The last week or so has seen me picking up on some history.
July 17 was the date 58 years ago that I began my national service, spending two years in the Australian Army, including one year of active service in Vietnam. That period of time had a profound affect on me. In many respects, as I look back, it has been a positive time and I have had a good number of long term benefits from my military service. I caught up with three of my old comrades for lunch on the anniversary of that day and we enjoyed a couple of hours of good company.
Paul Beraldo, Bob Johnson and Ken Wriedt were in the same platoon as me during recruit training at Puckapunyal Army Base (2 TRB) in 1968. We all went on to serve in different units in Vietnam. Paul served as an infantryman in the Royal Australian Regiment, Bob was a Provost (Military Policeman), Ken served as a driver in our headquarters company, whilst I was a driver in 85 Transport Platoon.
On another military subject, I was sorry to have to miss the annual WW1 commemoration of the Battle of Fromelles in WW1. This is one of the actions remembered by the Friends of the Fifteenth Brigade – a local commemorative group of which I am a member. I have been struggling with a bad case of of Planter Fasciitis. Many of the roads around Melbourne’s Shrine of Remebrance were closed at the time of the service because of a fun run and my foot was too sore for me to be able to walk a long distance after having to park some distance away.
The service is held at the large bronze statue “Cobbers” which features a soldier carrying a fallen comrade from the field, It is a memorial to Australian service and sacrifice at the Battle. During the years of WW1 The term Cobbers’ was used to mean ‘Mate’ or Buddy.
After scratching around in my photo files I found some images of the day that the statue ‘Cobbers’ was first unveiled in 2008. We went to that ceremony as we had recently returned from France where we had visited the site of the battle and the cemetery there where most Australians who were killed in the battle are buried in mass graves.
The Battle of Fromelles on July 19–20, 1916, was a tragic World War One engagement, marking Australia’s first major action on the Western Front in France. It resulted in over 5,500 Australian casualties in less than 24 hours, making it the bloodiest 24 hours in Australian history. This was was the first action that my grandfather saw in France although, luckily his Battalion was held in reserve, otherwise there was a reasonable possibility that he might have been killed. In that case I would not be here.
The British refused to hold an armistice in order to rescue wounded soldiers dying in no-mans land between the trenches, Simon Fraser, a Victorian farmer took it on himself to rescue as many men as he could. As passed by the wounded, they would call out ‘Don’t forget me Cobber’.
I found another historic photo, this one of my father who, in his early years, worked in the family grocery shop. My dad is the young man to the right in this photo which shows just how different a grocery shop in the 1930s is from today’s supermarkets.
A few months ago, we had a family of magpies that would eat out of my hand They disappeared while we were on one of our trips but this week they have returned. It looks like the mother bird has somehow lost a foot but the Male looks healthy enough. The younger bird still comes up to the window ledge to look in and see if I am around to get some food for them. It makes me happy to see them again.
