gullybogan

Dear Reader,

At the moment i’m living in that curious moment between Mister Widget downsizing his factory from a little village community to a room full of nerds who hate each other, and the realisation that he can just sell the office and have us nerds all work from home in our underpants.

So i still have to put up with having other people around during the day. People who aren’t Princess, and thus missing out on all the benefits that having Princess around affords.

It kind of sucks.

Today was Remembrance Day.

We’re supposed to have a minute’s silence and remember the glorious war dead.

With all these nerds who hate me and each other.

So: awkward.

Me: So how are we going to do the minute’s silence and stuff?

Accounts: Maybe we could just be silent for a minute? Duh.

Shipping: Maybe we could have a whole day’s silence, starting now, you chatty cunts.

Accounts: Yeah, shut the fuck up, Gully.

Time went by.

Me: Hey, look! The Australian War Memorial website has an MP3 of the Last Post, and Rouse and Reveille… we could play those and have a minute’s silence in between.

Shipping: Hey, maybe you could just shut the fuck up?

Marketing: Gully, why don’t you download the files, burn them onto a CD, like a podcast, and then we can each have our minute’s silence when it’s most convenient.

Accounts: Yeah, that’s a great idea. You do that, Gully.

I didn’t do that.

I saw on a documentary that the last person to be killed – officially – in The Great War was a French infantry runner, or messenger dude. His job at twenty to eleven on the 11th of November, 1918, was to run along the French trenches to let everyone know that after the cessation of hostilities at 11am there would be soup served at a field kitchen that was about to be set up for just that purpose.

A sniper killed him as he was running along, crying, “Soup for Elevenses, chaps!” in French.

Lots of people got killed on the last day of World War One, but their deaths were all recorded as being on the 10th, so that there would be no issue about their loved ones getting a war-hero-widow’s pension (as opposed to an ex-serviceman’s-widow’s pension, which was nothing, really).

I wonder if that French runner dude had loved ones.

Every man who saw his duty and did it when the choice was before him has had his share in the destruction of the most maleficent Power that ever afflicted mankind. The Australian people will recognise that to them they owe their safety, that through them their honour stands high among the free peoples of the world. Peace that has been won by so much suffering and so many tears must be honoured by a new spirit of fraternity and public service. The flower of this generation has perished. Their loss is irreplaceable, but their sacrifice makes an unanswerable appeal for the democracy they have honoured and preserved.
Sydney Morning Herald 12/11/1918

We now keep meeting small or large parties of British or French prisoners moving west on their way home. What a splendid mood they must be in compared with us.
In spite of it all, we can be proud of the performance we put up, and we shall always be proud of it. Never before has a nation, a single army, had the whole world against it and stood its ground against such overwhelming odds; had it been the other way round, this heroic performance could never have been achieved by any other nation. We protected our homeland from her enemies – they never pushed as far as German territory.
Herbert Sulzbach 13/11/1918

Peace is rapidly dissolving into the light of common day. You can go to London without meeting more than two drunk soldiers; only an occasional crowd blocks the street. But mentally the change is marked too. Instead of feeling that the whole people, willing or not, were concentrated on a single point, one feels now that the whole bunch has burst asunder and flown off with the utmost vigour in different directions. We are once more a nation of individuals.
Virginia Woolf 15/11/1918

source

Yours fire-ceasingly,
Gullybogan