HOP UP
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- Messages
- 92
- Location
- "Hollywood", Australia
fftopic: April 25 is the most important day in the Australian calendar to me personally and so many Australians and Kiwis all over the world. It is ANZAC DAY.ANZAC Day....OUR National Day. Our Kiwi friends across the Tasman know what this day means all too well. It is a day of reflection - to remember the courage, sacrifice and loss of our service men and women over past conflicts, and the people they left behind.
Loyalty, mateship, resourcefulness,endurance, sacrifice and the Australian notion of giving people a "fair go" - these are the qualities for which the ANZACS became known for. They were ordinary guys who did extraordinary things, farmers, teachers, plumbers, bakers, sportsmen and so on.
Tomorrow morning on a cold, still morning at the Shrine of Remembrance over 30,000 Melbournians of all ages will slowly file in to pay their respects to the fallen at the Shrine Of Remembrance. Every year the numbers are increasing, as if some invisible force compells them to do so.
Later on today over 90,000 fans will attend the football match that has become an institution in Melbourne - Collingwood Magpies v Essendon Bombers. I can tell you that when the Last Post sounds and there is a minute silence, you will be able to hear a pin drop, such is the emotion of the moment and the respect Australians have for our fallen servicemen and women.
We as a nation have served proudly from the Boer War right through to Afghanistan and the proud tradition continues. At dawn today all over Australia and in the killing fields at Pozieres and other locations in France, in Belgium, all over Greece, in Crete, at Kokoda in New Guinea, Libya, Tobruk, in Vietnam, Korea and Malaysia and Singapore, at Gallipoli in Turkey and in Iraq ,Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands, they will be repeating the same verse....
They marched with songs into battle,
They were young - straight of limb and true of eye.
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old,
Age shall not weary nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the Sun.... and in the morning,
We will remember them.
We will remember them......
Let us honour their sacrifice in our daily lives, remember all that were affected by horrors of war and never forget their sacrifice for the country we now live in and the life we now know and sometimes take for granted.
Let US not be be remembered by future generations as the Generation that let freedom slip from our grasp beacuse we were asleep on "our watch".
LEST WE FORGET.
Rat
