27 April 2012

The 25^th of April in Aussieland is ANZAC Day.  It begins at dawn (4:27 a.m. to be exact) with a very solemn devotional ceremony in each town.  Here in Albany, it takes place at the monument atop the highest hill, where one may view the harbour and picture the boats all lined up there to depart on that day in 1914.  It was, in fact, the last view of their homeland for most of the 30,000 troops who left here that day, many of them never to return.  8,700 of them were killed in Gallipolli, Turkey and at least 11,000 in Villers-Bretionneux, France.  I keep hearing different numbers for each, but I know that every town in Australia and many in New Zealand as well, gave up their young men to the war.  The ones who went to the Middle East were killed in a terrible slaughter when they landed on the wrong shore, and miscommunications between their own leaders caused an unthinkable tragedy, leaving thousands dead in one battle. 

The thing that so astounds us is the level of devotion paid by the towns of Australia now!  Everyone goes to the well-planned ceremonies, standing for hours  throughout the day, singing their anthems and bowing their heads in prayer.  Many of the men march in the parades, proudly displaying their own or their ancestors’ medals.  The children too, participate in the parade, proudly marching in their school uniforms, each school a different color.  It seems uncharacteristic of the Aussie people in a way, because by their own admission, they are not religious people and are very “laid back,” as they put it, meaning, I think, that they don’t often get excited or committed to things that require any degree of discomfort.

After another ceremony in the ANZAC park down at the main harbour, we came home and saw the dawn service at the monument in France on TV. 

The whole thing was incredible.  Even the children were reverent about ANZAC!  I went into the library at the school where we do service on Thursday and struck up a conversation with the librarian about it, and found that it was a wonderful opener to talk about with people, because they just brighten up when you compliment them about what they have achieved with this memorial. 

I remember going to the cemetery in Orangeville when I was a small child, and watching a patriotic program from a stage they had set up there.  It was, it seemed, attended fairly well by the locals, but I think it disappeared.  Do they still hold such things in America?  I think we are all guilty of not paying enough reverence to our kindred dead and our war dead.  I know I am guilty of it.  It’s partly because we all go so many different ways on Memorial Day, and that we have made it a day of fun, instead of remembering. 

In our own family, we have Kids’ Day on Memorial Day.  Is there something more fitting that we can add to our Kids’ Day?  We have such good memories now of all the years’ fun together, and I’m not suggesting that we stop it because it has become such a wonderful weekend for all of us to be together.  But I just think we should turn our minds back more, and help our children to also.  How can we do that? 

I think that our kids need to know how grateful we are for our own country’s heroes.  What if we had to send our own family’s boys off to war?  Perhaps we need to do more on the Fourth of July that is in a spirit of gratitude and reverence.  Then as part of our Kids’ Day we can make sure we talk about our own ancestors as part of that day. 

I know that we have done some things on Memorial Day to reverence our grandparents, etc.  Let’s do more of that!  Sometimes we have gone to the graves of the different ones when we could, but Brenda Dart always decorates our family’s graves in Orangeville, and sometimes even our others in Ferron.  Perhaps we could do more to pay for the flowers she provides too.