Business brought Mine Host to the big smoke late in the afternoon on Anzac Day. This brought one of life's new experiences; how Anzac Day is finished off in the metropolitan areas of this great nation.
It seems that returned servicemen (or the tail end of them) get awfully merry through over-imbibing, then put the wobbly boot on and lurch off home.
Mine Host has never seen this before. Anzac Day has always been just another day, though a public holiday, and a mandatory half-day closed for pubs. Returned servicemen are always out of the picture by 3pm.
Different in the big smoke.
Mine Host's most memorable observation: (Please, this is not intended in a negative sense)
The current crop of returned servicemen are sporting one helluva lot more medals from the left side of their chest than the blokes who served the entire First World War on the front line.
God, I hope we don't end up like the USA, a country where a serviceman who hasn't even been in battle will have fruit salad all over the left breast of his uniform.
Most of Mine Host's uncles served the full 6 years of World War Two, they have/had between three and five campaign/service medals each. That is Three, perhaps Five, ribbons. In one simple row.
2 comments:
G'day from Borneo Indonesia (sorry been awhile). Our Anzac Day is getting bigger every enough. We were even lucky enough this year that the committee raise enough funds to fly one of the original vets from the Balikpapan Borneo landings to the service.
Little know fact that Battle of Balikpapan was the last major battle of the Pacific.
Where have you gone?
I've put this on cat for you to find, but thought you'd like a direct link here.
http://annoyancesandirritations.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/bit-of-excitement-at-local.html
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