ANZAC Day

People much more eloquent, more worthy, more memorable than I, have spoken on war, on young men and the keen loss of so much promise and beauty.

And I think its women who haven't been heard so well but who truly understood what has been lost, who felt that loss in a way incomperable because its women who give life, who carry it and bear it. And its perhaps women who understood that mostly it was about Waste. Of good Men. Good good men. By mad Men.

And it is women who have given dignity to an awful, often brutal reality through their stoicism, their strength but most of all their love ... the love for a son, a father, a brother, a lover.

That the honour of the ANZAC will outlive us all is a saving grace.

GALLIPOLI

Had he never been born he was mine:
Since he was born he was never mine:
Only the dream is our own.

Where the world called him there he went;
When the war called him, there he bent.
Now he is dead.

He was I; bone of my bone,
Flesh of my flesh, in truth;
For his plenty I gave my own,
His drouth was my drouth.

When he laughed I was glad,
In his strength forgot I was weak,
In his joy forgot I was sad
Now there is nothing to ask or to seek;
He is dead.

I am the ball the marksman sent,
Missing the end and falling spent;
I am the arrow, sighted fair
That failed, and finds not anywhere.
He who was I is dead.

Dame Mary Gilmore

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Today, National Rembrance Day (ANZAC Day in Australia & NZ), was gazetted to be a National Public Holiday in PNG ... however in a mad rush last week the government at the last minute decided to cancel this public holiday (which has been celebrated on April 25 in PNG for the past 30 years) and reset it for July 23 - because Prime Minister Somare has said:

"April 25 is when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915.

For us, the right date to remember and pay tribute to our fallen heroes and heroines in WWII is July 23."

And that is because one of the bloodiest campaigns of World War II, which has forever sealed the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea was the battle of the Kokoda Track on July 23, 1942.

The Kokoda Campaign from July 1942 to December 1943 was critical in repelling the Japanese Force intending to invade Australia from PNG through the Kokoda track. It was then that Japanese troops landed on the northern coast of then New Guinea and unexpectedly began to march over the Owen Stanley Ranges with the intent of capturing Port Moresby.

Its a story of individual heroism, the courage and the refusal to give up as the men battled the elements of incredibly unfriendly terrain, dense jungle, outnumbered by a kamikaze enemy and fought bravely for victory. It is the Kokoda Force, a defending army amalgamated between a Militia Unit of Australia 39th Infantry Battalion, Papuan Infantry Battalion and of course the enthusiastic, hard working and sweating Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.

The Kokoda Force was the last band of untrained and ill-equipped men under the command of Major Morris. The war that started in Europe and ended in Kokoda was bloody, infested, under extremes of cold, hunger and over burdened, in thick jungles, steep gullies, high ridges, fierce raging rivers and high muddy and highly treacherous conditions. Australians and PNGns never gave up that struggle to protect their homelands.