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Bit of a day of awareness and rememberance is Anzac day for us. Extended family day with all the grandkids in. Nan and myself will get out our parents momentos of the war. My mums little ships and planes she ripped off from her job as WAAF Plotter ...and some bits of Wirraways that she was making in melb before joining. My dads service medals and tags and his diary from Changi and Burma Railway of his days as a POW. The little containers he made out of crashed japanese fighter aircraft ...one a cigarette case all inscribed and etched with scenes of camp life….he died of his injuries many years later. My mum was given a war-widows pension in 63.
My wifes mum was an RAAF nurse in Darwin and has many pics of the devastation after the bombing ...her first hubby died flying out of Darwin against the Japanese ...missing in action. (I think that has to be the worst)
A day of awareness as I say ......we don’t need any more of these wars .....best we don’t forget.

Anzac day was never a big day for us when the old man was alive. He’d spend the day with his Legacy mates visiting ‘all his girlfriends’ as my mother used to say. Actually one year I went with him and we had a semi load of split firewood we threw off on the nature strip (some now what I’m saying) and drive on to the next while a team following stacked the wood around the back ...lots of things legacy did that I came to appreciate after he died.
Never had nor saw any of these war momentos until after his death ....it was never ever spoken of in our household although all the people around us in our lives were ex POWs I know now. Never did at the time….as I said it was never spoken of.
The whole affair was pretty tragic for spouses and serving alike and shouldn’t be glorified.

Oddly just receive a call from our good mate Ian Lawther, he was standing on sydney station waiting for a train to canberra….. asking for my dads tag numbers and regiment. He’ll be at the canberra memorial in the morning and wanted to hunt my dads name down and say some prayers…..can’t hurt I said.

Nice thought and what makes your mates mates I reckon.

When I was but a young boy I had a mate who lived in a great big house in toorak rd….I still remember the big gates at the front and especially my mate Weary.  Not Uncle Weary or Mr Weary but just Weary.
Dad used to go to Wearys often .....I always went because Weary and I had a business breeding guinea pigs for profit hehehheeeeeee.
He and I used to lie on the grass (old tennis court) and play with our guinea pigs for what seemed like hours. He always had time for me and called me Sachmo or Pops ....apparently I always had a deep voice as a kid.
I also recall my mum balling us both out with me and Weary inside my birdcage where I kept my guineas .....we’d taken some vegies out of the garden for our guineas and apparently we’d done the wrong thing.
Weary took the ear bashing in silence with me ....I remember his sideways look at me of “we’re in the poo now!”  heheheee

was years and years later that I realised who this guy was .....I think my dad was there for counselling
or whatever ......I never ever realised this bloke Weary was anybodies mate but mine. I never saw him again after my dad died when I was 10.
I realise that Weary probably had a hundred little mates like me as I think he ran support for ex-pows from his family home in t’rak.
He made me feel special I remember.  With what I know now I just hope someone was doing the same for him.

I also remember my dads funeral in 63. Not a military uniform in sight as dad would have liked it. He was a consciencious objecter coming into the war and so joined as a medic. He had been studying medicine up ‘til the war.
It was in all the papers about how the funeral had bought BoxHill to a standstill because 600 cars were in the procession and how proud we should be of our dad.
I think lots were there for their own lost loved ones from the war as my dad had very few friends.  An opportunity to grieve those lost when there was no time to grieve during the war was why most were there I’d say.
Anyone else have any of thes e weird little disjointed memories of that early childhood that have come back to gell in your older age?
I seem to have lots lately .......is it dementia moving in????? hehheheeeeee
Ians going off to the war memorial seems to have set off my memory about all this stuff from the past.
The 50/60s were a wonderful time to be a kid I think ......maybe you only remember the good bits though?

Somehow feel my father wasted his time giving his life for this society.
Shame but crosses my mind a bit more often than it should.