The alarm goes off in the dark and I ritualistically stumble towards coffee and pinned medals. It’s brisk at the cenotaph of course, and the young men and women on parade all used to be me.
Words get amplified about sacrifice and service and the debt of those lost to foreign ambitions and puppeteers of narrative. Weaving some fabric of worthiness to console the wreckage of loss and mourning and the silent bitterness of knowing by those who know. Nothing could ever justify. Nothing will ever console. Not land, not ideology. Not fear, not greed.
That was me, too naive to fully grasp the consequences and the risk; too idealistic to perceive the pawning of my young, ignorant, courage. It could all have gone to waste more times than I care to remember. These mornings I know it was only lucky rolls, narrow misses, an accident of geography, the timing of history. The distance between Timor and Gallipoli is nothing but generational techtonics.
The nostalgia and conflict follow into the dawning sunrise as the day shines on the truth of this for me. I just miss my youthful comrades, and all our hopeful, dedicated, vibrant service. Not in the name of our country, but in the spirit of our own small community of belonging. The years of wreaths and odes make me silently entreat to those who would go off this time, to just stay a little. Why not savour the morning. There is after all no hurry to depart, for someone else’s story.
cjG
#mygroundtruth
To my lost brothers. Not forgotten. cjG