Yet all too soon another world war came and my father, though living in a neutral country, risked his life sweeping for mines in the waters around Sweden and after that war was over had the horrific experience of entering places like Auschwitz to help clean up a tragedy that should never have occurred.
My mother too did not come out of the second world war unscathed. Her closest cousin, was shot down in Papua New Guinea. But the horror that I remember from that story was not her cousin dying, but how my ANZAC great uncle's workmates treated him after his son went missing in action. The next week they told him he wasn't wanted to be a part of their weekly lottery ticket syndicate as having lost a son made him unlucky. And doubly unlucky he was, for it was that week that his workmates won the lottery, and not a penny of it did they give to him.
During the first dozen years or so of my life, my brother dragged me along to more war movies than I think any of my peers (at least the female ones) have seen in their entire lives.I knew how to shoot my brother's air gun (and wasn't too bad at hitting the target) and I'd watched my father strip down and restore classic guns to their former glory.
Our favourite game in the backyard was playing wars and, together with the neighbours kids we dug trenches and tunnels, wore real helmets and tossed rocks at each other pretending they were hand-grenades. How we lived to tell the story, I'll never know, yet we survived all our battles with barely a scratch or scrape.
When I hit my teens I began to see another side of war. I saw young guys, not that much older than myself, marching not wanting to go and fight a war they didn't believe in, and I saw old blokes trashing them. Though at the time I was probably only 11 or 12 all I could think was how wrong this war must be. I remember celebrating in 1972 when Gough Whitlam was elected, for Australia, at least, this war was going to be over. And that led to another November 11 when in 1975, the prime minister who brought us peace, was sacked by the Queen of England's representative.
During my university years I became an ardent pacifist and republican, yet as the years have wrought their toll I have found the edges of my passion becoming greyed. Edmund Burke once said, 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.' Over the years this much quoted phrase has been used to justify both action and inaction and for me the debate is still out.
Yet I still, cannot image a point where I could raise a gun and shoot to save my own life. The only time in my life I have ever had a gun pointed at me was by a Koori late one night in Redfern, who, after we chatted, ended up just wanting a light and decided I was cool. Maybe the situation was never dangerous, or may be my inability to respond negatively to the danger made it a positive experience ... I'll never know, but at least I lived to tell the tale.
We now live in a world where one country's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. Where inequity is massive. We get caught up in chasing dollars, fame and fortune, but as I was reminded so well by Deepak Chopra this morning, what really matters at the deepest level is peace, harmony, laugher and love.
So peace, harmony, laugher and love are what I am focussing on this Remembrance Day and hope that if enough people around the world join with me then together we can make this dream a reality.
-----------
If you are liking my blog then please share it on your wall :-).
No comments:
Post a Comment