Patriot Realm

Of all the legends and stories about ANZAC the most enduring one is that of Simpson and his donkey.

I clearly remember being told this story as a very young child when I was in grade 2 in 1941. In those days we were repeatedly told stories about the “last” war; last meaning previous, not end or final.

Recently, one of my commenters said that we had become a society of sex, drugs, mock and troll.  How profound was that? Everything was either lewd, spaced out, or subject to ridicule and abuse.

Doesn't that just about sum up today's world in a nutshell?

It is no longer sex drugs, rock and roll. Our modern society has taken things to a new level.

The Last Post would be familiar to all Australians from an early age. It is played at every ANZAC Day ceremony by a bugler in an army uniform and frequently at funerals of soldiers and veterans.

Does the average civilian attendee understand the significance of this quasi musical interlude? Is it an entertainment piece that everyone expects to hear because it is always part of the programme like the hymn “Oh God our Help in Ages Past”?

The Last Post is one of the most ancient tools used by modern British founded armies and has its roots in the days of the Roman Empire when horns were used to play the hymn of the Goddess Diana and as signals to command troops on the battlefield. Even to this day, the French term for what we call e reveille is La Diana.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it’s one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him… One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.”

~ H. L. Mencken, “Prejudices: Third Series (Le Contrat Social)“. Book by H. L. Mencken, 1922.

I just off the phone from talking to my Mum, Redhead. We were talking about how some older neighbours had relocated to another state to be closer to their daughter. While waiting for their house to be ready, they are living with their daughter. It has been months now. 

The conversation turned to how it is nice to have visitors but they, like fish, start to smell after two days. Redhead said that she could never understand why I was so reluctant to move in with her, seeing as she had a big house and lived alone " We get on so well, don't we? " she asked.

"Yes " I replied. " Because we don't live together. "

And so began the conversation and the story of Bombay Gin, getting up at sparrows fart, noodles and The Crooner.

Of all the magnificent units and regiments of the Australian Army I doubt if any have a better claim to have been the one that saved Australia than the 39^th Infantry Battalion, the first to advance down the Kokoda Track to confront the Japanese.

There are a number of units who could claim this title. The 25^th Brigade in the defence of Milne Bay so ably presented a few days ago and the Coral Sea Battle. The former was supported by the RAAF. The Coral Sea Battle was a largely American enterprise. The 39^th held the Japs at bay alone and unsupported until the 7^th Division arrived fresh from the Middle East. For that they get my vote without detracting in any way the efforts and performance of all of our other units, and the Americans, who took on the Japs.