Remember our heroes
THE old passport has gecko eggs and spider webs around it, and I’m wondering if I should simply put it in the Fiction section of my tiny library.
My books being Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Magic Faraway tree, next to those, there are dozens of National Geographic. I look at my passport and remember, what a glorious gift memory is!
Those moments that mean the most, become a reality once more, instantly.
On this day, I look for the stamp from the rail station in Amiens, and remember the moment my historian mate, somewhere in an overgrown field in Pozzieres, said “Walk five yards that way Steve, and that is where George Price, your Grandfather, went over the wire for the first time … I’ll stay in the car”.
He stayed, he knew how emotional it would be for me, so I sat in the long grass, trying to imagine the mud, blood and absolute terror, that George had seen.
It’s something I truly cannot imagine, for that’s a memory, thanks to George and his mates, I don’t have.
It’s Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, and I’m sure I’m not alone to think about those who went before us, family or friends who experienced the terrible taste of war, both then and now.
Today I’ll be with my mates at Belgian Gardens War Cemetery. In these hallowed grounds are many who lost their lives right here in Townsville, in Kittyhawk crashes on the airfield like Peter Collier on March 9, 1945, four lost in a Beaufort Bomber crash at the Bohle River, another Beaufort crash in cockle bay on the isle claimed three, and the famous flying boat crash in Cleveland, you can read about it on a plaque at the Rockpool, and many more.
This place, in the heart of a great Garrison city, is also the resting place of soldiers who returned in the early days, that lived outside of what was imagined as civilisation, almost outcasts because they came back ‘different’, different because of what they had seen and what they had done for King and country.
Those graves with no name, in the shadow of Jimmys Lookout on the edge of our Town Common, are also who we remember today.
Many researchers have worked on finding these men who traded their name for a humpy in the bush near Townsville, all because of a terrible war that broke them.
They didn’t have the help we offer now. They’re there, I promise you, I went to a nameless grave one day with a small group, and on that very morning, we celebrated the hero that lay there, and hero he was …. hero he is!
The story is there, and I wonder how many more are there, lost because of a battle in some far away land, found because of the love of local historians.
To me these amazing people who study, who research all over this country, all to find those incredible soldiers lost in time, and certainly memory.
They do it so we can give the honour to those soldiers so richly deserved, but given much too late.
But at least, given.