A very emotional day today in Australia.We commemorated ANZAC DAY. It is a day of reflection for all our forebears,men and women that served our country . It's not a celebration of victory but a celbration of courage and care for our people.It came about from a military failure at Gallipoli in Turkey in WW1.After that engagement Ataturk the leader if the Turkish people said to the Australian people their sons that had died there were now in the loving care of the Turks.They kept their word.
It is a sobering thought, the largest volunteer military force in history I think. Many families like ours lost nearly a whole generation, so many of my great uncles did not come back. I am anti war, and am against sending troops into another country where some of the population may see us as invaders. Yet I feel this one was different. They were not going into to a country as such, but onto other continents to help those who were being invaded.
Not at all sure it is a good idea to indulge in such commemorations: At the end of every wars, the survivors affectedly swear "never again! But hardly a generation of most peoples on the planet has lived its life without enduring one or another conflict, and putting on military parades to be admired by children, bayonets a-glinting and drums a-beating is not the way to condition, at long last, the next generations against bloodletting as a means of conflict resolution.