So, it’s ANZAC Day again.
Last evening I looked at my father’s medals. They acknowledge five years of frontline service from 1939 to 1944. He returned to Aotearoa wrecked both physically and mentally and neither the RSA nor the government did much to support him or his disabled mates. After a few years his medals arrived in the post and he threw them down an open drain. My mother rescued them as she so often rescued him. I also looked at my medals, acknowledgment that I served my country from 1966 until 1974. My father, by then a pacifist, was sad to see me in uniform, a deep sadness that I never fully understood until recently. He accepted my choice but I was his only biological child and he’d seen an awful lot of children cut down in their prime and he couldn’t deal with the thought of me dead in the mud in a rice field in Vietnam fighting in a war no-one understood, least of all me.
I don’t celebrate ANZAC Day because there is nothing to celebrate. It’s a lie as this article clearly points out. There is nothing to celebrate in meaningless death. Did my father’s service change anything? No. Did mine? No. Will maudlin, jingoistic dawn services make the world a safer place? No. Will we be any more honest about nationalism than before? No. There is nothing to celebrate. I stopped short of throwing my medals down an open drain as my father did but I’ve thought of it many times. I keep mine – and his – as a reminder to my son to think deeply about war, it’s causes and its consequences. We commemorate ANZAC Day with a holiday and we shut the shops until 1pm. Why? So we can obliquely glamourise the uniforms and prepare the next generation for when it’s their turn? Read the attached article. It’s a cartoon so accessible on every level. Digest it, and have a thoughtful day.
dykiegirl 