My grandfather was part of the first landing at Gallipoli
He kept a journal
It begins on the boat trip from Australia telling of the send off
Egypt training has a few descriptions and hopeful anticipations
Then he lands
Most days get a sentence
His language sparse and factual without reflection
A mate is shot collecting water
Another in the trenches
Bravado rapidly fades
The relentless rhythm of comrades falling runs through the account
It is interrupted by mention of the Christmas Day cease fire to bury the dead with the Turks
Cigarettes shared with them stands out to me
thrown across no man’s land in shell cases
Then suddenly the next entry is months later,
he is recovering on a hospital ship
Dysentery took him out
He returned to his battalion after the evacuation
Recognises no one
All his mates dead
Then it is off to the Somme
He becomes a signal man
Running communication wires between trenches
I imagine him running as soldiers take pot shots at him and he throws himself into a trench
A bullet passes through his tunic
Another is stopped by his army badge and still bares the imprint
was it the death wish of survivors guilt driving him?
He does not record this thoughts
No reference to feelings of horror
A letter home, published in the paper at the time, has much more flourish as it describes shooting ‘Jerrys’ as the emerged from a hole like rabbits. Who knows what war office editing may have occurred but it is hard to reconcile the tone of the article with his journal.
The article was about keeping home moral up I guess
Then he comes home after 1000 days and does not really talk about it
I was 10 when he died
I remember a dignified gentleman revered by his family
I was never old enough to ask him what he thought of all this
My mum also regrets unasked questions
He was from an old landowning family tracing back to the second fleet
Very much a part of the establishment
He did not follow his father and grandfather into law but lived a humble life as a teacher
A Christian but not particularly interested in the institutions of religion
I put myself in his shoes and wonder what he thought of the experiences he had
How he processed it alone or with a few mates at the RSL
I would have looked to the causes
he notes at one stage that the Germans had ‘Gott mit uns’ on their helmets
I believe he recognised the humanity in his opposite numbers and saw them as much victims of circumstance as he was.
The sharing the cigarettes was a recognition of shared humanity
So who’s fault was it then
He was an educated man
A quiet reflective man prone to statements of distilled wisdom
I’m sure he would have deduced the Imperial interests on both sides that had caused such suffering
Outwardly he did not rebel but thinking for yourself was certainly something he valued and cultivated within his family
His daughter, my mum, would have been among only a few science graduates in the first half of last centaury.
Propaganda has come a long way since his letter presented a sanitised reality to the people back home but the creation of enemies by elites to perpetuate exploitation seems an eternal theme to me.
I grew up listening to Rory Mcleod singing ‘passing the pain down’ after all
And now we live in a world where trenches between others are being dug deeper
People corralled into partisan tribes as much as nations
Crazy conspiracy theories create enemies in the deep state or other countries while tax cuts and government bail outs continue to protect and benefit rich arseholes, wearing ‘with god’ on their helmets, continue to line their pockets with our toil and taxes.
Call themselves truth seekers but who is funding the youtube that gives them The Truth?
I woke on Saturday to the sound of a bugle playing the last post
In the pre dawn light I thought of my grandfather in wet trenches losing all those mates in the horrors of war
I thought of who it was that really brought that atrocity into the world.
The military industrial complex
I thought of the oil companies who carved up the middle east after the second world war and then benefited from the gulf wars
How their power is threatened by current circumstances
Desperate people do desperate and terrible things
Especially those with power & the most to lose and the least regard for others
Truth the first casualty of war eh?
Lets not do all this again
Lest we forget
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