anzac

The mornings are getting warmer. I'm standing beneath the Wellington Arch in the middle of London city in just jeans and my coat but the air is still and I'm not cold. The first thoughts of sunlight are on the horizon. There is a big whispering crowd around me that sounds very much like home. Then, underneath the voices, a didgeridoo starts, so low it's barely audible, and it seems to pull all the other sounds into it until the only thing moving in the morning is that one low and lonely sound.

This is the start of the dawn service for ANZAC day, ninety-nine years after the fact. I'm with more Australians right now than I've met since I left. I'm not sleepy like I thought I'd be. There's this attentive energy in the crowd that makes me forget how early it is, how little sleep I've had. 

The didgeridoo stops and a man is talking, an English accent with slips of Kiwi in the vowels. He reminds us why we're there. The numbers and the places I've heard many times, but that never cease to amaze me.

War is so dumb. So dumb. I don't care if it's political and economical and there's ten thousand facets of it's horrific existence that I don't understand. I am willing to proclaim it dumb in the full knowledge that I know nothing about it. Except the killing. I've heard about that. And that, too, I proclaim to be dumb. When a human claims some kind of right to kill another human, it's like humanity loses its grip on itself. It lets itself slip just a millimetre more. I guess that's what I think about war. I see no sense nor reason.

I know many people feel the same way. I also know that  many boycott memorial ceremonies, because they don't want to participate in the act of 'glorifying' war. That kind of makes sense. There is a shiny ceremonial nonsense that comes with the wearing of poppies and the reciting of poetry. Actually, I felt kind of weird going to the ceremony, for that very reason. In the days leading up to Friday I was conflicted. Of course I don't want to support the institution of war. But I want to remember. And I want to do it with all the other people who are remembering, because shared experience has such a power about it.

War feels far from me. None of those close to me have died at its hand, though some have suffered. Just the rocky edges of my home country have hosted international battles. I'm lucky. But when the man standing below Wellington Arch at dawn reads letters written a century ago, I feel close in other ways. These soldiers were like me. My age, certainly, and with similar concerns. And we're both on the other side of the world. Well sure, I came by my own will, and I Skype my mum weekly, and am not in constant fear for my life, and I can choose to leave at any point without having to shoot my foot, even, but I'm still a long way from what I've always known. When I read the words of boys from the trenches I feel like don't have to stretch my imagination too far to cross those ninety-nine years.

And that's what I want to do. I love the humanity in empathy. Because when you're sad for the soldier whose best mate died in his arms, you're not sad simply that it happened. You're sad because you're imagining what that felt like. If you're like me, you're sad because you've got that rock heavy feeling in your guts like, that could be me and my best friend. Hell, imagine that. Then imagine it one hundred thousand times. That's what I'm thinking about when I'm standing at dawn and the sweet salute of the last post is drifting out over the crowd. 

What I'm not thinking about is patriotism, or politics, or even war, really. 

I'm not thinking, These men died for their country. 

I'm thinking, These men died. 

I'm not thinking, Thank you for the political influence that your death probably had over my current situation. Not really. I'm thinking, I'm sorry, but not because it's my fault, or because I'm here reaping the benefit of their deaths. I'm thinking I'm sorry because humans can be shit. Because there were boys younger than me seeing things men couldn't handle. I'm thinking, I'm sorry you had to be a part of this history, and I hope that maybe this present can learn something. 

I stand for an hour and listen to the words of people who, like me, don't see the sense in it. This is not the glorification of war. I don't know why I was worried it might be. There is no talk of winners or losers. There's talk about the memories of those who served. 

But hold up. Don't I think that listening to military leaders preaching messages of peace to the crowd is a touch confused, a bit ridiculous? Hypocritical? You bet I do. But I see that they're doing what they think is right. I don't believe one of them would willingly start war. For the most part I believe they prepare armies to fight, in the hope that they won't have to. It's not my style, sure, but I think they have as much right to do it this way as those at home have to boycott the ceremony because that's what they feel is right.

I realise, or remember, some time when the sky is in half light, that no matter what situation you're in, everyone is experiencing something different. The girl beside me in the grey North Face jacket might be feeling swells of patriotic pride. The man blocking my view could well be thinking, Gosh darn, I really do love how this ceremony glorifies war so much and stuff, and probably we should go march on Luxembourg immediately. There are doubtless a huge number of people standing around me who have the pictures of dead relatives behind their vision, for whom this ceremony is a funeral, every year, that allows them to remember family love. And there are probably plenty like me, who are standing here just asking to be reminded about the condition of being human, and what happens when that gets complicated.

It doesn't matter. Everyone is here to remember the dead. And those who didn't come, for whatever reason, I hope they're remembering too. As far as I'm concerned, the more that people remember -- the more we feel the injustice in the deaths of those before us -- the better we keep tabs on our own humanity. Lest we forget.