ANZAC Day

[radstockjeff]

Couldn't find any other posts for this day. I recall being in Australia in 2017 and attending an ANZAC Parade service in the Wolumla locality of New South Wales. My eldest grandson,head boy at the local Primary School was one of the flag bearers.
I spotted these two chatting before the parade and no doubt reminiscing about their own and their family experiences. The lady was wearing her father's medals; he had been in Bomber Command and she told me that she had only recently become aware of his war service.

[Viktoria]

There was great service and bravery from Anzacs in both world wars.
What was the film about the runner who took messages along the trenches when communication wires broke?
Gallipoli?

A lovely sad song about WW1,”Beat The Drum Slowly” ,and  troops getting back home ,dreadfully wounded.

I have a recipe for Anzac biscuits.
Viktoria.
P.S, I am correcting myself  The  Green Fields of France is the correct title.

[radstockjeff]

On the walls to the entrance to the Museum in the basement of the National Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne,is the following inscription:

ANZAC is not merely about loss, it is about courage and endurance and love of country and mateship and good humour, and the survival of a sense of self worth and decency in the face of dreadful odds

Words so very powerful and moving.

[Viktoria]

Yes, they are.
Do you feel, despite  the  many good deeds etc that are being done today, that somehow we lost the cream of our young men in both world wars.
A lot unfair that I know, and standards generally have slipped but  there was a sense of things being greater than the individual,and the individual knowing that.
Can’t quite explain ,but they were special .Viktoria.

[BumbleB]

An even more emotive song, and especially for those "down under" on this day, is "The Band played Waltzing Matilda" written by Eric Bogle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFzCmAyOp8

[Viktoria]

Do you know I think that was the one I was trying to recall, it is specifically about Gallipoli I seem to remember .
The limbless returning soldier something like:- “when I looked down where my legs  used to be “.
My Dad’s ashes are scattered at Hill 60 in Belgium .
The site part of the battle  of the Menin Road on the Messiness Ridge and others .
Australian sappers were literally undermining the German trenches ,using Ammonal, they were going to blow up the German position.
The bravery of the Aussies was legendary  and the tragedy of Hill 60  well recorded.So many bodies irrecoverable the whole site is a memorial to the Australians ,and Germans.and  others  there.
There is a memorial to the Aussie tunnellers .
It was part of the Battle for Messiness Ridge,
The site now tranquil with hawthorn bushes and wild flowers, grazed by sheep to keep it tidy .
My Dad did not fight there ,but the position was so strategic .
He requested his ashes be scattered there in 1974 .I lived in Belgium at the time .We have often been back though and I remember approximately the spot.The last time was in 2018 for the hundredth anniversary of the end of WWl.

 60 metres, was a vantage point in  that  flat  countryside and the  hill (actually firmed from debris from a railway cutting,so an  artificial  hill) was an advantage to whoever held it.
Thanks  you are  correct.
Viktoria

[BumbleB]

Yes, it is the song of the Aussies going to Gallipoli.  Very emotive.