Anzac Day

Today is Anzac Day here in Australia, where we remember those who fought and died in wars to help protect our freedom and liberty. “Anzac” stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

Each 25th March, on Anzac Day, there is a dawn service at the Cenotaph in the city, and then a march with the old diggers and younger men and women wearing their medals proudly, as they remember their mates, many of whom aren’t with them anymore, through war, old age, or lives destroyed by war.

I’d really like to go to the dawn service one year, and have been thinking about doing so for some years now. As our girls are now getting older, I hope that we will be able to next year (though Anzac Day apparently falls on Good Friday next year, which could make things a little unusual). I would have liked to have gone today, but we arranged some weeks back to go to some friends’ for dinner last night. A late night and a pre-dawn morning would be too much for two young girls, I think, and too much for their parents also!

I have always found it amazing that neither of my grandfathers went to war. My paternal grandfather was a technological college teacher, and my maternal grandfather worked in a factory where they made bullets (or so I believe), so both were needed here at home. Most of my school friends would have had some relative who went to war, so I always felt it was unusual that I didn’t. Perhaps this is why we never went to one of the Anzac Day marches in the city, when I was little.

I don’t like to glorify war at all. War is hell, and I say that with only the merest understanding of how absolutely hellish it must be. I have the utmost admiration for the men and women who served in the armed forces. I hope never to be able to identify with those who stayed at home, wishing and praying that their loved ones would return as soon as possible.

Lest we forget.