At the end of the first week back in second term I’m told that one of my daughters will be attending the dawn Anzac service to lay a wreath with the other prefects.
‘So what time will they need to be there?’ I ask my wife anxiously.
‘Ten past five, but don’t worry she’s being picked up’, she answers.
Pheeww. But then I feel the pang of guilt.
Guilt, because my daughter is so keen to get up so early and do this thing but I’m so keen to sleep in. Guilt, because I feel I should be supporting my own daughter and driving her there myself, like the other perfect, oops, prefect parents . Guilt, because it is Anzac day and although I’m grateful for the sacrifice others have made I’m not sure what to do each year. I’m not sure what example to set my kids. Like, should we make everybody get up and go to the dawn service? Should we watch it on telly? Should we go to a march? Should we have a little prayer time of thanks and memorial at home; the kids after all have a great grandfather who fought in WWII. Our school did such a nice Anzac service on the Friday; do we need to do more?
My wife had brought home the bacon this week while I earned zip, so I reasoned it was my job to rise to the occasion and ‘woman up’ by waking ridiculously early like the other prefect mums to stand in the damp cold with my daughter as she laid the wreath, while my wife slept in. That was until my daughter came home on Friday and it was clear she really wanted to car pool with her friends and do this as a prefect only thing. Daddy wasn’t needed.
So I was off the hook (sigh).
I’d stood tall but sadly, the decision had been made for me. No dawn service for this brave soldier. That was until my even younger daughter said she really wanted to go. Now can you really refuse to take your kid to a dawn service when they are asking to go? I mean it’s going to be really boring for a child; they’ll have to stand on their feet for an hour and probably won’t see much because of the crowd. Not to mention the cold and then the hunger. Mmmmmm, the hunger. That got me thinking, if I got up early with my youngest daughter we’d be able to have breakfast afterward; yes, we could get a nice hot café latte with a pastry, even a bacon and egg roll! Oh yes, this frosty Anzac dawn service is warming up nicely.
No sooner had my younger daughter enthusiastically signed up to the dawn service, that something terrible dawned on me: There will be no coffee and there will be no pastry because there will be nothing open until midday. Oh the horror, the horror.
But it’s too late to turn the boat around from this beach head; imagine a father who is so lame he refuses to take his daughter to the dawn service?! Shamed of my cowardice and unable to live with the memory of a man who cowered in bed while others brave the cold with their 8 year olds, I set the alarm.
It’s dark, cold and very, very early. I didn’t even sleep. You know when you got to bed saying, ‘quick I’ve got to get to sleep’. Big mistake. The last time I got up this early was to work as a barista at a local café. This got me thinking about an idea for next year’s dawn and services. Why not have baristas like me donate their time, and have coffee companies set up equipment and donate consumables but for every coffee purchased the money raised (or a large portion of it) goes to supporting war veterans? The whole idea works nicely when you realise just how big a role caffeine played, especially in World War II, keeping the soldiers awake. In one year alone, the entire production output of instant coffee in the United States went to the soldiers.
Turns out that it is the 100th anniversary of the original Anzac date. Well I did know that, but you know, I didn’t really take it on board until I arrived with my eight-year-old daughter at 5:30 AM to discover the memorial surrounded by thousands of people. Naturally, as I had explained to my daughter the night before, there was little chance she would find any of friends. This seemed to not matter to her, she was genuinely glad to be there and made not a single complaint or request to go home from a whole hour. When it came to the ‘laying of the wreaths’ we waited expectantly to hear our school read out and I stood my daughter on the barricades that she might see her sister joining with the other prefects to lay the wreath.
Not sure why all the surf clubs from Cronulla need to lay a separate wreath, after all there is a separate memorial happening at the same time down at Cronulla. Then there were the girl guides, the chess clubs, the local council and finally the schools. I think by the time the old guy from the RSL got to the schools he just about had enough and said ‘anyone else who would like to lay a wreath come forward’. One or two schools snuck in a mention but our school missed out. But what’s it about anyway? Is it about us or about them?
What struck me most about the service was the amount of Christian content. There were three or four prayers that were read out beautifully by students from the local high school. Plus there was a short and memorable sermon from a local Anglican minister who reminded us that the motifs of mateship, courage and sacrifice were embodied most clearly by the person of Christ Jesus. He then tied Christ’s sacrifice and suffering for our benefit to the act of the ANZACS who acted on our behalf all those years ago at Gallipoli. Wow. I needed to pinch myself. You wouldn’t see a crowd like this at church on a Sunday in Sydney. But here we are, gathered in the cold, dawn light, all walks of life, listening to a sermon about Christ, mateship, courage and sacrifice.
It got me wondering how long this type of service might remain? As Australia becomes more and more secular we may still remember the ANZACS but will we remember them the same way? Is the ANZAC service a museum piece that we all respectfully allow to bounce through to the keeper but will one day be compromised and changed by newer generations? Perhaps under the influence of pluralism and multiculturalism we will say prayers to an unknown, unnamed God. Or perhaps there will be no prayers at all, because there will be no place for God at all. Will we stand together in the cold and the dark in godless silence remembering those who fought against the godlessness of Germany and Japan? If there is no God, why did we bother? Lest we forget.
Stephen Shearsby is a Christian performing artist and writer
You can find out about his two unique shows, Anton’s Antics and Barista Banter here:
