April 25, 1915. In time, it would be framed in history as the first ANZAC Day. But Great Uncle Edgar wasn’t to know that; for him, it was simply the day he enlisted in the Army.
Some months after, his little brother – my Grand-Dad, Alf – followed him into the AIF - and had much better luck, of which more later.
Edgar sailed away, bound for the tragedy and horror of Gallipoli.
He was only a bantamweight: five-feet-seven-and-a-half, and 138 pounds – less than ten stone in the old money. But at 27, he was older than many of his fellow recruits. That may have helped his promotion from Private to Lance Corporal in July, and to Sergeant in October.
He managed to survive long enough to leave the Turkish beaches behind in January, but it was no escape: the troop ship took him to Egypt, then onto France, where the slaughterhouse of the Somme awaited.
Amid murderous fighting on the bloody battlefield of Pozieres, as his comrades fell by the hundred around him, he was promoted again – this time to Second Lieutenant. Six days later, bullets tore across his chest. Four days after that, Great Uncle Edgar died in a military hospital. He’s been lying for 95 years now in the war cemetery at Puchevillers in France.
But chance is a funny thing.
Edgar’s brother, Alf – a strapping six footer, sixteen stone, with a massive chest, and arms thickened by his work as a farrier – joined up in 1916. He was posted to the 12th Field Company Engineers and served in France.
His papers show that he was even allowed six months’ paid leave to work in London as a boat-builder.
I suspect they were rowing boats he was building, because after his discharge from the military, he went on to win the world single sculls championship, drawing 150,000 spectators to the banks of the Parramatta River for his unsuccessful title defence against the Englishman Ernest Barry.
Too proud to exploit his sporting fame, he worked as a nightwatchman for the Commonwealth Bank, and died in 1951, missing the birth of his first grandchild by just six weeks.
So I never got to meet my Grand-Dad Alf. My father and his sisters say he was stern, sometimes gruff, and a disciplinarian, who hid his emotions – like many men of his generation. I have a feeling I would have liked him, though. Certainly I’m enormously proud of his achievements.
But all I can glean about Edgar comes from the 65 digitised pages of his army service records, which are held in Australia’s National Archives. It’s a priceless experience to be able to sit at a computer screen in 2011, and see the very papers he signed as he went off to war nearly a century ago.
It’s touching to read some of the other documents in the file – the handwritten letters from Edgar’s parents, unfailingly polite and effortlessly formal, seeking photos of their son’s final resting place, and the clipped, impersonal tone of the replies. The photos, incidentally, arrived in 1926 – ten years after Edgar’s death.
But what’s truly heartbreaking is the typed inventory of the few meagre possessions Edgar left behind. The list accompanied the kit bag sent by the Army to Edgar’s mother after his death.
“2 Singlets, 1 Cigarette Case, 1 Wallet, 1 Leather Belt, Socks, Handkerchiefs, 2 Small Books, 1 Pocket Knife, 1 Pr. Canvas Shoes, 1 Gun-Metal Wristlet Watch (Damaged).”
It’s hard not to think that that’s all he left. But I’d hate for anyone to regard that list in any way as the sum total of his life.
Great Uncle Edgar – we’ll never know what sort of a man you were. I can’t even find a photograph of you anywhere. But I feel I owe you a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. You mightn’t have changed the course of history, even though you died trying. But you might just have made a big difference to our family history.
Like my father and my children, I can only be eternally thankful that that it was you, and not Alf, who took those bullets at Pozieres. I’ll think of you and your mates when I go to the Dawn Service in Melbourne this ANZAC Day. And I’ll come to Puchevillers Military Cemetery in France one day soon. Just to say thanks, in person.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Monday, December 8, 2008
The Sleep of The Just
Children's powers of sleep amaze me.
New parents creep around their houses and rely on a mysterious code of whispers and sign language to communicate, lest, heaven forbid, they Disturb The Baby. Given their probable sleep deficit, it's totally understandable. But necessary, it ain't.
Almost from birth, the baby will wake often, but only when it's either hungry or wet. The chance of any external factors disturbing it are negligible. By the time the kid's 3, shut his or her bedroom door and you can safely go ahead and throw a party for two dozen guests.
They are simply uncanny.
We once had two workmen arrive just a few minutes after our daughters, then aged 3 and 1, went for their lunchtime naps. The tradies spent the next hour erecting a mantelpiece, involving the liberal use of hammer blows, just metres from the girls' bedrooms.
There was not a peep out of them, other than some light snoring.
When they wandered downstairs later that afternoon, they thought the Mantelpiece Fairy had swung by.
Like many parents checking on their children before retiring for the night, I've blundered around in darkened rooms and at times inflicted painful toe injuries on myself in a misguided attempt to preserve the child's sleep. Can I just say this: don't bother.
Switch on their lights. Clear the toys off the bed. Tidy up. Re-shelve the books. Hell, whistle if you feel like it. Rearrange the blankets to keep the child warm, and, go on, give them one more kiss. Trust me, it won't make any difference to them, and it will make you feel better.
What a blessing to be able to sleep as solidly as kids can. I figure it's a 30/70 mix of physical tiredness and a clear conscience. While we lie awake worrying about work, the mortgage, global warming and our waist measurements, our kids' innocence and purity of heart has earned them blissful, restful slumber.
Innocence and purity of heart, of course, doesn't explain the secret of teenagers' even more impressive capacity for sleep. I'll bring you the results of that research in a few years' time.
New parents creep around their houses and rely on a mysterious code of whispers and sign language to communicate, lest, heaven forbid, they Disturb The Baby. Given their probable sleep deficit, it's totally understandable. But necessary, it ain't.
Almost from birth, the baby will wake often, but only when it's either hungry or wet. The chance of any external factors disturbing it are negligible. By the time the kid's 3, shut his or her bedroom door and you can safely go ahead and throw a party for two dozen guests.
They are simply uncanny.
We once had two workmen arrive just a few minutes after our daughters, then aged 3 and 1, went for their lunchtime naps. The tradies spent the next hour erecting a mantelpiece, involving the liberal use of hammer blows, just metres from the girls' bedrooms.
There was not a peep out of them, other than some light snoring.
When they wandered downstairs later that afternoon, they thought the Mantelpiece Fairy had swung by.
Like many parents checking on their children before retiring for the night, I've blundered around in darkened rooms and at times inflicted painful toe injuries on myself in a misguided attempt to preserve the child's sleep. Can I just say this: don't bother.
Switch on their lights. Clear the toys off the bed. Tidy up. Re-shelve the books. Hell, whistle if you feel like it. Rearrange the blankets to keep the child warm, and, go on, give them one more kiss. Trust me, it won't make any difference to them, and it will make you feel better.
What a blessing to be able to sleep as solidly as kids can. I figure it's a 30/70 mix of physical tiredness and a clear conscience. While we lie awake worrying about work, the mortgage, global warming and our waist measurements, our kids' innocence and purity of heart has earned them blissful, restful slumber.
Innocence and purity of heart, of course, doesn't explain the secret of teenagers' even more impressive capacity for sleep. I'll bring you the results of that research in a few years' time.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Auction Action
Well! It's been quite a weekend.
We've decided, after nearly five years, that the road outside our family home is becoming just a leeee - tle bit too busy for comfort.
Hence the search for a new place - what we're after is basically the same house as we have now, but in a better location. But not too far away. In fact, we've given explicit instructions to local realtors to find us a spot somewhere within the area bounded by four local streets. So they have easily, oh, two or three square miles to work with. One doesn't move out of our suburb, apparently - you only have to meet all the second- and third-generation locals to realise that - one simply re-locates within it.
So there we were, determinedly bidding on a house in the very next street to ours. And when I say a house, I mean a threadbare, grubby, tumbledown shack on an unkempt block, which would not change hands for any less than two million dollars.
In the event, there were three parties actively bidding, amongst a crowd comprised of a few hopeful but quickly forlorn bargain-hunters, some neighbours having a stickybeak, and an assortment of domestic pets who charmed sections of the crowd during lulls in the proceedings.
Of those with the chequebook readily at hand, apart from us - the young homebuyers - there was, forgive me, a bogan property developer favouring the t-shirt, 3/4 pants, and runners look; and a shaven-headed buyer's advocate dressed in white shirt, garish red tie, black wraparound sunglasses, and the Melbourne real estate industry uniform of dark single-breasted suit - in this case, at least two sizes too small for his girth. He looked more shark than sharp.
The buyer's advocate dropped off the pace early and vanished, probably off to terrorise a school of small fish somewhere off Dendy Beach. The bogan developer made desultory bids when prompted, all the while keeping up a running tirade against the vendor bids being entered by the auctioneer, and good on him, too.
We just tried to pretend we had far deeper pockets than we did. Being a family in search of a family home, at least we knew we had the locals on our side, not that they offered to chip in to bolster our position.
The agents disappeared inside to consult with the vendors for an extended period, and on their return, excused their lengthy absence by explaining that, "...the property has been in the family for more than 40 years, so, as you can imagine, it's quite an emotional time."
One suspected that the dominant emotion amongst those inside the house was blind panic, as the bidding failed to ascend to anywhere near the desired heights.
Re-starting the process, the auctioneer noted that the leading bid, ours, was at $916,000 - a mere million short of the truth. As the vendors reeled into a dead faint inside, one of his colleagues unsportingly corrected his mistake.
Then - in one of those totally incongruous, surreal moments - bidding was interrupted when one of the local pets who earlier had been amusing the crowd ran in front of a passing car, with fatal results. Children wailed, old ladies wept, some gawked, stunned; others turned their heads.
It took quite some aplomb for the auctioneer to drag attention back to centre stage, especially as one of the only two remaining groups of bidders - us - nearly left at that point, greatly nonplussed at the prospect of looking back for generations to come on a road death as the enduring memory of the day we bought the family home.
In the end, put simply, we ran out of money. Realising this, we then bid only a further sixty thousand dollars beyond that point, without really knowing where it would come from. So it may be as well that we missed out.
Not for the neighbours though. While we can walk away, and live to bid another day, those already livng in the street now face a period of uncertainty while the bogan developer settles on which execrable townhouse design he'll inflict on the neighbourhood.
We've decided, after nearly five years, that the road outside our family home is becoming just a leeee - tle bit too busy for comfort.
Hence the search for a new place - what we're after is basically the same house as we have now, but in a better location. But not too far away. In fact, we've given explicit instructions to local realtors to find us a spot somewhere within the area bounded by four local streets. So they have easily, oh, two or three square miles to work with. One doesn't move out of our suburb, apparently - you only have to meet all the second- and third-generation locals to realise that - one simply re-locates within it.
So there we were, determinedly bidding on a house in the very next street to ours. And when I say a house, I mean a threadbare, grubby, tumbledown shack on an unkempt block, which would not change hands for any less than two million dollars.
In the event, there were three parties actively bidding, amongst a crowd comprised of a few hopeful but quickly forlorn bargain-hunters, some neighbours having a stickybeak, and an assortment of domestic pets who charmed sections of the crowd during lulls in the proceedings.
Of those with the chequebook readily at hand, apart from us - the young homebuyers - there was, forgive me, a bogan property developer favouring the t-shirt, 3/4 pants, and runners look; and a shaven-headed buyer's advocate dressed in white shirt, garish red tie, black wraparound sunglasses, and the Melbourne real estate industry uniform of dark single-breasted suit - in this case, at least two sizes too small for his girth. He looked more shark than sharp.
The buyer's advocate dropped off the pace early and vanished, probably off to terrorise a school of small fish somewhere off Dendy Beach. The bogan developer made desultory bids when prompted, all the while keeping up a running tirade against the vendor bids being entered by the auctioneer, and good on him, too.
We just tried to pretend we had far deeper pockets than we did. Being a family in search of a family home, at least we knew we had the locals on our side, not that they offered to chip in to bolster our position.
The agents disappeared inside to consult with the vendors for an extended period, and on their return, excused their lengthy absence by explaining that, "...the property has been in the family for more than 40 years, so, as you can imagine, it's quite an emotional time."
One suspected that the dominant emotion amongst those inside the house was blind panic, as the bidding failed to ascend to anywhere near the desired heights.
Re-starting the process, the auctioneer noted that the leading bid, ours, was at $916,000 - a mere million short of the truth. As the vendors reeled into a dead faint inside, one of his colleagues unsportingly corrected his mistake.
Then - in one of those totally incongruous, surreal moments - bidding was interrupted when one of the local pets who earlier had been amusing the crowd ran in front of a passing car, with fatal results. Children wailed, old ladies wept, some gawked, stunned; others turned their heads.
It took quite some aplomb for the auctioneer to drag attention back to centre stage, especially as one of the only two remaining groups of bidders - us - nearly left at that point, greatly nonplussed at the prospect of looking back for generations to come on a road death as the enduring memory of the day we bought the family home.
In the end, put simply, we ran out of money. Realising this, we then bid only a further sixty thousand dollars beyond that point, without really knowing where it would come from. So it may be as well that we missed out.
Not for the neighbours though. While we can walk away, and live to bid another day, those already livng in the street now face a period of uncertainty while the bogan developer settles on which execrable townhouse design he'll inflict on the neighbourhood.
Friday, April 4, 2008
An Ongoing Riddle
Like I said, fathering doesn't get any easier. I feel qualified to say that, having raised three children in the past seven years, only to find I'm now no better at it than I was when it all began in late 2000.
Don't get me wrong. You wouldn't change anything for the world (most days), but, being one for whom the phrase 'creature of habit' may well have been specifically coined, often I find myself wishing I could just get into some sort of GODDAMN FRIGGIN' ROUTINE, for Chrissakes!
And that's another thing. You find yourself getting so darn frustrated sometimes that you blow your top at things that really aren't worth the fuss. And then - worse - you feel like a first class heel for making little children cry. Well done, you big bully.
But I'm trying to get better at fathering, especially since we're onto our third, and this will be my last chance. You fast-forward in your mind to a time when not only will the kids not be elbowing each other aside to compete for your attention and indulgence, they won't even want to be spotted in the same suburb as you. Make the most of the rock star adulation while it lasts, I tell myself. It won't be around forever.
Don't get me wrong. You wouldn't change anything for the world (most days), but, being one for whom the phrase 'creature of habit' may well have been specifically coined, often I find myself wishing I could just get into some sort of GODDAMN FRIGGIN' ROUTINE, for Chrissakes!
And that's another thing. You find yourself getting so darn frustrated sometimes that you blow your top at things that really aren't worth the fuss. And then - worse - you feel like a first class heel for making little children cry. Well done, you big bully.
But I'm trying to get better at fathering, especially since we're onto our third, and this will be my last chance. You fast-forward in your mind to a time when not only will the kids not be elbowing each other aside to compete for your attention and indulgence, they won't even want to be spotted in the same suburb as you. Make the most of the rock star adulation while it lasts, I tell myself. It won't be around forever.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
So Begins the Charm Offensive
I've been a father for more than seven years now. How come it doesn't get any easier?
That's not me over there on the right, by the way. That's the son & heir, rampaging through our holiday apartment with the confidence of one who has been upright since, oh, February. He's nearly 14 months old now, and, despite a selection of fully- and partly-formed teeth, cute as all get-out.
Trouble is, he knows it.
(This is possibly because his mother has forsaken the use of his given names, in favour of "My Handsome", 24/7)
Consequently, the boy now does his best to charm every female, regardless of age, whom he meets. Other mothers, their pre-school daughters, waitresses, receptionists, delivery couriers, passers-by in the street - basically anyone with two X chromosomes in their cells is on his list.
It's simply astonishing to observe. Whatever task he is undertaking the moment a female appears - eating, watching TV, riding in a pram - he will abandon in a second, preferring instead to lock his laser-like gaze quite shamelessly onto the object of his affection. It's the sort of leering brazenness for which, in a bar, women either call security, or toss their drink over you. I would imagine.
But you can get away with a lot, evidently, when you are only 30 inches or so tall.
His mother has developed a certain despondency about it all. She feels she is losing him before her time. For me, his father, naturellement, his constant charm offensive engenders a certain undeniable pride. That's My Boy.
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