It's windy today. The gum trees are swaying and the roof of the small office I work in is flapping in the breeze. Yesterday was ANZAC Day, which means something only if you live in this part of the world. A day of remembrance for fallen soldiers generally, although the original was from the First World War.
When I was a kid in early highschool, the Vietnam War was on, and conscription existed in Australia. If I had been a bit older, it's possible that I would have been drafted and possibly sent to the jungles of Asia to kill strangers. One of the few things I have left from that period is my Vietnam Moratorium badge, which I used to wear on the bus. I do remember the looks I got from some people. It was probably my first experience of what being unpopular with some people can mean.
I got some dirty looks, and the occasional remark from fellow commuters. This was in the early 1970s. Australians were quite politically active at that time. There's nothing like a war going on which involves your country's troops to help focus the mind. The media coverage and the body bags and the length of the conflict was having some bad consequences on public support.
There's an old Spike Milligan gag about the army (something which he knew about from personal experience): "Join the army, travel the world, meet interesting people...and kill them." Unknown to me at the time was that my Dad would have moved me to Austria if I'd been called up. Both my parents were born there, so presumably I would have stayed at a relative's place, and maybe started a new life over there (or wait until conscription was revoked in Australia). As it turned out, we didn't need to do anything as exciting as that, since the Labor government of Gough Whitlam abolished conscription in 1972, when I was 15.
I wonder what I would have done had I been called up? Would I have been prepared to go to court and defend my beliefs that killing people I don't know is madness? Would I have been prepared to go to gaol? I will never know. Fortunately, the odds of conscription being reintroduced in Australia must be about zero. If either of my sons are called up, I'd like to think that I would do the same thing as my Dad.
It's easy to be a hero in your own mind, always doing the fine and honourable thing, but I wonder how many of us would live up to those ideals when faced with the reality of some really unpleasant consequences. When I was a kid, the idea of soldiers going to war just sounded crazy to me. My highschool still had a cadet program, where some of my school mates would dress up as soldiers and do some drills and marching. I thought they looked like dweebs. ANZAC Day was just embarrassing, with all those thousands of dead people who were killed in so many bogus wars.
I don't feel the same anymore. It really has nothing to do with whatever reasons the young guys had for enlisting, but more to do with what they did when they were there, in a foreign country, shit-scared, and faced with the likely prospect that they could be killed at any minute of the night or day. Would I have jumped out of my comparatively safe trench to help a wounded mate who was screaming in pain only 20 yards from me, when I would almost certainly be shot at by opposing guns? I have no idea. And I never will. And how would I live with the memory of not having done the proper, brave thing if I had been in such a situation? Do you think the nightmares would ever go away? I have my doubts.
Human beings should never be put in situations like this. We have free will, a conscience, and a memory. Any decent human being would be scarred for life if they had to live with such memories, and I'm sure that many people around the world have to do just that. Sure, you can rationalize your reasons and motives, but the dreams probably won't ever go away.
So, whenever I pass a war memorial now, I spare a quiet thought for the poor bastards who are represented, and am very grateful that I am not one of them.
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