verging_on_random

Worshipping the ghosts of the fallen

September 5, 2007 on 8:12 pm | In Uncategorized |

So the remains of two more Australian soldiers have been found in Belgium, and identified thanks to the miracle of DNA technology.

Having been dug up, they will now be reburied ‘with full military honours at Belgium’s Buttes cemetery on October 4.’ Except they died 90 years ago, which kind of begs the question: What’s the point?

The same question can be asked about the Australian government’s decision to pay for relatives of the two men to have a nice little holiday in Europe at our expense, just so they can attend the funeral. For one lady of a certain age interviewed on tonight’s ABC News, it will be her opportunity to find closure … for a great uncle who died long before she was born. Forgive me for wondering just how legitimate any emotional link can be between someone and their great uncle who they never knew.

I had a relative die in Indonesia in World War 2. He was a proper uncle, my father’s younger brother, none of this great uncle stuff. Or actually it’s wrong to say he ‘was’ an uncle because he was dead long before I was conceived. He ‘would have been’ my uncle is more accurate, I think. My Uncle Alan - that’s where my middle name comes from. His photo hung on our hallway wall until my parents died.

This is him:

He was a really good-looking young bloke and a lot wilder than my parents, from all accounts (although in my family that might just have meant he liked a beer occasionally). I reckon I would have liked him and occasionally, in my younger days, I felt a bit sad for him. But I can’t say I ever felt a gaping void in my life that ached for ‘closure’ - an expression that crept into our language a few years ago and now seems to afflict vast numbers of people.

I never heard whether Uncle Alan was buried in a marked grave, so I assume he wasn’t. Apparently he was swept away crossing a river … maybe the army never knew what happened to him. The retreat from the Japanese after Singapore wasn’t one of our finest hours.

But it’s conceivable that one day they might find his remains in Java, in some makeshift wartime grave. Would I care? I doubt it. And I certainly wouldn’t expect the government to pay for me to go to some re-burial service. Colour me cynical, but I’m afraid I would regard such a gesture as a cheap attempt to get political advantage from something that happened a long time ago, that has nothing whatsoever to do with anyone still alive today.