I mounted Monument Hill with a mixture of emotions this dawn. Most April 24ths I fall asleep thinking of those young, frightened soldiers, feet wet and rotting in their boots, fighting battles in foreign lands on the orders of a few powerful and delusional men. I sigh, my brow crinkles. My jaw clenches, then I cry.
In many ways this year is no different. All of the emotions still bubble away. Tears are still shed. But my lens is much wider these days. I think of the lost children and mothers and fathers in the Australian Frontier Wars - for aren't those fallen equally worthy of my tears? They were killed in the thousands. Isn't their spilled blood a loss just as great? Their lives were lost fighting for their country, their language, their culture - the very same motivations used to rally the troops of the great wars. And we have no day set aside to commemorate the lives of those countrymen, to contemplate that earthly loss.
Then I pan out further. I think of those losses and the ones that came in later wars, and I think of our returned vets, and I can't help but think these thoughts are all they really get. Is that enough? They come home broken: broken hearts, broken minds, broken souls. Sleep broken by relentless nightmares, marriages broken by PTSD, lives broken by war. Then they are shoved here and there by outdated military expectation, shunned by their peers, abandoned by their governments.
A morning on the hill, with a trumpet and a poem. It is lovely. It is heartwrenching. But it is not enough. Until we all pan out, it is all just smoke and mirrors: a solemnly beautiful ceremony that distracts us from the infinite ripples of war.
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