The Last Post ANZAC Day 2020 - Readers Contributions

ANZAC Day 2020 is taking place without the usual social get together, and we are inviting readers to contribute their stories as a way of celebrating this very special day in a slightly different way. 
See this post for details - ANZAC Day Initiative - The Last Post Award - Inviting Your Contributions

Here are some contributions so far -

From Alastair Bridges of Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The Volunteer Guides at AWM are using this story for a special Anzac Day edition of Guide Post.
"25 April 1944 my dad was flying Wellington X HE489 O for Oboe (Oscar today). Their target tonight was the San Stephano Docks in Italy with six 500 pound bombs for 4.5 hours flight all at night. (Our Lancaster, G for George, flew with 460 Squadron which was originally a Wellington squadron.)

Four months later he was shot down by a German ME 110 while bombing Ploesti oil fields near Bucharest in Romania. His aircraft, Q for Queanie, lost an engine (twin engine) and he jettisoned his bombs near the Danube River and diverted into Yesilkoy aerodrome (now Istanbul). He destroyed his aircraft by firing into it with his very pistol (which I still have - don't tell the rozzers). He was interned with his crew (records have them as POWs). This was a few weeks after I was born in Scotland and not long after my mum was badly hurt by a V1 while she was doing volunteer work in London. Can you imagine what my poor mother was going through.

Much later in life, dad told me the internment was one of the best few weeks of his life! In a reunion in England, dad met the Luftwaffe pilot, Manfred, and they became good friends. Manfred described how he attacked a Wellington which, in the dark, rolled over and dived to tree top level. He said he was not going to do that! Manfred was trapped behind the iron curtain until it was removed in 1989."

From Editor Greg Smith - This photo is one of my ANZAC Day favourites not only because it features long time contributor to Odd Bods, Jan Dimmick, but because it illustrates the generational interest in the ANZAC story.

From FOTOBAI member Geoff Clark:

"I consider it a privilege to be member of the Friends of the Odd Bods Association and take great pleasure having lunch with the Odd Bods particularly on ANZAC Day, but alas not this year.

My memory is not of ANZAC Day but of just a month ago when I drove to Canberra for the Dedication Ceremony for the Commemorative Plaque to the Odd Bods at the Australian War Memorial.

As a lad growing up in England during the war, when my parents belonged to the Lady Francis Scheme hosting servicemen on leave, I knew New Zealanders, Canadians, three Poles and a Czech soldier and 24 Australians.

Of the Aussies three were in Fighter Command flying Hawker Typhoon ground attack fighters and all returned safely home. Flt. Sgt. Don Walker was lost over the North Sea flying a Beaufighter in Coastal Command.

The other 20 flew as crew members in Bomber Command, ten of whom  paid the ultimate price.

During that Ceremony on Saturday March 14th as I remembered what my parents had done for those young airmen and even more what they had done for Britain and the World I cried.

It was without doubt the most moving event I have ever attended.

Geoff Clark"

From FOTOBAI member John Eacott a photo giving us a rare close-up of marchers preparing for ANZAC Day featuring Walter Eacott, Frank Sims, Doug Parry, Weston Bate, Jack Elliot, and others. We think it might be 2014 or 15?

From FOTOBAI Member Paul Kerrins - a lengthy documentary that covers six years of wartime operations, and reviews the obstacles and challenges that the RAF (Royal Air Force) faced as they developed Bomber Command. Plenty of Lancaster content.

From FOTOBAI Member June Smith whose Father was an RAAF Mosquito Pilot in WW2 - 

"So many ANZAC days stand out in my memory.    Watching my father, a returned WW11 pilot , march  with his local RSL ;  watching our children  in St Kilda Road  being awed by the  long parade of veterans;  watching thousands of people  emerge from the gloom outside the Shrine to celebrate the Dawn Service;  and so many more.  

But the one I’ve chosen to write about was at Sorrento in Victoria.  My husband and I had attended the Dawn service by the water’s edge , and waited there again  for the  11 a.m. parade to arrive.   The main street was closed for veterans to march  through the town and down the steep hill  to the cenotaph  on the foreshore for the memorial service.   There were fewer veterans every year,  going ever more slowly down the hill ;  some clinging to a supporter’s arm and  some travelling slowly  in a ride-on machine.    But as they came , a great crowd  came behind them.  Not only the  sporting groups, the scouts, the schools, the clubs,  but a great assortment of people who had been in the town for  their coffee  or their  shopping  or their games  and who had stopped what they were doing to follow these old heroes. From the  bottom of the hill it looked like the Pied Piper being followed. 

And I realised yet again how the idea of ANZAC inspires us as a nation.   How it makes us value the contribution of ordinary people who became extraordinary, how it creates a bond between us, how it reminds us of our common allegiance to this wonderful country. 

This year there will be no treasured veterans marching down the hill at Sorrento or elsewhere, but they will be remembered as always. "