War Stories

It has been said that as we grow older, we also become more cynical. This is understandable; the longer we live, the more we see of life, good and bad. Nowadays, it seems we're constantly being bombarded with the negative aspects of our society. The media places great emphasis on reporting the bad. The latest celibrity to be caught up in a sex scandal rates top billing, whilst the well known movie identity who spends twenty hours a week with handicapped children rates only as a page filler. With this bias toward the dark side, it's easy to see how we can become jaded.

I would like to think - just like you would - that I haven't been adversely affected by this constant barrage, but I find myself looking at the news with an almost perverse sense of fatalism. And how often have you heard yourself say "this world's just getting worse and worse"? It's very easy to see only the bad when you aren't given any other alternative, isn't it? And I think it may be this conditioning that is partly responsible for the following:

I heard somewhere that the R.S.L. (Returned and Services League) was becoming concerned that numbers were dropping as members, exhausted by Time's forced march, fall by the wayside. It seems, on ANZAC Day in particular, that the gatherings of those brave souls who served their country in the major wars are slowly getting smaller. ANZAC Day has always been seen as an opportunity for old comrades to re-muster, and to re-live. To share again the comraderie which is conceived only in the womb of war. Battles are re-fought as fiercely as the first time. Memories, faded by everday life of the past year, are wiped off and polished until they gleam with the radiance of the present. The fallen are brought back to life, their health drunk to, and then laid to rest again. Homage is paid to those who were there the year before but failed to make it this time around.

In an attempt to improve on numbers, the R.S.L. is looking at promoting interest amongst today's youth. They are hoping that the young ones will pick up step where the old ones have faltered, thereby keeping the ANZAC tradition alive. A noble sentiment, for sure, but somehow I don't think it will be quite the same.

I have been extremeley fortunate in that I have grown up in a period of our history when I have at no time, no matter how reluctantly, been forced to consider taking up arms and going to war. In that regard alone, I would find myself with nothing in common with our returned veterans. Sure I can imagine the privations, the noise, the smell of blood and death. But it's not the same as actually being there, is it? I have never been that scared. I have never tried to hold in my mate's brains as they leaked out of his shattered skull. Nor would I ever wish to.

That's what sets our brave veterans apart. So imagine how wide the gap would be between them and today's youth. As the old-timers gather and reminisce, and great battles with exotic sounding names such as Gallipoli, Ardennes, Tobruk, El Alamein, Battle of the Bulge, Nui Dat are re-fought, what will the young-timers have to talk about?

The Rumble at Southbank during the Gangbanger War of 2003?