Odd Bod Maurie Smith has referred us to the archives for this article and it contains a very interesting perspective on the meaning of Anzac Day for our veterans.
The article comes from Odds'n'Ends magazine, the Odd Bods newsletter back in June 1986. The article was written by Father Max Grabau, a parish priest in a number of Melbourne Diocese up until the early 2000's.
"Many nations have an annual remembrance day, when they honor those who have fought for the country.
Yet Anzac Day has an atmosphere all its own. An atmosphere which has changed considerably over the years, and which means different things to different people.
It is inevitable that the further we are distanced from this century's two world wars, that there are changes in the outlook of the population.
Nevertheless it is sad to see the day being used by extremist groups for their own ends. On the other hand it is just a holiday for many, and if Anzac Day falls on a weekend, then a holiday is claimed the following week. Which isn't exactly what it's all about - or wasn't, until recently.
So what is, or was, it all about?
Alan Seymour's play, The One Day Of The Year, is currently having a return season in Melbourne. It is a good play technically; a genuine drama about real people. A plot which is real enough and which still has point after all these years.
The old soldier whose attitude to Anzac Day is not understood by his son, and vice versa. Both sides of the argument are well presented, with the audience's sympathy, on the whole, shifting from the son to the father in the end.
But somehow even this honest attempt by an honest author fails to penetrate the real depths of Anzac Day reunions.
This is leaving the annual march to the Shrine of Remembrance, which serves its purpose as a healthy reminder to succeeding generations that the freedoms in which they luxuriate did not come about by chance, but were won the hard way, and may yet have to be defended again.
And rescinding from the fact that it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, which happens in services all through the land. What does bring old servicemen together once a year after all this time?
Many have philosophised about this over the generations: mostly with some elements of truth, yet missing the reality. And it has little to do with the reasons wars were fought, whatever they may have been. Nor, even, the varied reasons for which men and women volunteered in the services.
Contrary to some popular views, reunions are not spent in beery braggadocio about exploits of great daring, nor in any forlorn attempt to glorify war.
Any reminiscing is mostly about amusing incidents, or a few memories about those who have died since last Anzac Day. Much conversation is about grandchildren, or arthritis, or exploits on the local bowling green.
Anyone who had ideas about the glory of war soon lost them in the face of reality. There isn't much glory to be had in a water-logged trench or in jungle mud or being pitched about in an angry sea.
And thoughts of the glamour of being heroes were soon corrected by other heads, with reminders of the so-true tale of the pied piper of Hamelin.
Even the youngest soon realised that patriotic political speeches about nothing being too good for our gallant lads had no more substance than the promises of gold to the pied piper. Servicemen are very popular in times of war and danger, but nobody wants to know them when the danger is past.
It has been truly said that a wartime serviceman's life is mostly boredom, with occasions of intense excitement. And, perhaps, therein lies the crux of the matter.
A sharing in something which nobody else could therefore share with them. Not spouses, not children, not anyone.
Of all human emotions and experiences, there is nothing quite so basic as coming face to face with seemingly certain death. To share this emotion creates a strange and remarkable bond.
This is so when it happens once; a car accident, a bomb, an escape from drowning, or whatever. If it happens several times, the bond is stronger among families in say, London during the blitz or among children who learned when to dive for the gutter during rocket-bomb raids.
When it is between people who have volunteered to offer, if necessary, their lives, it is something else again. And when it happens not once, but by entering the same situation again and again over a long period, the bond among those who survive is remarkable.
This is the experience which cannot be described adequately, and therefore cannot be shared by anyone who did not take part in it. And it is true of any group of people who, knowing one another well, entered the occasion of seemingly certain death over and over.
It matters not whether it was in foxholes at Tobruk, a jungle in New Guinea, in opposing dugouts at Stalingrad, in German U-boats, or in a bomber heading for Hilter's Reich.
People who have something in common naturally come together to share. Whether they be philatelists, scuba divers, parachute jumpers, nudists, pediatricians or musicians.
But the repeated sharing of the presence of imminent death cannot be fully appreciated or understood by strangers to it. It is, to a large degree, what brings its sharers together, in any country.
They don't talk about it. There is no need to. It's just a sharing and they all understand without philosophising or articulating - most couldn't anyway.
In Australia it happens on Anzac Day. Nothing in their later lives will ever reach that level of intensity. For many, their later lives seem to have been lived on borrowed time."
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