfair, humiliating etc etc last time around. And a lot nastier than I was, with a bloody sight less reason.
Good onya RS.
You do highlight a problem though. We are labelled racist, arrogant, churlish etc because we are both proud and humble of those men and women who have fought and laid their lives down for liberty, freedom and survival.
We are always reminded to respectful of new immigrants, to respect their cultures, religions, to be welcoming to them.
But is this a reciprocal thing?
digger
Right!
Just remember, you started this.
And I am not known on this site for short responses. 
Reciprocal in this context means to me mutual respect, in the sense of the guest and the host.
The guest accepts the host’s house, family, cuisine, circumstances etc, and politely accepts what is offered, within reason.
The host tries to accommodate the guest, according to the host’s principles of hospitality in the host’s culture, and tries to avoid offending the guest, within reason.
If the guest doesn’t like it, the guest can piss off.
It’s not the host’s problem.
Much more so when the guest is uninvited and the host is doing the guest and his family a favour by putting them up and feeding them, instead of turning them away at the gate.
Applying that to migrants to Oz doesn’t mean they have to fall to their knees in gratitude for being here or love everything about Oz, or that they can’t agitate for change, or maintain their culture, or that we can require bullshit of them like being able to cite Bradman’s batting average or sing the national frigging anthem (I don’t know more than about five words, not necessarily in order, and I’m not interested in learning - I come from a generation that stood up in picture theatres for ‘God Save the Queen’ as she rode a horse somewhere) but it means they do it reasonably and without trying to make us conform to their every requirement or regarding us as inferior and contemptible because, say, our women go the beach in bikinis. Where their oafish blokes strut around in minimal budgie smugglers and regard women not like theirs as sluts because we don’t live in a culture where women can’t go out without a male relative or two present at all times because these apes are living in the seventh century and think so called honour killings are something to be proud of if their daughter or sister talks to the wrong bloke without a male relative’s permission.
Like the Sydney gang rape cases, with their idiot relatives blathering on on 60 Minutes about how their good little Muslim boys were unjustly convicted by the Skip justice system of gang raping Aussie sheilas as a racist act to humiliate them, or even raping any sheila ‘cos good little Leb Muslim boys don’t do that. Then their idiot families also said that the Aussie sheilas brought being raped on themselves by not observing good Islamic dress and behaviour, which apparently their good little innocent Leb Muslim boys who didn’t rape the sheilas and make all the phone calls couldn’t resist.
Beats me how you can’t gang rape sheilas to show how Lebs can fuck Aussie sheilas Leb style, with mobile phone call records showing all the boys turning up for a bit of Skip meat, and then say the sheilas brought it on themselves. Either you raped them, or you didn’t. Which just shows how fucking dumb those pricks are. Sixty years was about the right sentence. I’m against capital punishment for reasons of principle, but I’m prepared to consider exceptions.
On the other hand, down here in sunny Melbourne the idiot press and talkback radio are lately getting stuck into the Sudanese because they’re supposedly a big crime problem. The latest focus was a Sudanese kid who got bashed to death, probably by a mixed migrant / Anglo group. Kevin frigging Andrews got onto it, to whip up more bullshit to bolster his endless cock ups as a minister.
Somehow a Sudanese kid being bashed to death demonstrates that the Sudanese are the sort of people we don’t want here. I would have thought that the people who killed the poor bastard are the ones we don’t want here.
I read something recently by a woman who’d worked with the Sudanese. She ran into a Sudanese women she knew, in a supermarket. The Sudanese woman was in tears. The writer tried to comfort her. The Sudanese woman explained that she wasn’t crying because she was upset. She was crying with happiness that she was lucky enough to be in a place where there was so much food. That’s beyond anything any of us who grew up here can begin to understand.
We don’t have any idea of the misery and horror many of the people who come here have experienced. A lot of it makes Kokoda look easy. At least both sides were armed there. Everybody had a fighting chance.
Not like the oppression and butchery the poor bastards who’ve come here in various waves have experienced, which goes back to some of the Greeks under the colonels and the Vietnamese after we ditched them and the Chileans after Pinochet and the Argentinians after Galtieiri and the Iraqis and Iranians when those two nations were at war and countless other miserable episodes.
I’ve dealt with a few people from each of those and other sad places and they do it hard here, but they press on. The average Aussie who slags them just because they’re different wouldn’t have the same guts and perseverance, and is too ignorant to appreciate the fine qualities of people who have overcome adversity no Australian has ever known in Australia, despite the grandstanding from various whingeing groups (e.g. lesbians moaning about how discriminatory it is that they can’t get IVF on Medicare, who’ve occupied a million times more newsprint than, say, an Iranian woman I knew who came out of Iran on a terrifying journey of hundreds of miles in the 1980’s, much of it in the boot of a car, never knowing is she’d be abandoned locked in the boot or shot at the next exchange point by people she didn’t know who, she hoped, had been paid by her husband who’d got out first).
Having said that, there’s a few bearded caftanned pieces of lace headed shit I’d round up and send back to places where you’d think they’d be a lot happier in the bosom of Islam. Funny thing is, those places don’t want them. Because they’re troublemakers. Which is absolutely hilarious when you consider that some of these places, like the Saudis, have been exporting this sort of vile bile for years but don’t want it on their home turf. If they’re not good enough for the defenders of Islam, they’re not good enough for us.
But you’re not allowed to say that. By our anti-discrimination laws, or the Saudis.
Why do I think I’ve missed the plot?
P.S. Strange to relate but true, but I’m one of those reviled people, a vaguely lefty civil libertarian.
An extraordinarily powerful image.
For all wars.
I forgot that “The Wall” is 25-years old as of yesterday…
What really pisses me off (among an unbelieveably large constellation of things that piss me off) is the political exploitation by our national politicians on all sides of turning up at the couple of funerals we’ve had for Australian soldiers who’ve actually died in something approximating action as distinct from a similar number who’ve died in barracks through stupidy or suicide or murder.
If we were in a war even vaguely like Vietnam, never mind WWII, the politicians wouldn’t be doing anything but attending funerals.
Different in America in recent years, where close to 4,000 service people have died.
Politicians crying crocodile tears over the coffins of people who’d still be alive if the politicians had done their jobs half way properly will never make me respect politicians who always exploit the service dead while carefully avoiding sending any of their precious children on these missions of national survival.
BAH!
P.S.
I say the above as the father of a 17 y.o son whose army enlistment papers, against my better judgement, I signed a couple of months ago.
I did the same at his age, but it’s a bloody sight different when it’s my kid and I look at the shits who are running the country who love to have a khaki election. Not one of those cunts have ever been in uniform, or been in a decent barroom fight where people lose eyes and sometimes die, but they love to send other people’s kids off to war, so they can turn up at funerals in election campaigns and cry their bullshit tears for something they never experienced or even really value, as long as they’re safe, but expect the lower classes to do for them.
BAH!