Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

There are no buses running in my area today, and rather than walk at least 6 km to Edgeworth only to discover nothing's open, I'm staying home instead. Got the dishes done, but I have a lot of cleaning up and sorting to do down my end of the house. It's wet and cool, so it's a good day for this.

And while we're at it, since my grandfather fought in Flanders in WWI, and my dad fought in New Britain during WWII, here's a song for the day.

I happened to turn on the TV earlier today and caught a program on SBS about Australian casualties in World War I. Until then the most I'd done on ANZAC day was eat some Anzac biscuits. Anyway I has only half listening when I heard about three brothers who were all killed at the front, and their names were Seabrook. I phoned my mum to let her know to watch SBS at 5:30pm. Then I listed and watched for more detail. It seems the brothers were George, Theodore and Kenneth and their mother was called Fanny.

Now mum didn't know if they were related or not. My maternal grandfather was Ronald Seabrook who was a Royal Marines in WWI, and didn't come to Australia (from Wales) until after the war. My paternal grandfather F.W. Dunning fought in Flanders. My father Frank William Dunning fought in New Britain during World War II. My brother Mark didn't fight, but was in the RAEME in the 70s, so each generation had someone in service. It's doubtful that such will continue on my branch of the family, as only my brothers have children and I have one niece from each.

I think that as time goes on, wars still come and go, though not quite the same as they have in the past. It's not that wars never decide or change things - they do - but that the main thing they decide is who dies. World War I used to be called "the War to End wars" but in retrospect that seems like so much hype doesn't it? World War II seems to have been that last "moral war" - one in which the infamy of the losing side can be clearly demonstrated. However the winners tend to write histories and what often gets overlooked are events perpetrated by the victors that rival the opposition, like the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, each of which killed thousands of civilians in a deliberately bloody manner. I heard the opinion recently that it wasn't the dropping of the A Bombs on Japan that forced its government to surrender (they were quite prepared to have the civilians fight to the death) - it was the U.S.S.R.'s invasion of Manchuria instead. That being the case, the flattening of Nagasaki and Hiroshima seem the most horrid extravaganzas of death.

Since World War II things have been murkier. It's hard to justify the wars in Vietnam and Iraq but they happen anyway. And Australia, as usual, sends its expeditionary forces like we always have. See here's the paradox of the whole thing. The armed forces we send do their jobs generally in an honourable and competent way. ANZAC day is nominally to remember both living and dead veterans. But the Gallipoli campaign (where the allied forces of France, England, New Zealand and Australia ultimately failed in their objectives) is also hailed as "the birth of the nation". Sure, we federated on the first day of the 20th century, but it seems that's only worth something when we  send our young off to die in someone else's war. And yet oddly enough it's also a significant event in Turkey as well - it made Kemal Atatürk a hero who went on to found modern Turkey. It really was the birth of a nation, just not ours.

When mum was cleaning out dad's shed after his death, she found his old campaign and service medals. Dad sometimes watched the parades on TV but so far as I know he never marched, and never talked about the war. He turned his back on those experiences, preferring to leave them in the past than relive them. It's a pity that as a species we can't do the same.