ANZAC

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We felt much, much worse afterwards.

You know that intense adrenaline and feeling of victory after you win a game? The elation of accomplishing something huge? You look at your mates, grinning crazily. You feel yourself begin to levitate. Joy creeps into your face. There wasnt that. As a normality, people cheer and laugh when theyve won. We didnt cheer or laugh. We felt awful for our achievement. Murder equates to success here. Its, sickening.

When I was baptised they poured water over me for protection. Here, underwater, everything is audible. But not in an immediate way. Noise around you sounds removed - like you are listening to it through a dense layer of cotton wool. Cotton wool softens hard landings. But its so thin it barely suffices for its purpose anyway. What a farce. Noise is several yards behind us; my ears are hollow. I can hear the General yelling at me but his speech is faded and melting into the air. It doesnt quite reach me. He's got eyes in the back of his head and I'm staring at them through his face.

Drowning is what it is. Not 'like' being underwater, but actually drowning in the rush of shrapnel and the ebullition of orders which fly amidst panic. Your legs are amputated, and you are expected to run a marathon. The boys in front are dog meat. They are our sacrifice which we offer. Who wants to die proudly, in dignity, gloriously, for their country? They dress it up, skeletons dancing in expensive suits.

Who wants to be slaughtered in a meat works factory and chucked into the freezer compartment? You wont be plastic-wrapped like home kill (which is more humane, apparently), but you will be put in a pretty bloodstained red tin. Your grave will bear a cross that looks just like every other product on the shelf. Youll even get a barcode, for reference. You already have an expiry date.

Tick.

Tick.

You will be one of many, and die completely alone. Just like all the others.


Here's how the casting works: Everyone is lined up, and told to march forward. If you make five metres you have a featured role in this play. You'll stand out to anyone who looks back over the beach. Unfeatured extras hide in the massacred crowd. Twelve metres is a cat walk. To the quarter: Three guys will make land. They will be our protagonists. Often, the director has chosen them before the audition even begins. Their fate is pre-determined; you can buy that in the supermarket aisle too next to cake packet mixes. The other hopefuls will drown in an unconventional manner, the water surrounding them, yet not a millilitre of it in their lungs. They will have choked on bullets fed to them by the enemy on a silver spoon. They strap you down into a high chair (because you are, after all, a juvenile) and satisfy your avarice for adventure. Isnt this what you ordered? the chef will ask you. It's a la carte.

That's the catch in marketing, you see. It comes down to money, and power. Cultural capital: That's what we are fighting for. “The greater good.” Greater. They have more power, and therefore they are greater than us, and therefore they are good.

Objection? They will without a doubt call treason. They blindfold you for that you know; you die using your aural senses. POP, goes the weasel, SLUMP against the wall. Treason is a war within the war; it is us fighting ourselves, fighting grey bricks. Treasonous soldiers are consorting with the enemy. Sex has always ruled men, all throughout history. It is the burden of our society, our vice, our fatal flaw. And sex does kill. On the battlefields, you see the leftovers, and leftovers without 'eft', discarded limbs and hearts. We are all bleeding red, as do the women for life, for sex and death and love. But theyre not even here, they exist only in our memories now. We are all bleeding red. You just cant always see it.

The usual reaction to these sounds and lights is fear. Fear sounds like an echo: You hear it once, loud, suddenly, and then it continues to irkpreoccupydisturb you, a little quieter each time, but all the more repulsive for its decreasing decibels.

And occasionally, there is the one who shines. His head is clearer in this circumstance. He strategizes, he makes a plan. He is one of the bodies which makes it to land. He is the mechanics of the factory; he refuses to be a sacrifice because he is, in his own right, purposeful. He makes it through alive. But he must not forget his time to die comes later if he forgets the rules.



Stains seep through my skin, and out my ears, I know it.

These images are indelibly imprinted on my mind.