[quote]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete Hill
Hi Neil,
I actually live in Victoria's Wimmera region- very flat, very dry and at this time of year, everything looks dead and faded. I long for a bit of green sometimes!
Quote:
Hi Pete;
I have seen why you would long for a bit of greenery now and then! I thought the Wimmera a very striking area just the same. I live in Preston in Melbourne. Things are still pretty green here though the garden's certainly on its way out from the drought. Still that's nothing to what your experiencing up there.
|
Re: Max Hastings, I admire his books especially 'Overlord', 'Bomber Command' & 'The Korean War'. I know he is not popular in the United States, especially amongst US historians in relation to his assertion on the man-for-man superiority of the German army in WW2 and his criticisms of the American army in WW2 and Korea. Stephen Ambrose and Max Hastings are two blokes you would be unlikely to meet in the same room unless you wanted to watch a fist-fight. Ambrose has scoffed at Hastings' admiration for the Germans in the Normandy campaign on numerous occasions. Whilst Hastings has taken a thinly-disguised swipe at his US counter-part's awe and reverance for the US Army- 'he doesn't write history, he writes monuments!'
Quote:
|
Looks like I'll definitely have to look at Hasting's works. I'll have to see which of them I can pick up here.
|
... That is reality behind myth and legend. I wonder how surviving veterans today in Australia feel when every Anzac Day, baby-faced TV presentators suddenly and patronisingly start using the words- 'Digger' and 'Mate' for a couple of days and then forget about them for another year.
Quote:
|
My father (ex 10 Sqn RAAF) hated to watch the ANZAC Day parade when it was televised. Listening to all the BS being thrown about usually led to him switching of the TV with the comment of "Sabre-rattling bastards!". He never marched after the first couple after the war for similar reasons but usually went to the reunions. Some of his mates were also like that. He didn't join the RSL until he was in his 70's and that was only so he could get at the cheap food and drink!
|
The 9th Division was one of the best Allied units of the war and the siege of Tobruk was an epic of defence. The ill-equipped and ill-trained soldiers who staved off disaster at Kokoda did us proud and many of the Australian air-crews in Bomber Command were amongst the elite. But were they all like Chips Rafferty and Paul Hogan and take everything on the chin and still give an iconic grin? I want to dig below the surface of the legend and find out more about the Australian soldier as an individual, not a generalised stereotype. |
I agree Pete. Maybe there are some elements of truth to the stereotypes but the truth is much wider than that. A lot of them were quiet and unassuming men who did their duty no matter what. I think it was "Until A Dead Horse Kicks You" (Robert Crack) that goes into the author's life before and after the war. I like that book as it shows just an ordinary bloke who did his bit and went on to a quiet, mostly uneventful life after the war. And many were like that. Some were greatly traumatised, sure, but many just went on with their lives afterwards, passing their legacy and lessons on.
Cheers
Neil