The skirl of the pipes woke me ANZAC morning.
I would have thought that they would have done their practising at home, instead of leaving it until the last minute before they were due to march...and while they were some way from my window, their skirl was not.
I never knew Mad Harry, no reason why I should really. He died in a car accident in 1966.
During the first world war though, he won the Victoria cross, the highest of all the British armies decorations, and but for a line of barbwire that he couldn't get through, came within a whisker of winning another. Winning instead two distinguished service orders..or D.S.O. and bar to use the correct vernacular. The French gave him the Croix De Geurre.
It was the skirl of the pipes that reminded me of him.
The pipes are to comemorate the fallen, and the returned, soldiers of the Gallipoli campaign of 1915.
My Grandmothers brother Harry was one of them. He enlisted in the New Zealand army, and became what was known as a Mainbody man, which meant he was one of the first of the idiots to arrive on Gallipoli.In his favour however, they did tell him that it would be like going on holiday and that he would be back home by Christmas...He got there in April of 1915. Mad Harry was another.He was a shiftless wastrel from Tasmania, who to get out of working in a logging camp, enlisted in the Australian army.His life so sorely lacked purpose that he thought Gallipoli was an upwards career move.
So, there they were, both Harry's fighting for the Empire against the Turks, over a god forsaken stretch of dunes that you would have trouble raising spit over.
It is, however, perhaps one of those ironic quirks of fate that one Harry's sister ended up raising the other Harry's son.
See, Mad Harry, despite all his medals for bravery, was actually a coward.
After the war Mad Harry got married, nothing wrong with that, (except perhaps the shonky alliteration.) Then his wifes neice came to stay, nothing wrong with that either. It was the tupping of her that caused all the ensuing problems.
"What steps are you going to take?" said his wife. "Big bastards" said Mad Harry and promptly left the country,pregnant neice dutifully in tow. Wife got the cattle station, and stayed silent.
It was the other Harry's sister who answered the add in the paper to adopt Mad Harry's bastard.
Mad Harry for his part, married the, by now, ex wifes neice, and went home, sans child, to a life of reflected glory, considerable fortune and two more children. (legitimate ones of course)
For a time there was word that he would even be made Prime Minister of Australia. It was probably this story,stored away in the skeleton closet, which caused him to turn down the offer.
His son, for his part, never fell far from his fathers tree, and dutifully spent his life spreading his genetic pool as far afield as he possibly could. He unfortunately did not have a Gallipoli to redeem him, and he died of Emphysema a matter of days before the cancer would have got him.
I checked Mad Harry's six pages of biography on Wikipedia, and read the book about him. Not one mention was made of the abandoned son...who, incidentally,for better or worse, came to share my name.
The other Harry too managed to survive the carnage of Gallipoli and cheat the death trenches of France. He even managed not to get hit by any bullets or bombs, which was more than Mad Harry could do.
No, in a somewhat ironic paradox he managed to get to within a month of the end of the war only to be bitten by a mosquito while drinking warm beer in a downtown bar in Cairo. The resultant Malaria then killed him.
The moral here, I geuss, is to always check what they tell you about the holiday destinations that they are sending you to.
He is buried in the grassy calm haven of the War Memorial Cemetary in Cairo.
Cairo, a pox of a place, where even today you can still get a reasonable choice of pain filled death from Malaria, Typhoid or Cholera,caught while drinking warm beer in a downtown bar.
The day before ANZAC Day my god kid was competing in the New Zealand Secondary Schools Triathlon...Lord, where was that little fat kid,who couldn't jump off the ground. She swam, Biked and ran alongside the best athletes in the country and she never gave them an inch all day...and who I have since watch grow up into such a delightful young lady. To come within a heartbeat of taking a medal was all that I could have asked of her. I was so proud I had to turn away and pretend I had dust in my eyes.
