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julesjonesNext year no-one will march there at all.
Claude Choles, last known combat veteran of the Great War, has died. There is one remaining veteran, but Choles was the last of those who saw combat.
When I was a teenager, I watched those old men of Eric Bogle's song. Anzac Day parades, with the veterans of too many wars, but the old men who'd lived through the horror of the First World War had pride of place. They would have been mostly in their seventies and eighties then, many of them still fit enough to march, fit enough to snap a sharp salute as they passed the memorial. As I got older, they got older, and fewer. And finally there were only a very few very old men in wheelchairs, most of them still bright and alert but terribly terribly frail. And now there are none.
Yesterday the Great War was still living memory. Today it is history. Alas, there is still a supply of men, old and young, to march in next year's Anzac Day parade.
Claude Choles, last known combat veteran of the Great War, has died. There is one remaining veteran, but Choles was the last of those who saw combat.
When I was a teenager, I watched those old men of Eric Bogle's song. Anzac Day parades, with the veterans of too many wars, but the old men who'd lived through the horror of the First World War had pride of place. They would have been mostly in their seventies and eighties then, many of them still fit enough to march, fit enough to snap a sharp salute as they passed the memorial. As I got older, they got older, and fewer. And finally there were only a very few very old men in wheelchairs, most of them still bright and alert but terribly terribly frail. And now there are none.
Yesterday the Great War was still living memory. Today it is history. Alas, there is still a supply of men, old and young, to march in next year's Anzac Day parade.
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Date: 2011-05-06 08:50 am (UTC)