Anzac Day
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@Kiwiwomble said in Anzac Day:
@antipodean and you might be right, my personal experience on ANZAC day after talking to some of the old mates was to message a mate who had served to check on him but that might be the exception
@Nevorian ill be first in line to agree professional sports people get idolised too much, knighthoods for one….when there are police, ambos and firefighters that don’t get the same recognition
Agree entirely.
Well, apart from the great Sir Paddles Hadlee. First man to 400 test wickets.
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@antipodean said in Anzac Day:
It just feels like a societal expectation now with people posting on social media about attending. Which to me makes it more about them than solemn reflection
This. For the last few years it's seemed like a massive "virtue-signalling" gift for a lot of folk.
(Fuck I hate that term, but... Accurate. )
Personally (ahhh... I sound like one of "them"...) ... I can be aware of the sacrifices made in the past, be fully aware that I'm very unlikely to ever truly understand them, and be very fucking thankful for that, while also knowing that war is a dick, and fuck ALL that shit.
Without getting up at 5am and lighting a candle, and then posting on Facebook about how that's what I did.And I think ANZAC Day liquor laws are perfect. A little reminder to those who don't think about it .. and then a celebration/acknowledgement of what we have because of the sacrifices.
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Taking a different tack from the virtues of ANZAC DAY. My newly found half cousin was the first person from the family to visit my grandfathers grave at the Sangro River War Cemetery in Italy. And the place is well look after and beautiful. It brought some closure to finding her roots. It is easy to forget that these young men died with their comrades but absence of their families.
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Taking a different tack from the virtues of ANZAC DAY. My newly found half cousin was the first person from the family to visit my grandfathers grave at the Sangro River War Cemetery in Italy. And the place is well look after and beautiful. It brought some closure to finding her roots. It is easy to forget that these young men died with their comrades but absence of their families.
….and so many of those that came back had loads of other issues to deal with.
The sheer amount of undiagnosed mental disorders because that generation were just staunch and got on with life must have been absolutely horrendous.
Contrast that with todays generation who get offended and have a breakdown if someone gets their pronouns wrong.
Where is that Clint Eastwood gif ?
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Taking a different tack from the virtues of ANZAC DAY. My newly found half cousin was the first person from the family to visit my grandfathers grave at the Sangro River War Cemetery in Italy. And the place is well look after and beautiful. It brought some closure to finding her roots. It is easy to forget that these young men died with their comrades but absence of their families.
I paid a visit to the cemetery at Caterpillar hill in northern France. It is a beautiful place. I have no relatives that served in WW1, but I found it intensely emotional seeing all the rows of NZers who left home and never came back
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@canefan My friend wants to forego our next dive trip and go to Normandy. I think I need to go.
Normandy was excellent. I did it the day before I did the Somme. But I was on my own and went on an American slanted tour, which was great because I was really big into Band of Brothers at that time. The Somme tour from Amiens was another level entirely, in part due to the great tour and guide, mainly because of the ANZAC centred tour
Both trips, Normandy and Somme, were day trips. I took the TGV from Paris
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@canefan My friend wants to forego our next dive trip and go to Normandy. I think I need to go.
Do it if you get the chance, you won't regret it. Base in Paris and you could do both. There were British centric tours in Normandy as well. I'd tell them you are kiwis so you get to see especially Kiwi stuff on the Somme alongside the Aussie stuff
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@canefan My friend wants to forego our next dive trip and go to Normandy. I think I need to go.
Do it if you get the chance. Base in Paris and you could do both. There were British centric tours in Normandy as well
I am sure he would be interested in both. Funny thing is that his Dad is German but he is American through and through. He works a lot with serviceman who have come back with PTSD from Iraq and Afghanistan.
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@canefan My friend wants to forego our next dive trip and go to Normandy. I think I need to go.
Do it if you get the chance. Base in Paris and you could do both. There were British centric tours in Normandy as well
I am sure he would be interested in both. Funny thing is that his Dad is German but he is American through and through. He works a lot with serviceman who have come back with PTSD from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Based on my very small experience I would try and get on tours run by ex-Military. The guy on the Somme was able to strike the right note in terms of the tone of the experience, and was able to provide insight into the battles that occurred where we were taken
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….and so many of those that came back had loads of other issues to deal with.
I had a relative (second cousin I think) who had served in North Africa and was dairying up near Mangawhai.
I think I only met him the once when I would have been less than 10. He scared the beejezuz out of me.
I can now recognise he very clearly had PTSD but he just seemed to a little kid as odd, angry, sullen, withdrawn.
My Mum tried to explain things to me but I guess I was simply too young.
The farm was marginal, he drank, he suffered constant headaches and every now and then would dig bits of shrapnel out of his forehead. He was a conscientious objector who nevertheless volunteered for the medical corp. Poor bastard was injured captured and then spent three years as a POW.
Then came back to a life as a character in one of those very bleak, black and white films NZ cinema used to seemingly specialise in where there's only about 12 words of dialogue in the whole movie and everyone is miserable.
I never saw him again. He died - suddenly - a few years later and was never mentioned.
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….and so many of those that came back had loads of other issues to deal with.
I had a relative (second cousin I think) who had served in North Africa and was dairying up near Mangawhai.
I think I only met him the once when I would have been less than 10. He scared the beejezuz out of me.
I can now recognise he very clearly had PTSD but he just seemed to a little kid as odd, angry, sullen, withdrawn.
My Mum tried to explain things to me but I guess I was simply too young.
The farm was marginal, he drank, he suffered constant headaches and every now and then would dig bits of shrapnel out of his forehead. He was a conscientious objector who nevertheless volunteered for the medical corp. Poor bastard was injured captured and then spent three years as a POW.
Then came back to a life as a character in one of those very bleak, black and white films NZ cinema used to seemingly specialise in where there's only about 12 words of dialogue in the whole movie and everyone is miserable.
I never saw him again. He died - suddenly - a few years later and was never mentioned.
That's awful. And probably not that uncommon.
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….and so many of those that came back had loads of other issues to deal with.
I had a relative (second cousin I think) who had served in North Africa and was dairying up near Mangawhai.
I think I only met him the once when I would have been less than 10. He scared the beejezuz out of me.
I can now recognise he very clearly had PTSD but he just seemed to a little kid as odd, angry, sullen, withdrawn.
My Mum tried to explain things to me but I guess I was simply too young.
The farm was marginal, he drank, he suffered constant headaches and every now and then would dig bits of shrapnel out of his forehead. He was a conscientious objector who nevertheless volunteered for the medical corp. Poor bastard was injured captured and then spent three years as a POW.
Then came back to a life as a character in one of those very bleak, black and white films NZ cinema used to seemingly specialise in where there's only about 12 words of dialogue in the whole movie and everyone is miserable.
I never saw him again. He died - suddenly - a few years later and was never mentioned.
That's awful. And probably not that uncommon.
Absolutely. I can’t upvote the original post for that reason.
The sacrifices that generation made for us are immense, unimaginable really……and I’m sure they all did it purely so subsequent generations “wouldn't have to go through what they did”.
So many of them would have been eaten up inside from what they dealt with. If only the support network was available to them. It could be argued Vietnam Vets had it worse on account of it being such an unpopular war ( the first Rambo isn’t all a bullshit action movie, there’s a poignant message there too ) and the way some of them were treated when they returned home was disgraceful ( those that DID return home that is ).
Thank goodness there are avenues to try and address this nowadays.
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