{"id":7008,"date":"2015-04-23T07:49:46","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T21:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=7008"},"modified":"2019-12-06T16:02:05","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T05:02:05","slug":"anzac-day-2015-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=7008","title":{"rendered":"Anzac Day 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 25th April it will be 100 years since Australian and New Zealand soldiers charged the beaches in Gallipoli, Turkey, in an attempt to beat the Turks and give the Allies a chance to take Constantinople.\u00a0 They were mown down, slaughtered.\u00a0 The battles continued for months until December 1915 when they withdrew, defeated.\u00a0 Out of a population of less than 5 million, Australia lost 8,000 young males at Gallipoli.<\/p>\n

The following year, 1916, my grandfather, Ernest Bruce, joined the army after stowing away on a ship of volunteers headed for Egypt.\u00a0 In July at Pozi\u00e8res, France, on the Western Front, he was trapped under concrete in an explosion, and then gassed.\u00a0 But he survived.\u00a0 He was one of the 40,000 Australians killed or wounded in 1916 on the Western Front (see AWM<\/a>).\u00a0 That’s a huge part of a population of 5 million.<\/p>\n

When he returned to Australia, he was too ill to work for more than a few days a week, yet it took the government years to offer him a pension.<\/p>\n

His oldest son was my father, Ronald Bruce, who hadn’t learnt a thing about the futility of volunteering to fight in a war.\u00a0 In 1941 he joined the army, was sent to Egypt, and months later was sent home with shell shock.\u00a0 He couldn’t hold down a job, and at 25 was offered a pension.<\/p>\n

This Anzac Day, I honour my father and grandfather for volunteering to participate in Australia’s defence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ernest and Florence Bruce<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Ron Bruce, before leaving for the Middle East, 1941<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Ron Bruce, Heliopolis War Cemetery, Cairo, 1941<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the Australian War Memorial in Canberra there is a wall called the Roll of Honour.\u00a0 It’s covered in the names of Australians who have died in war.\u00a0 My grandfather and father are not on the wall because they returned alive;\u00a0 but my grandfather’s three cousins, the Shaw brothers, and my grandmother’s two cousins, the Burley brothers, did not.\u00a0 They are all buried on the Somme in France, and their names are here on the wall.\u00a0 I put poppies beside their names.<\/p>\n

Since I learnt that they were all killed while my grandfather returned, I haven’t looked at life the same way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
George Ronald Shaw, Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
D’arcy R. N. Shaw and Frank A. P. Shaw, Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0*****<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 25th April it will be 100 years since Australian and New Zealand soldiers charged the beaches in Gallipoli, Turkey, in an attempt to beat the Turks and give the Allies a chance to take Constantinople.\u00a0 They were mown down, slaughtered.\u00a0 The battles continued for months until December 1915 when they withdrew, defeated.\u00a0 Out of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Anzac Day 2015”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[579,20,1371,13,14],"tags":[4,5,88,728,6,39,30,358,7,8,21,729,1074,730],"class_list":["post-7008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canberra","category-my-photos","category-world-war-one","category-wwii","category-wwii-photos","tag-1940s","tag-215th-battalion","tag-anzac-day","tag-australian-war-memorial","tag-black-white","tag-cairo","tag-egypt","tag-france","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-red-poppies","tag-remembrance-poppies","tag-roll-of-honour-awm"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7008"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13013,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008\/revisions\/13013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}