We of all nations should know better than to continue the impracticality that is war. War does not solve a damn thing, the hippies were right. All war does is dig even deeper foreign gaps between nations, between religions thus between humans. What will happen when evil aliens come forth from the heavens and demand us to sacrifice our planet? Will it be only then that we all would unite? That the Amazon tribes will lend us their poison spears when people from the white white west run out of ammunition? Would the red Indians of America ally with Australia's forgotten Aborigines in spite of the white white west? I only hope that the aliens come sooner just so I can laugh at the face of humankind's tragedy.
But it was this that inspired me to write such a drab post:
A picture from an Anzac Day lift-out in the Herald Sun Newspaper yesterday, the 23rd of April. It is mirrored because I took the photo on my MacBook, however that element of this picture is unimportant - what is important, though, is the content of the photo, the act of which I am unable to name even despite an extensive search of the name of this act of holding a string that, on the other end, is attached to a soldier holding on, the last grip with their loved ones before they go to a foreign place and clamp their hands around the grips of a gun and hold fast to it even if their grip shakes otherwise the "enemy" might shoot them first.
This is perhaps the most heartbreaking pre-war photograph I have ever come across, in fact each one of its kind is heartbreaking. One can only feel this heartbreak if they place themselves in the position of one of the two people on either end of the string: from the perspective of the soldier, who probably is holding on to the last piece of hope that they will ever see, or the person on the other end - the lover, the brother or sister, the father or mother, the best friend, the daughter or son who might see their father, uncle, brother or son for the last time ever, and this tug-of-war sort of play is the last experience before that soldier has to tug for their lives.
The entire prospect of war angers me. "Lest we forget", they claim, as they take the day off as a public holiday and become intoxicated on beer and fill their guts with barbecued meats as they sit around in the sun in their backyards watching their children play around and feeling the fresh green grass between their toes, while years ago men as young as fifteen risked their lives because they were brainwashed to fight for their country, a sense of false patriotism overridden by a "holiday" claimed by the propaganda, only to find blood, guts and ammunition being fired from every direction at them. In fact, in the case of the Anzacs, most of these young men never made it off their boats without being gunned down, bullets piercing their lungs, their skulls, their legs, everywhere. And what do they get in return? Some unmarked gravestones, some marked gravestones with dead flowers, and some decaying in the sea where they were shot down while all being commemorated with one minute of silence and a red poppy.
The parade showcasing the remaining veterans, some too shell-shocked and traumatised still after all these years to even know what is going on. All they know is that they are in the safety of a wheelchair and they are not wielding guns and running around shooting other young men for the pride and joy of their country. I look at those gloomy eyes and I see pain, I see things no human should go through or witness, and I realise that the fanfare of these parades are not enough to commemorate these men. War should not have happened in the first place. Anything involving the premature taking of lives is execrable.
So tomorrow, while we have that one minute of silence, imagine being on one end of that string and either wishing or being wished a 'bon voyage'. Only then we will know, minus the gruesome details, if war ever was worth being fought. "Lest we forget"? More like, "lest we not drink".
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