ANZAC Day will not be forgotten

My earliest memories of ANZAC Day are of watching the march on TV and looking out for one banner in particular. It’s a small one, purple background with a few place names up the sides and the insignia for the Eighth Division Signals. That was Pop’s group. He didn’t march in the Sydney march to my memory, I think he did once before I was born, but he did march in Wagga. But we’d always look for it and anyone who wasn’t in the room at the time was called in with the cry “There it is”.

I didn’t really know what it meant of course. It was just something Pop had been a part of in the war, which seemed like ancient history to me as a kid, it had nothing to do with the present. Over the years I learnt more though. I learnt about what Pop endured during the war, being present at the Fall of Singapore and spending years as a POW on the Hellfire Pass. The suffering he and his mates went through is beyond belief and certainly not a shiny topic.

But I didn’t just learn about the bad. Some of the stories I heard were funny too. And many were downright heroic. He didn’t really like to talk about it, Nanna didn’t even hear much from him, but she did from his mates years later when they started going to reunions as Grey Nomads. Those reunions were a chance for men and women who’d suffered to really live it up together and enjoy their hard-earned senior years.

It won’t be long before there’s no-one to carry that little purple banner and the deeds of the Eighth Div Sigs will be mostly forgotten. But their legacy will continue. How? Through me for one. Pop survived. He went to the Hellfire Pass with his mates and came home with a few of them. He came home because of them and they came home because of him. I will remember what stories I have and I will remember that banner with pride.

To me my Pop was always a giant. The more I learnt the more I realised that was true. There’s not much shiny about war, but there is in the people who survive and built a life and a world the better for their experiences. And in the friendships that help get us through.

Pop endured a terrible darkness and it haunted him all his life, but it made him a beacon, a tower of light. I still look up at that giant and feel honoured to be his grandson.

Lest we forget.

Written by Robert Jenkins - @wanderingfriar