Lest We Forget
This is a story my local paper ran covering Remembrance Day, 11 November 2018 which is the 100 year anniversary of the end of World War 1.
My two great uncles are remembered with their names inscribed on the Anzac Memorial in Chinchilla and I occasionally stop in to reflect. My Dad inherited the picture of them, the medals of Alexander and his army issued rifle, a 303 cal with a massive bayonet. After my Dad passed away we had to hand the gun in under the Australian gun laws regime, but we kept the bayonet. My Dad told my brother and I the story of Alexander and James every year at Anzac Day and on Remembrance Day.
Alexander originally signed up and was accepted into the Light Horse brigade which was fighting in the Middle East and Africa. However by the time he was being put on a boat after initial training the Light Horse was disbanded and sent to the western front in France to fight as part of the infantry.
The reluctant older brother James was 'guilted' into signing up by his mother to keep an eye on the younger brother Alexander. James became a gunner after being a crack shot like most boys from the country were. My Dad recalled how James' hand always shook even years later and he couldn't hold a cup of tea without it spilling.
The war was no doubt confronting on many levels. Not just the violence and sacrifice and I find people often forget the effect of the environmental conditions. My uncles were from a dry, hot, dusty sheep farm in western Queensland. The war was where they saw snow for the first time! How many of us today are lucky to see snow for the first time and be able to frolick and play in it? The pictures of the trenches they lived in are shocking. They are often huddled together for warmth in the cold minus centigrade temperatures. Their faces are muddied like the trenches from regular rain storms or the damp of snow melting.
My great-uncle James got pneumonia within 3 weeks on the front and was sent back to England to an army hospice. Whilst he recovered over 6 months to be well enough to travel by boat back to Australia, a trip which took 6 months then, James suffered from bouts of pneumonia for the rest of his life.
Whilst we celebrate Remembrance Day as the day the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, the real celebration occurred for my family in July of 1919 when both boys had returned safely back to the sheep farm in western Queensland. Many didn't return, lest we forget.
This is the link to the story in the paper:
Written by Stuart Dinnis, from memories of the stories I was told as a child and details from the war records of Alexander and James Cooper of Baking Board, Queensland.
