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‘I turned my back on Anzac Day and protested in the streets’

Apr 25, 2018

Two young men went off to war, one went to the army (Bev's father Bill Wroe) and one went to the navy (Bev's uncle Bert Wroe). Source: Bev Malzard

In Australia we honour the soldiers who fought for their country in past wars that they were involved in. On April 25, it’s Anzac (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) Day.

I’ve serendipitously arrived in countries that have similar traditions, Veterans Day in the United States, Ochi (No) Day in Greece plus Greece’s Independence Day and Armed Forces Day in Britain. There must be many marches/processions around the globe — as there would be a rare country that wasn’t involved in a minor political skirmish or a major all out war in the past or in the present.

I have a complicated emotional history with Anzac Day. When I was a child it was a tradition that we went to the march (always called ‘the march’) in Sydney — my mother, myself and my little sister. We would watch the veterans from the World War I through to Korea march by or be transported in the back of an open car. We and the thick crowd would clap and wave our flags. Waving at our father — for we knew not what. He had never spoken about the raid on Darwin that I found out he had been serving as a young lad who lied about his age to join the army.

Bev’s father, Bill Wroe, lied about his age to serve for his country. Source: Bev Malzard

At the end of the long march, we would head to Hyde Park to eat sandwiches and drink cordial that my mother had made. Our father would join us before he headed off to the pub to meet up with his army buddies. To me this was a heady thing. Who were these men, what did they talk about. As a kid I had no concept of war and participated in Anzac Day like it was Christmas Day or the Queens Birthday — some sort of celebration.

While my father was in the pub involved with secret men’s business we went up to Kings Cross — notorious for Bohemians and gangsters in the late-’50s. My colourful aunty Jean had a flat there and somehow my mother and the aunties disappeared and us cousins just roamed the streets. We hung around the pubs as every space was taken up with blokes playing two-up. There was a lot of change dropped by careless punters and we cleaned up. The Greek fish ’n’ chip shop in Darlinghurst Road got most of the booty as we feasted on chips, scallops, and battered savs.

These were idyllic days. Never an inquiring mind when at my grandmother’s as I gazed at the oval picture frames holding images of my great uncles. My nan said that she “lost four of her brothers in the war” — and all I thought that how could you lose four men. Where did they get lost?

As I grew older and the Vietnam War was front of mind and claiming space in the nightly TV news, I became enraged at the idea of a lottery, a barrel full of names where a young man of 19 years of age would be stamped on a ticket and they would be conscripted into the army to go fight a war in Indochina when nobody of their tender age even knew where it was. I turned my back on ANZAC Day and protested in the streets against the war. This wasn’t about the soldiers, who when they returned to Australia were unfairly spurned and were given a hard time, it was about our engagement in this terrible war. When Gough Whitlam was elected to prime minister he declared the war was over for Australian soldiers in Vietnam and they were to be brought home.

Sadly, it was a few decades until the returned Vietnam vets were recognised and honoured for their service. Throughout, many were fighting for compensation and assistance with the cancers they came back with from Agent Orange — a deadly poison dropped across the south Vietnamese paddy fields to starve the enemy. Many of those young men died from cancer and now men into their late-60s are still suffering from PTSD. What a dirty little war it was.

I softened towards Anzac Day about 20 years ago when I was in Winton, a little town in the middle of Queensland — out the back of beyond. I had a few days there and one of those days was ANZAC Day. I wanted to see how it played out in the country town.

I woke before dawn and walked to the town’s War Memorial. There were probably about 30 people there. Two kids from the local Scout troop stood sentinel at the memorial, and a couple of soldiers who had driven down from Townsville (600km) were here. A couple of old guys in wheelchairs were attending wearing their best suits and rows of medals pinned to the left side. A ratty old tape recorder played a creaky version of the Last Post and as the final sound faded out a huge flock of budgerigars took to the sky as dawn was breaking. I felt my heart stop and a great sadness come over me. What were those old guys remembering?

Along the way I asked my father about the bombing of Darwin and he always kept it light but said “the b*****ds kept on coming”. Dad was on the Ack Ack guns, he found Darwin very hot and his mates a good bunch… That’s all I got.

It’s funny that in the mid-’60s when my parents separated that my dad went back to Darwin to meet up with his foster-brother (our Uncle Alf) and except for rare visits to Sydney he lived in Darwin until he died in 1995.

With the constant barrage of news we suffer every day from television and social media it seems like the world is on fire with war hotspots. People going crazy with grief, going crazy with rage, going crazy with a lust for blood. Will it ever end? I think not.

For this Anzac Day let’s make it a day of remembrance for the fallen and for those who served and suffered. Importantly, remember the current/contemporary victims of war and how they flee their ragged and war-corrupted lands for a better and safer life — remember the grand deeds of our past — but there are less than grand and kind deeds occurring now.

Lest We Forget.