Last week has seen the conversation surrounding the need for a Royal Commission into Veteran suicide come to a head. With a unanimous vote in the Senate, the nation is now set to watch this Monday, March 22nd, with the expectation that it will also pass the Lower House.
For too long now, this debate has been dragging on, inflicting further insult to the moral injury that has been plaguing the Veteran community for decades. While politicians continue to argue which party has the better policy, Australian Veterans of all generations have continued to suffer from the inaction and failed understanding of the key issues at hand.
Read more: Time for a Royal Commission into veteran suicide
As NSW and southern Queensland are being rained out, flooded out, and emotionally wrung out, the Governments and bureaucrats are hanging Australia out to dry albeit with soggy feet, destroyed lives and submerged under a sea of despair.
The story I am about to relate to you is one which will be vaguely familiar to some, the detail unknown to almost all. Australia’s contribution to the defense of the Empire in the very early days of WW1 is barely recognised and never acknowledged such was the extent to which we were taken for granted by Britain.
In my posting of The First Angry Shot I described the German strategy known as The Schlieffen Plan and its Pacific and Far East Asian Empire. It is suffice to say that Germany was very well prepared for WW1. If it had not been triggered by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Grand Duke of Austria and his wife, then I am sure that some other cause or incident would have taken its place.
We have so many Veterans taking their own lives and disappearing into a sea of despair, that I have to wonder if there is an answer that is right in front of our noses?
Recently, it was World K9 Day: the day that the world is supposed to celebrate the gift of loyalty and dedication that our four-legged friends have given to our Military men and women. Our canine friends have fought beside us and stood beside us and comforted us in times of trouble and we are increasingly, as a species, forgetting their dedication and love and consigning them into the same bin that we place our unborn children.
We are reading more and more stories of heartbroken and dispirited Veterans who are taking their own lives.
After so many decades of service to us, surely we should recognise the role these quiet companions play in a world post-war? Are dogs the answer to the pandemic of Veteran suicides confronting our Nations?
Read more: K9 Veteran's Day - is it time for our best friends to become our BEST friends again?
As a child, we spent our Christmas holidays at a remote coastal sheep farm, The car would be loaded up with camping gear and we would head off on the long drive to spend 2 weeks of fishing, mucking around in the shearing shed, hiking across the paddocks and exploring the rock pools at low tide. Our Aunts and Uncles would already be there and our cousins would be smug that they had already scanned out the best places to build forts, swim and generally get into mischief.
Read more: I remember when I learned that memories are a precious gift
On 19 March 1932 the Sydney Harbour Bridge opened to the public. This landmark bridge is almost the poster child that is synonymous with Australia and is no doubt one of the most instantly recognizable bridges in the world.
The brainchild of John Bradfield, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is tribute to the man who brought us the concept of the much touted " Bradfield Scheme " and also the Storey Bridge in Brisbane and Sydney's rail system. He oversaw the rebuilding of the bridge over the Hawkesbury River and the construction of dams such as the Cataract and Burrinjuck dams. In 1917 he wrote a paper predicting Sydney’s population would nearly triple by 1950 to more than 2.2 million. This was used in Bradfield’s day as an argument for suburban electrified trains as a way to open up new land for development. source.
Last year ANZAC Day was subsumed by the Coronavirus lockdown and we were denied the right to celebrate it and honour our Diggers in the usual way by government decree.
As the day approaches it looks like this year it may be subsumed again by the furore of the March 4 Women’s Rights movement or the demonstrations by the Aboriginal Industry asking for MORE.
Either way, I expect that we will still get the usual collection of the bearded unwashed telling us how wrong we were/are for participating in any war because we should be celebrating peace.
These angry shots are not the first, nor will they be the last salvos we ordinary grateful citizens will be subjected to by this ignorant element in our society. Ignore them and roll with the punches.
When one talks about real angry shots and the peaceful scenario of Port Philip Bay on a calm and cloudy day one does not normally connect the two in the same sentence but on 4th August 1914, they did.
Ad-Free ABC?
(Australian Broadcasting Commission)
In recent decades “our” ABC has become a pampered left-wing mega-phone.
Read more: Is it time to give Aunty the boot? A Thursday thought from Viv Forbes
The 17th of March marks the date of the death of St Patrick, the patron Saint of Ireland. St Patrick was actually born in Britain but, when he was 16, he was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a slave. It was about the year 415 and there was no kids helpline or social media available to send out a cry for help. So he planned and plotted and eventually managed to escape. Sadly, Paddy was no Houdini and he was sent off to France where he was introduced to Christianity.
He escaped again and managed to return to Ireland, which he now accepted as home. Converted to the Christian religion, he set about spreading the Word throughout Ireland. Perhaps the most well-known legend of St. Patrick is that he explained the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) using the three leaves of a native Irish clover, the shamrock.
He is credited with ridding Ireland of snakes and is generally regarded as being a pretty good chap.
Of course, he would never have risen to the levels of global recognition that his name enjoys today, had it not been for one singular event: The Irish Potato Famine.
An 89 year old woman has died from the horrific neglect she sustained in a Brisbane " care " home. She was suffering from sepsis and her leg had rotted down to the bone. Her back was covered in burns from having lain in her own urine for God knows how long.
It is not often that I am moved to tears when I read an article, but this one has broken my heart and destroyed what little faith I have in humanity. That this has happened in Australia is incomprehensible and that it went unnoticed or ignored for so long is a symptom of a deeper rot and sepsis within our society.
Any commentary or reference to the contribution by Heston Russell on 10th March (Moral Injury) may seem somewhat belated. Fact is that this whole disgusting witch hunt makes me so furious with anger that I find it difficult to put words together coherently, rationally or civilly. Civility really has no place in this discussion because the discussion does not deserve it.
I have followed, among others, Heston’s site, Voice of a Veteran, since its inception. I am not a veteran myself. I was a Nasho during the Korean War which ended hostilities during the time I was conscripted. At the time I was under 21 and the law then was that persons under that age could not be conscripted for overseas service unless they had parental consent. My mother would not give consent. I remained in the CMF as a volunteer after my 2 year conscription was finished. By the time the Vietnam War started I was married and too old anyway.
This purge on our most elite soldiers is a matter of national shame because it rejects the notion that these men have put their lives on the line in defence of our nation and our way of life. This is a matter that we should all be eternally grateful for but instead, we have a collection of little nobodies who think that they are on a higher plane than the rest of us and sit in judgement of those who have volunteered to defend us.
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