ANZAC DAY 2008

Anyone who read my blog entry on Anzac Day 2007 will probably be surprised to hear that I went to Anzac Day 2008 and had a very good time. I explained last year why I had been a regular truant but ended with these words:

All I can say is: Look fellas, it’s not you. It’s me. And that’s the truth – although I don’t rule out the possibility of getting over what ever it is that I don’t like about living in the past. Perhaps when it is long enough ago and I can be certain that THAT is not me, I will be able to go back and enjoy the memory of the most astounding year of my life: 23 July 1969 to 23 July 1970.(emphasis not in the original.)

Well the possibility came to pass sooner than I imagined when I wrote those words. I had a “road to Damascus” experience while reading something written by the theologian James Allison, whom I have referred to elsewhere in this blog. Here’s what he wrote:

I suggest that only someone who is really aware of being liked, who is really complacent, is able to defuse someone else’s place of shame and make it spacious. And it is out of complacency that liking flows to those who are like: because I am not frightened of being like someone, liking them, being liked by them.(my emphasis in both quotes)

[By the way, JA’s use of the word complacent above must not be taken to mean what it normally means. If you would like to follow up what he means see Chapter 5, Confessions of a Former Marginaholic in his book On Being Liked, DLT 2003.]

I told James that I had fallen off my high horse (why it is a “road to Damascus” experience) when I read the words emphasised above. As I said to him, I’m still not sure that the relevance of his words for mine is really as self evident as it seems to me, but for me they certainly flashed like lightning when I read them. In the light of his words I felt compelled to examine my position. At the time I wasn’t sure that it would result in my going to the Anzac Day Dawn Service and march, but I saw that I probably had to make an even bigger leap and rejoin the Returned Services League. He replied that he’d be interested to hear how the melding of the two sentences highlighted above affect me as Anzac Day comes closer, and my re-membering continues.

Well, I deliberately did not work on drawing out the case for going to the Anzac Day activities. I decided to act on the flash of insight and see what happened. I thought it would be more fruitful to reflect on the experience rather than run the risk of pushing the experience in a direction it might not be capable of going. So I went with the expectation that there was something in store for me that I not only wanted, but needed. And so it was. It was as though I had always been there. And look, I can’t help myself, a certain parable comes to mind – “These late comers have worked only one hour, yet you have paid them as much as we who bore the full day’s burden and heat.” [If you don’t know the parable and would like to know what I am talking about, it’s Matthew 20: 1-16]

DAWN SERVICE AND BREAKFAST
The day started with the Dawn Service at 4:30 am – the time of the Gallipoli landing. There was no formation, just people standing around in the dark with the president of the local RSL calling on people to lay wreaths and sing hymns. It was a surprisingly moving hour – surprising because when I was in the army I found military ceremonial utterly barren – even though I was good at it: I was the right marker for my rookie platoon and most subsequent units. But this, of course was not military ceremonial. It was blokes and the wider community remembering. The last post and Reveille were played on a bugle by a young man I later met and found to be in year 12 at the local high school. The singing was by a mother an daughter team – the daughter known to me and seen regularly at school dancing and singing extravaganzas. The mother was obviously someone who had had serious voice training – which probably explains the daughter’s regular stage appearances. The number of people there surprised me. Apparently I wouldn’t have been the only one surprised at the size of the turn out. I later heard that 450 attended breakfast – they had catered for 160. Not everyone who attended would have gone to breakfast – though it seemed that most did. I wondered if the later collected 12 baskets of scraps.

Because of the unusual circumstances of my being there I was not only participating in something I had mostly avoided in the past, but very actively observing that participation. As I waited in line for breakfast, therefore, I realised, with considerable clarity, one of the reasons that I had stayed away in the past. I was feeling vulnerable because I couldn’t see anyone I knew, apart from a couple of people on the RSL executive, and I didn’t think it would be right to attach myself to them – they would have more to do than protect me from my sense of being a stranger – how presumptuous would it be for someone who had not been involved to cosy up to the leaders. My first strong impulse was to flee. But too much was at stake. I knew I couldn’t ever succeed in what I was there for if I chickened out. So as I moved slowly towards the food service my mind frantically worked on opening lines and topics of conversation that might be useful when I found myself sitting at a table with people I didn’t know.

As it happened I sat at the same table as the bugler and found an instant opening line. Well done that man with the bugle. He was grateful but self critical. There was spit in the bugle which made a couple of the notes problematic. The conversation immediately turned on out mutual interest – music. He told me he was in the Lismore Symphony Orchestra. I confessed that I did not know there was a LSO (other than in London, of course) and told him that I was in the Mullumbimby Amatori Choir. He asked me if I had considered singing at the Dawn Service, which took me by surprise, because it had indeed crossed my mind during the service that it might be a role I could play as a veteran and singer. Next thing he has me meeting the president of the local RSL and it’s arranged for next year. Struth!! How fast was that?

Later at breakfast I met someone with a medal I had not seen before and asked him what it was. It turned out to be a medal to which I am entitled but knew nothing of. So there’s another gong to add to my collection. What was particularly interesting about that conversation was the warmth of it. This bloke didn’t know me from Adam, yet he engaged with me instantly as though I was someone he could call a mate and mean it. Context is everything. If you’re here you must be OK, so to speak. Would I get the same reception from the same person in a different context? It struck me like a thunderbolt that that depends, not on the context, but on me, and that I was here to begin the journey towards being the kind of person who would get the same reception regardless of the context. The measure with which you give you shall receive. In the next hour or so as I moved around the hall saying g’day to people I didn’t know was so utterly painless that couldn’t help laughing to myself about my initial anxiety – and even invoked a piece of advice from quite a different context: Do not be concerned about what to say. The words will be given to you. It was the second time in a month that that advice had emerged from my unconscious. Maybe the message here is that I am a control freak who needs to trust the universe. Universe?! Wooooooooo! Hold that thought! I’m definitely not ready for reconciliation with the New Age.

The people I was sitting with left as I got up to get a cup of tea. When I returned to my seat I saw someone I knew at the next table and asked if I could drag up a chair on the end. He was with a couple from Brunswick heads and friends visiting from Melbourne, who were specialists in personal development. Me too I said. So we talked about a range of interesting things until it was time to go. At no time did I feel I was in alien territory. It was probably about 7:30 when I went home and took a nap before returning at 10:30 for the march and parade.

THE MARCH, PARADE AND LUNCH
By then I was much less apprehensive about being unknown, and it took no time to “be there”. People I approached greeted me as “one of them”. They had no way of knowing that until that morning I hadn’t been “one of them”. It didn’t even phase anyone when I pulled out my medals and asked which one goes on the left, which on the right and how the others fit in between. Haven’t done this for a while, eh was the remark. Haven’t done it ever I said. Well it’s good you finally made it was the reply are you coming to lunch after the march – would you like my wife to pin those on for you? I almost laughed. Someone who sews and makes biscuits, vacuums, washes and irons, you know, sensitive new age guy stuff, doesn’t need someone else to pin his medals on. So I thanked him but declined, and made a huge mess of pinning my own medals on. Maybe I’m not such a control freak after all. If I were I would have persisted until they were in a straight line. But hey, I’m just a few months away from being a pensioner. I don’t have to be perfect anymore. Not that I have ever been perfect – other than a perfect dickhead, of course.

Speaking to people before the parade prompted me to remember things I wouldn’t otherwise have thought about ever again in my life. And it was interesting to catch a glimpse into life in the Australian base early in our engagement. One person told me about building the base at Nui Dat where I first went. He mentioned the air field built by the Engineers (my Corps). I mentioned my alarm when I saw it for the first time coming in to land on it – it runs over a hill! Being able to identify that seemed to make a difference to the bloke I was talking to – he knew for sure that I wasn’t bullshitting about being there. Let me explain that. A problem I have had, not just with veterans but people in general, is that I have always looked too young to be a veteran. People have always given me dubious looks when I have said I was there. One of the people I had breakfast with me asked me how old I am. He was visibly taken aback when I said sixty in a few months. He told me he must have been in the same National Service intake as I. I didn’t tell him that he couldn’t have been in the same intake as I, because I didn’t wait to be called up. I volunteered for Nasho early. One in eight Nashos were volunteers. Why I volunteered is too long a story for here.

One slightly unnerving incident was that one of the members of the RSL executive saw me and asked, Are you the opera singer? I was absolutely confounded by this. I sing, I said, But I’m not an opera singer. I’m in a choir. To which re replied, Yes, you’re the bloke who’s going to do the singing next year, aren’t you? Struth! Talk about no where to hide. If I was planning to test the waters anonymously, which I wasn’t, I would have failed outright. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here, I returned, I made an offer not an arrangement. I don’t want to upset the people who are already doing a fine job of it. It’s something that would have to be discussed with all interested parties. So no, I’m not yet the person doing the singing next year, although I might be if no one minds. Fortunately I was rescued from any further discussion of this point by the signal to start the parade.

It was late starting, and it was led off by a tracked vehicle festooned with children. Small town, I mused. No one concerned with OH&S issues here. As we marched down the main street of Mullumbimby I scanned the crowd gathered and clapping as we passed, for people I knew. To my surprise I didn’t see anyone I knew at all, even John who was definitely there. Yet the people I didn’t know were not strangers. This was my town out to celebrate. When we arrived at the cenotaph we formed up for what was to be a much longer ceremony than the Dawn Service. This time there were speeches. Fortunately there was cloud cover so it was not as difficult as it could have been. Nevertheless one person fell over and was taken away in an ambulance. That brought back some memories. Parades were always ordeals in training units. Someone always fainted – and was charged later for (I forget what the wording was, but it was ludicrous.) That’s the military. There was a poem The Power of Kokoda by Dean Travaskis, a local lad from Ocean Shores, who had walked the Kokoda Track and subsequently won the Blackened Bush Billy poetry competition in Tamworth. It was quite moving. When the parade was dismissed I was delighted to discover that I had forgotten the dismissal drill – unlike the first time I attended an Anzac Day parade (mentioned in my blog post of Wednesday 25 April 2007).

As I went in to the RSL for lunch I reverted to type fretting about who I would find to sit with. I made the cowardly choice of sitting with the same people as at breakfast. Calling it cowardly is not intended to reflect on the company, but to admit that I had not really gained courage from what I had learned – about myself and the universe – earlier that day. The bugler was there with two of his brothers. On the other side of the table, where I sat, was a WWII veteran and his son – a bloke about 50 years of age who turned out to have had a fascinating career in biomedicine. What was rather special about lunch is that it was served by the RSL catering staff. Roast beef with Yorkshire Pudding and three veg, followed by apple and rhubarb crumble with ice cream. Later on port was served. I had forgotten about that aspect of military life. The Queen is toasted with port or water for those who don’t drink. Interestingly enough, the Queen was not toasted – a fact that I noted but did not comment on. My conversation with others at lunch was not about the war – any war – but life in general. It was remarkably easy. Not at all fraught like others I had had in previous years. These were not blokes reliving the past but engaged with the present and alert to possibilities of the future. Maybe it was the fact that it a small town with no garrison. You know, the Capital of The shire. I’m sure if I’d have looked around I would have seen Bilbo and Frodo.

As I said earlier, the majority of people who saw me there didn’t know that it was my first time there. Most of them were probably regulars (not a military term in this instance)and probably would have assumed that I was too, if they thought about it at all, which they wouldn’t have, because they would have no reason to do so. But you see what I mean. It was like I had always been there. And it is my intention to be there from now on – as a regular. My next visit is this coming Sunday. There’s a monthly RSL meeting. I have an arrangement to make for next year. I was thinking maybe something from St Matthew’s Passion, but probably not. I mean it’s in German after all. It might be the RSL, but, you know… don’t mention the war.