Anzac Day In Thailand Today

[chuchok]

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

[Jai Dee]

Cheers chuchok.

Lest we forget...

[Tornado]

Lest We Forget.

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables at home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Edited April 25, 2005 by Tornado

[chuchok]

Anzac slang

arseapeek (upside down or arse over head)

banjo (trenching shovel)

Beachy Bill (Turkish artillery piece that regularly shelled Anzac Cove)

body-snatcher (member of a raiding part sent out to capture Turkish prisoners)

broomstick bomb (dangerous Turkish throwing bomb)

camel dung (Egyptian cigarettes)

chat (louse or to remove lice from clothing)

cricket ball (Turkish hand grenade)

digger (Anzac soldiers, derived from New Zealand/Australian tunnellers)

furphy (camp rumour, named after Joseph Furphy, an Australian engineer who built mobile water tanks used in WW1. Rumours spread as the tanks moved.)

Gallipoli gallop (diarrhoea)

Gypo (Egyptian or to be conned)

grungy (improvised bully beef meal with onions, biscuits, water and salt)

jacko (Turkish soldier)

jam tin (improvised bomb to match Turkish hand bombs)

red caps (British military police)

sap (trench)

short arm inspection (genital inspection for sexually transmitted diseases)

Turkey trot (diarrhoea)

wallah (person)

wazzah (dugout)

wazzir or wozzer (Cairo's red light area)

woodbine (English soldier named after their cigarettes).

[Jai Dee]

[Indo-Siam]

I always liked:

The Position, as stated, will be held.....

My sincerest respects to all the fallen ones, who never made it home.

Steve

Indo-Siam

[chuchok]

Here is a similar one jaidee...Those old diggers did it tough!

To the memory of our hero comrade 'Murphy' (Simpson) killed May 1915. John (Murphy) Simpson Kirkpatrick leading a donkey along a cliff path.

[Tornado]

nice one Jai Dee

[tuky]

[cdnvic]

The author was killed in action shortly after writing this poem. I doubt he had any idea it would make him immortal.

cv

[tuky]

Wreaths for Death Railway POWs

From correspondents in Hellfire Pass, Thailand

April 25, 2005

From: Agence France-Presse

ALMOST 1,000 people from Australia and New Zealand gathered here today for a dawn vigil honouring nearly 100,000 people who died building the 'Death Railway' during World War II.

Veterans, relatives of former soldiers, school children and senior officials from Australia, New Zealand and Thailand prayed and laid wreaths at a memorial along the route of the infamous railway built by POWs held by Japan and forced labourers.

After meeting a group of Australian school children who had made the ANZAC day pilgrimage, Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison said the "essence" of the ceremony was having young people visit the site and meet with veterans.

"They are getting impressions you just don't get reading about it," Ellison, on his first visit to the pass, told AFP.

"The four veterans are doing an outstanding job in coming here, telling their story, and I think it's an essential part of the remembrance of what took place."

The Death Railway was built to give the Japanese an alternative supply route to the Malaccas Strait for its soldiers pushing towards India, via Burma, which is now known as Myanmar.

More than 200,000 mostly Tamil, Thai, Burmese and Malay labourers worked alongside some 60,000 Allied POWs between May 1942 and August 1943 on its construction.

While the exact toll remains unknown, an estimated 80,000 Asian labourers and almost 13,000 POWs died from disease, starvation and brutal conditions during the 16 months of work on the rail link.

Hellfire Pass was the nickname given to an area cut out of the hills by hand and small explosives by emaciated POWs, many of them Australian, working by candle and torch light for up to 18 hours a day.

[Jai Dee]

The author was killed in action shortly after writing this poem. I doubt he had any idea it would make him immortal.

<excerpt from the Australian War Memorial's website>

The Flanders poppy has been a part of Armistice or Remembrance Day ritual since the early 1920s and is also increasingly being used as part of ANZAC Day observances. During the First World War, the red poppies were seen to be among the first living plants that sprouted from the devastation of the battlefields of northern France and Belgium. Soldiers' folklore had it that the poppies were vivid red from having been nurtured in ground drenched with the blood of their comrades. The sight of the poppies on the battlefield at Ypres in 1915 moved Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae to write the poem In Flanders Fields (see Chuckoks original post and cdnvic's post above). Flanders poppies also featured prominently in several other literary responses to the carnage of the Western Front. In English literature of the nineteenth century poppies had symbolised sleep or a state of oblivion; this symbolism was carried into the literature of the First World War, but a new, more powerful symbolism was now attached to the poppy - that of the sacrifice of shed blood.

An American, Moina Michael, read McCrae's poem and was so moved by it that she wrote a reply and decided to wear a red poppy as a way of keeping faith, as McCrae urged in his poem. Michael worked for the American YMCA and at a meeting of YMCA secretaries from other countries, held in November 1918, she discussed the poem and her poppies. Madame Guerin, the French YMCA secretary, was similarly inspired and she approached organisations throughout the allied nations to sell poppies to raise money for widows, orphans and needy veterans and their families.

The poppy soon became widely accepted throughout the allied nations as the flower of remembrance to be worn on Armistice Day. The Australian Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League (the forerunner to the RSL) first sold poppies for Armistice Day 1921. For this drive, the league imported one million silk poppies, made in French orphanages. Each poppy was sold for a shilling: five pence was donated to a charity for French children, six pence went to the league's own welfare work and one penny went to the league's national coffers. Today, the RSL sells poppies for Remembrance Day to raise funds for welfare work, although they have long since ceased to import them from France.

[Jai Dee]

Hellfire Pass was the nickname given to an area cut out of the hills by hand and small explosives by emaciated POWs, many of them Australian, working by candle and torch light for up to 18 hours a day.

I visited Hellfire Pass in Kanchanburi last year, and was deeply moved by the sight of the number of little Australian flags that people had stuck in the rock walls of the Pass.

Those children visiting the Pass today, as well as the Minister for Justice (first time visitor), are going to have an unforgettable experience.

[cdnvic]

Thanks Jai Dee I never knew the behind the scenes info on how the poppy became the symbol it is other than the poem itself.

cv

[chuchok]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Interesting point to note about this man, he was actually English and had only recently arrived in Australia when war broke out.

John Simpson Kirkpatrick, affectionately known as "the man and his donkey", was born on the 6th of July 1892 in South Shields, England.

He landed at ANZAC Cove at 5 a.m. on the 25th of April 1915 and was mortally wounded in Shrapnel Gully, near the mouth of Monash Valley, on the 19th of May 1915 at the age of 22.

During the 24 days he spent at ANZAC he operated as a sole unit with his beloved donkey/s and is credited with saving the lives of probably hundreds of men.

He has become a part of the ANZAC folklore and though recommended for the Victoria Cross, twice, and the Distinguished Conduct Medal was never decorated for his actions.

HE GAVE HIS LIFE

THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE.

 

That night there was a hush throughout the trenches when the news circulated that "the man with the donk" had finally "stopped one". He had become such a part of life at ANZAC that it was hard for them to believe that he was gone.

Sapper Burrell told that when Simpson was shot, an artilleryman told Captain J.T. Evans, the Officer commanding the Indian Field ambulance, "Evans Sahib, what do you think? Murphy's stonkered." Evans did a thing which astonished all who knew him. He sat on a packing case and covered his face with his hands and prayed out aloud. "O God. if ever a man deserves Heaven, he does. Give it to him!"

The Indians gathered around and asked Evans what was wrong and when he told them Murphy Sahib had been killed they immediately went down on their haunches and wailed and threw dirt on their heads. "I never seen them show such sorrow for one of their own." Sapper Burrell said.

[wolf359]

we can never give enough thanks, they gave their live's so that we may live. Let us never forget.

[snoophound]

Kennedy said

"Ask Not what your country can do for you."

"Ask what you can do for your country".

How many of us or our spoilt and mollycoddled kids wouldvolunteer, and endure,for a common cause in the face of obviously blinding incompetence?.

Brave men.

Lets hope this will always be remembered for the bravery of two nations from the other side of the worlds youth .

we can never give enough thanks, they gave their live's so that we may live. Let us never forget.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Thomas_Merton]

Salute.

Silence.

Remembrance.

Thanks.

[Kan Win]

Hellfire Pass was the nickname given to an area cut out of the hills by hand and small explosives by emaciated POWs, many of them Australian, working by candle and torch light for up to 18 hours a day.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I visited Hellfire Pass in Kanchanburi last year, and was deeply moved by the sight of the number of little Australian flags that people had stuck in the rock walls of the Pass.

Those children visiting the Pass today, as well as the Minister for Justice (first time visitor), are going to have an unforgettable experience.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Likewise.

Hellfire Pass from the Viewing Point platform - Panoramic photo

R.I.P.

[Kan Win]

This Friday 2008

Photo by a dear friend of mine "Simon" taken 2006

LEST WE FORGET

Kan Win

[steveromagnino]

While the exact toll remains unknown, an estimated 80,000 Asian labourers and almost 13,000 POWs died from disease, starvation and brutal conditions during the 16 months of work on the rail link.

Hellfire Pass was the nickname given to an area cut out of the hills by hand and small explosives by emaciated POWs, many of them Australian, working by candle and torch light for up to 18 hours a day.

what a toll.

Let us not forget and allow humility, thanks and forgiveness to be strongest in our hearts.

[mike_rad]

This would be a good time to remember those brave Aussies who died because of the arrogance and egotism of that so-called hero of the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur:

Subject: MacArthur Museum - Brisbane, Australia

Posted By: Kokoda

Posted At: (2004/08/26 2:41 am)

Last week the MacArthur Museum was opened in the building in Brisbane that served (briefly) as his HQ during WW2.

This invoked my total disgust, and I drafted a letter to send to the Chairman of Trustees of the museum, the State Premier and the Lord Mayor of Brisbane expressing my disgust - and giving my reasons why.

I posted the draft at two naval forums I belong to here in Aus, and received nothing but total support.

For those members here who believe MacArthur was indeed the "American Caesar", and also for those who regard him as the egotistical megalomaniac that he was, here is the text of the letter:

Dear Sir,

My credentials are that I am a former naval officer, and author of the book, A Chronology of Australian Armed Forces At War, 1939-45, published by Allen & Unwin in April 2001. I have also completed a manuscript on the campaign in New Guinea from July 1942 until January 1943, covering the Kokoda Track campaign and the "battles of the beachheads" at Buna, Sanananda and Gona.

General MacArthur did absolutely nothing to "save Australia". The truth is quite the opposite - his persistent failure to appreciate the threat posed to Port Moresby - and consequently Australia - by the Japanese landing at Buna and Gona could have resulted in Japanese control of the entire Coral Sea area and left all of Queensland open to air attack.

He was awarded the American Congressional Medal of Honour for his "valiant defence" of the Philippines. That was akin to General Percival being awarded the Victoria Cross for losing Malaya and Singapore.

The combined Philippine/American army in Luzon was defeated by a Japanese force one-third its size - mainly because of MacArthur's strategy and tactics.

MacArthur accused the Australian troops of the 21st Brigade and 39th Battalion ("Those Ragged Bloody Heroes") of cowardice for withdrawing down the Kokoda Track in the face of "inferior" Japanese numbers when they were in fact outnumbered 5 to 1. MacArthur (and his staff) had absolutely no concept of the conditions under which the Australians fought on the Kokoda Track. After eventually moving his headquarters from Melbourne (as far from the combat area as was possible) to Brisbane (still quite secure), he paid a brief visit to Papua and the closest he got to the Kokoda Track was Ower's Corner, at its southern end.

Finally, when the Japanese were forced into their "last-ditch" defences at Gona, Sananada and Buna, MacArthur again persisted in a quick victory without appreciating the strength of the prepared Japanese defences and the willingness of the enemy to fight to the death.

At Buna, the first American troops committed to battle turned and ran. This resulted in MacArthur telling General Eichelberger to take over at Buna, and "Take Buna or don't come back alive."

What sort of order is that for a commander to give a subordinate?

The situation at Buna was saved only by the arrival of experienced Australian troops from Milne Bay on the insistence of General Blamey, probably the only time he stood up to MacArthur.

Veterans of the 7th Division's Syria campaign, and the advance up the Kokoda Track, were required in compliance with MacArthur's instructions to charge across open ground against Japanese defences whose positions were well camouflaged and not pinpointed as MacArthur's timetable did not allow for proper reconnaissance of the enemy's positions.

As a result, hundreds of Australians veterans were unnecessarily slaughtered and a number of battalion commanders were relieved of their posts because they refused to order their men into suicidal attacks.

MacArthur wanted a quick victory in New Guinea before the forces under Admiral Nimitz, whom he regarded as an arch rival, secured Guadalcanal. Consequently, he informed Washington that the Buna/Gona/Sanananda area was secured some time before it actually was.

Australian authors who have had books published on the New Guinea campaign, such as Peter Brune, Bill Edgar and Lex McAulay, are all critical of MacArthur. To quote Mr. McAulay, for one:

"MacArthur therefore constantly denigrated the performance of Australian officers, regardless of rank, expertise and experience, and of Australian units, requesting more of everything from the USA. Australian victories at Milne Bay and on the Kokoda Trail (sic) were down-played.

"MacArthur was faced with a personal disaster, much of it of his own making. Despite grand claims that he alone had decided to take the offensive in New Guinea as soon as he arrived in Australia, MacArthur did little."

At no time was Australia MacArthur's greatest concern: his whole strategy was governed by his promise of "I shall return" to the Philippines. The campaigns in New Guinea, until mid 1943 fought mainly by Australians, were simply a means to an end, and he had no concern for the number of casualties suffered by Australians in achieving his aims. Once he received the number of troops he required for his landings in Dutch New Guinea and the islands south of the Philippines, he did not give a dam_n about the Australians.

MacArthur was certainly no friend of Australia and to dedicate his old HQ in Brisbane to his "achievements" is nothing short of a disgrace.

I feel sure that Australian Service personnel who fought under his command will stay aware from the museum in droves!

Bruce T. Swain

(originally posted on a WWII forum - link not working)

----

[tahaan]

It is fitting for us to remember all the casualties of the war against Japan and, especially at this time, those from Australia and New Zealand. However, let's not put the blame for the loss of life and territory solely on the actions of soldiers like MacArthur and Percival. If a finger needs to be pointed let's aim it at the politicians who then as now commit forces to action with the materials that they've decided as being good enough for the job, regardless of what advice they may have been given beforehand.

[Jai Dee]

Thanks for the "bump" Colonel.

And, politics aside... this day is about remembrance and respect.

Lest We Forget.

[tahaan]

And, politics aside... this day is about remembran ce and respect.

It is indeed, for all Commonwealth, Netherland and American forces who laid down their lives and now rest in peace in Thailand.

[rick75]

Lest we forget

[steveromagnino]

And, politics aside... this day is about remembran ce and respect.

It is indeed, for all Commonwealth, Netherland and American forces who laid down their lives and now rest in peace in Thailand.

I also consider it the day to remember the overwhelming number of locals who died alongside the POWs who remain almost entirely ignored or forgotten.

[tahaan]

Rememberance is a personal and ongoing process for me. But let's not lose sight of what tomorrow's celebrations mean though.

I'm not an Aussie or Kiwi but from what I understand, Anzac day is more than a time to remember the past sacrifices made by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps or those who've died in wartime. It's a day for those nations to recocgnise and say thanks to all past and present members of their armed forces. Sure, there are services of rememberance but it's also a national holiday to celebrate the part those men and women have played in making their nations histories and the ongoing part they play in shaping their futures.

As a Brit, I wish the UK had something similar. We've got Rememberance Day and I think there's been lame attempts to start a Veterans Day but, they are not holidays or public celebrations in the style of Anzac Day. I spent over 30 years in uniform and for most of that time I couldn't wear it in public. It must be great to be a an Aussie or Kiwi serviceman or veteran and have people come up and say "thanks mate" and maybe even buy you a beer.

As a Brit, I'll be raising a glass for all those who've served and who are serving and toasting the memory of their mates who didn't make it back.

[rick75]

As an Aussie , what ANZAC day is, to remind us of the sacrafices that these people made for the benifit of our Nation and the sacrifices there familys made in saying farewell to them, ANZAC day is designed to remind us that war is not glamorous or exciting good people loose there lives and in current times you have to wonder if the powers that be should not look deep inside and question there motives as to why many soilders are put in harms way.

Lest We Forget