Tuesday, April 26, 2005
forgive and forget not
sorry Gianna i've stolen your title. if that annoys you i'll change it to "let it be" or something like thati am just mother-fucking-amazed. after my regular troll through the bloggers i find interesting, Gianna posted an ANZAC day article with reference to some moron who seems to think that men just like war and war is fun?! Gianna of course has a brain and picks the shit out of him. i may only have half a brain, but i was sickened by this fool who seems to think that because some other fuckwits of the era thought that war was a "great thing"tm, then maybe war wasn't suck a bad thing after all.
i'm afraid that my usual adjectives, expletives and invectives do not carry the bile creating urge i have to vomit on this person. you stupid, mother fucking, son of a donkey fucking moron, brain dead crunt. ANZAC day. remember the cost cunt. lest we forget. let us not send our children to fight someone else's children for some idiotic cause. and even if it's worth it. even if you really had to defend your country against the evil enemy, never, ever think that war is a good thing.
don't send my kids. they are young and dumb. send me. enlistment should start at 35 and stop at 65. it's not hard. that'll slow down the old pricks who think it's suck a good thing.
just entering into war is a failure. there are no winners, just those who lose less than others. in one respect we were winners. the turks lost about double the amount of young men that the allies did, whilst defending their homeland. (that was sarcasm by the way, i'd hate to think that anyone thought that i thought it was a wonderful thing we killed so many people...) the only way we were winners, was that by some strange twist of fate, the turkish people have adopted us as friends, and i hope that people in australia think the same, cause we've certainly got a bunch of rascist bastards as well.
i've been to turkey, did the tour to anzac cove. a little bloke (tour guide) who asked us to call him Uncle Ali told us the turkish side of the story. there wasn't a dry eye amongst us under the olive tree (i think it was an olive tree) when he told us their story. i couldn't speak for about 30 mins without choking up.
a couple of memories from that day will haunt me forever. Uncle Ali telling us about his grandfather who never came home, him and his dad walking all over the Gelibolu (or however you spell it) peninsula picking up bullets and shrapnel, some fantastic stories of humanity, us all trying not to cry out loud under the tree, and a Canadian girl walking in the water at the place where we landed. the canadians had some people there as well as us. mostly only aussies on the tour though, plus this canadian girl. no kiwis this time. we'd both had the same idea. i couldn't be here, at this place, without walking in the water. a bit illogical i spose, but you get that.
the kiwis have a huge monument. they were the only ones to take the ground that could have won the conflict, only to have the british move them back so the british could lose the same spot.
don't get me wrong. if we'd have won, we'd have taken someone elses country from them for another country. i'm not glad there was a war, and i'm not glad that so many lives were lost. but i see some good from such uglieness. the turkish people have a lovely country, and it is their own, they fought for it, and they kept it, and it's a beautiful place.
uncle Ali asked us to get our kids, friends, whoever, who came to visit, to call him uncle Ali as well. he was the friendliest dude. as were all the turks i had any dealings with. i've been to a few countries, and it still amazes me that the most friendly people in the world, and they love aussies, were those who we tried to invade. in the paper today they reckon there isn't another country in the world that remembers past conflict the way we and the turks do. pity we left the scene this year leaving so much rubbish behind. it's just embarrassing.
there was a message, in large letters, on a huge sandstone monument near the beach on the peninsula. to this day i can't read it without choking up. it's printed on the back of the t-shirt i bought back with me.
"Those heroes that shed their blood
and lost their lives...
you are now lying in soil of a friendly country.
there is no difference between the johnnies
and the mehmets to us where they lie side by side
here in this country of ours...
you, the mothers,
who sent their sons from far away countries
wipe away your tears.
your sons are now lying in our bosom
and are in peace.
after having lost their lives on this land they
have become our sons as well."
we've shed the blood. we have evolved. let us not repeat our painful bloody mistakes. there is no place in this modern world for invading other countries and imposing your will on them. and should you do so, you have no right to claim to be civilised. you are merely articulate barbarians...
