The Danté’s One Day of the Year

It was the gladdest of days, it was the saddest of days.

As Alan Seymour’s play rightly called it, it was The One Day of the Year. It was ANZAC Day, the last bastion of Australianism along with Melbourne Cup Day.

ANZAC Day commemorated the World War I Australian and New Zealand Army Corps; with the time of Sydney’s Dawn Service based on H-Hour, April 25th, 1915 when the ANZACs landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. The British were also there, as were the Indians, the French Corps Expéditionnaire d'Orient and the gallant Newfoundland Regiment, but most Australians neither knew nor cared, their mateship attitude being ‘mate, mate, mate we’re Australian; mate, mate, mate you’re not!’ It was the same attitude Phil Danté encountered growing up in Sydney as a Roman Catholic and not of Anglo-Celtic descent, yet on that one day of the year he was regarded like everyone else.

Phil found another reason to be fascinated by the day when he watched The Eve of St. Mark, a 1944 Hollywood war movie on television. The film related a legend that if a person took up watch on their church steps on St. Mark's Eve, one would see the spectres of those destined to die during the year pass into the church. St. Mark’s Day was the 25th of April…He had always wanted to sneak out and sit on his local St. Fiacre’s of the Immaculate Conception Church steps to see if it was true, but didn’t, because he was afraid that he would see himself…

As his sister Jean couldn’t be bothered getting out of bed, the day was one of Father and Son; without the usual Abbott to Costello, Leo Gorcey to Huntz Hall and Moe to Shemp relationship between them.

It was a wonderous day, one like no other, together without quarrel in the quietude of the darkness, the spectacular dawn, then brushing shoulders with larger-than-life former soldiers. ANZAC Day was always the same, yet it was always different…

They ventured to the Cenotaph in Martin Place in the wee hours where all was silent except for the soft tinkling of medals on the veteran’s chests, then the bugles, singing hymns with the Sydney Male Choir and reciting the Ode to Remembrance…We shall remember them…lest we forget…

Afterwards Dad took his son to breakfast at his British Ex-Serviceman’s club; then Dad marched with them in the morning parade of living history. One year, a proud Phil marched with his school cadets in uniform.

Later, the pair were joined by Tatie, his father’s sister Micheline, who came from France to reside in Australia; Phil named his daughter ‘Mish’ after her. Mish, now a Royal Australian Air Force officer was marching in Canberra where she was posted.

Phil was posted to Vietnam as a replacement infantryman. As the veterans of the First World War didn’t make the veterans of the Second overly welcome in the Returned Serviceman’s League, so the latter weren’t too enthusiastic to the veterans of Korea, Malaya and Vietnam. When Ulysses finally returned home, he visited his regimental association where he found no one he wanted to see again. Many acted like people who wanted to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day; using the day as an excuse for an excess of drinking to oblivion, as they had in the army, and playing two-up.

On a day of destiny, Phil blundered into a former Rhodesian Army Intelligence Corps officer he knew back in those lazy, hazy, crazy days of warfare, those days of contacts and biltong and beer! Now a journalist in Sydney, he invited Phil to join the Rhodesian contingent where they served together. Phil felt more at home with them than he did with anyone else. Their conversations were intelligent as they were well educated, well-travelled, professionally employed or entrepreneurs, had zero woe-is-me self-pity, held their grog and possessed the same sense of humour Phil and his wife had. In contrast, Phil’s binge-drinking Vietnam comrades-in-arms’ acme of wit was urinating on each other’s boots. Rhodesian-for-a-Day became a regular annual occurrence. Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer!

Fran let Phil go his own way for the day to play with the Lost Boys. Her Bersagliere father was captured in the Western Desert then sent to a POW camp in South Africa, where he found a home better than Italy.

The glad part of ANZAC Day was that it was the straight people’s Mardi Gras; everyone wore their berets and medals with their suits or colourful band uniforms. All felt alive and had funny stories to tell or laugh at. Phil wore either his Royal Australian Regiment, Rhodesian Light Infantry or South African Infantry green beret with his parachute wings, Infantry Combat Badge and medals from Australia, South Vietnam, Guatemala, Rhodesia and South Africa on his suit.

It was the one day of the year he could be himself.

Tory once asked him whether he had any post-traumatic stress disorder.

Phil replied,

‘Getting someone to feel sympathy for you is the poor man’s aphrodisiac.’

The sad part of ANZAC Day was seeing the aging and disappearance of so many well-loved characters. Vietnam veterans now resembled the World War I veterans of his childhood.

‘Tom and Geriatrics cartoon antics’, Phil remarked.

First his father and mother died, then Tatie; Mish was posted far away in the RAAF.

Usually, Phil attended his small coastal town’s Dawn Service and took the early morning coastal express train into Sydney for the march and lunch with the Rhodies.

This year he was invited to share a hotel room with a Rhodesian friend and attend the Sydney Dawn Service together. Phil and his friend separated into the crowds that had grown larger over the years, but they’d meet again to march.

There was no longer the sound of tinkling gongs as everyone’s medals were professionally mounted that precluded the familiar noise.

Like so many other places, despite the crowd, Phil felt alone, strangely alone…

‘Dad…’

‘Mish! What are you doing here?’

‘It came up rather suddenly, I’m in transit and it’s hush-hush.’

They warmly embraced. Tall and fit in her dark blue RAAF uniform, she wore her own medals earned in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Turn Around, Harry Belafonte sang in his mind as he recalled her as an infant, then a schoolgirl, then a cadet and now an officer. He never forgot the time he once looked into her eyes and saw they now resembled his World War II veteran father’s and Tatie’s from her own wars serving both the British Empire and France. Mish never talked about her missions, as they never did, with the exception of amusing anecdotes.

‘How long are you here for?’

‘Only for the Dawn Service and maybe a little bit more…’

‘Maybe a little bit more’ was Mish’s catchphrase as a child, whether it was not wishing to come in for dinner when she was playing with her friends, dessert at the dinner table, watching telly when it was beddy-bye time or being woken to go to school…

‘…I’m sure you understand I can’t tell you where I’m going…I haven’t time for the march.’

They held hands as the Dawn Service began; Phil now felt warmly surrounded by absent friends from long ago.

The ceremony proceeded as always with bugles, singing hymns together, bagpipes wailing Flowers of the Forest, wreath laying…the Last Post and the lowering of the colours, the silence of Remembrance, then the rousing Reveille and the colours being raised. It concluded with the band and the armed catafalque party marching off to Waltzing Matilda.

‘Let’s have breakfast and talk!’

‘No Dad, let’s walk and be together, just the two of us…I haven’t long…’

They walked together through the early morning, her arm through his as Tatie had walked with him so long ago; it felt as if Dad and Tatie were walking behind them again…

‘Let’s ring Mamma and get her out of bed!’

‘Sorry, Dad…I can’t…’

‘I know you two haven’t always got along…’

That was an understatement.

Like a Gremlin being fed after midnight, his fun Fran transformed into a hysterical Italian mamma and fanatic Roman Catholic following Mish’s birth. Phil acted as mediator and made them both laugh, but mostly he united the pair against him. He recalled a crying Mish sitting in his lap with her dolly as Phil sang Johnny Edmond’s Rhodesian troopie songs to her like he now did to the poodles. Fran glared like a cobra,

‘You don’t know women…you never have…you let them fool you!’

‘…but she’ll be so hurt you didn’t want to call her, Mish.’

‘Then promise me you won’t tell her you saw me…please…’

‘I can’t do that…I love you both…’

‘I know you do; you’ve been a wonderful Dad.’

‘I think Mother raised the both of us; I was pretty hopeless.’

‘No, you weren’t! I was…You never talked to me about yourself but Grampa, Tatie and Auntie Jean sure did! They were so proud of you…I am too.’

‘That’s a nice thing to say. Thanks. You always were my little lady, but I felt you outgrew me…like Puff the Magic Dragon.’

‘Jamais!’, she spoke in an identical determined voice to her great Aunt Tatie, ‘I had airs and graces then…I have to let you know how much I really love you. I’d tell Mamma all the time.’

He was incredulous at how Fran and Mish would fight like two cats in the same sack yet always came together, no matter what they said to each other. His own personal motto was ‘God forgives, I don’t’.

‘…but sometimes you were so remote, Dad.’

‘I always was stuck-up.’

‘No, you were just shy. I know that now, I know lots of things now…Auntie Jean and Grandma told me how tough Grampa was on you, so you didn’t want to be too rough on me; fortunately, Mamma was. But you were always around for me, and you always made me laugh, even when I didn’t want to…’

They walked through Hyde Park as the sun rose, walking on the pathway between the rows of trees, crossing over to walk by the Pool of Reflection bounded by poplars towards the impressive combination Gothic art deco Sydney ANZAC Memorial that resembled a temple of Atlantis.

The silent upper level’s ceiling featured 120,000 golden stars, the symbolic representation of the men and women from New South Wales who embarked for overseas service during the Great War. A recess on the eastern wall of the Hall of Memory was the Flame Room; housing the Flame of Remembrance eternally burning in a flat dish mounted on a pedestal. Behind the pedestal were the flags of Australia, New Zealand and New South Wales.

Fran called it ‘a pagan temple to Mars the God of War’; Phil teased her that she still couldn’t get over Mussolini losing the war.

They were the only ones in the silence.

They looked down to Sacrifice, the Rayner Hoff statue depicting a dead Spartan soldier carried on his shield by his mother, sister and wife nursing her infant child.

Phil quoted Plutarch,

‘”Come back with your shield…or on it”…I’m glad I never had to tell you that.’

‘You didn’t have to…there were lots of things you never said, because you never had to…Tatie taught me to understand you through your eyes and what you didn’t say, rather than what you did. I thought I was Nancy Drew investigating you and finding out who you really were…’

‘You always loved Nancy Drew, and you were as bright as anything…you still are.’

‘I couldn’t tell you I did Nancy Drew work in the RAAF, Dad.’

‘Just like Tatie; how proud of you she must be…and so am I! We love you so much!’

The pair warmly embraced; she continued speaking to him from his arms.

‘Tatie also taught me to see the world out of the corner of my eyes rather than looking directly at it, so I figured you were…you didn’t have to tell me…I knew…She told me all about your times together…she…’

Mish suddenly stopped.

They walked to look out over the marble steps, the Pool and the park greenery whence they had come as the sun rose higher in the morning sky,

‘I’ve got to go now, Dad…thanks for everything, and thank Mamma too.’

She cut off his question with a kiss on his mouth, holding his head with both of her hands as Tatie did to him when he went off to the Army and Vietnam…he wondered how much Tatie had told her about their activities…

They embraced, he looked in her eyes, she spoke sadly and yearningly,

‘Good-bye, Dad…I love you…’

Once again, Phil’s instincts took over from his common sense and reason. He had no idea why he transformed into the platoon sergeant he once was.

Grabbing his daughter’s lapels with his opposite hands, he pulled her towards him and sharply bent his forearms so they were strangling her. His blazing brown eyes gave her the look he gave his frightened soldiers in the wars they fought.

He shouted,

‘It’s not your time to go…fight!!!’

Mish’s eyes widened in fear as she gasped for air,

‘I’m talking to YOU, Blue Job! It’s not your time yet! Don’t be all Air and no Force! FIGHT!!!’

Everything went black…

* * *

He woke on the marble floor.

‘You right, Digger?’

Three sailors helped him up.

What happened and where was Mish?

‘We found you sleeping it off!’

‘I was with my daughter…’,

Phil looked at his watch and groped for his wallet that was still there.

‘Sure, the ones that take your watch and wallet’, cracked one of the jolly Jack Tars; the Hall of Memory exploded in loud Aussie laughter.

I’ve finally got dementia! Please God, let her forgive me for what I’ve done!

He dashed to the nearest pay telephone; the recording said her telephone was switched off…no bloody wonder.

He telephoned home: there was no answer. Fran and the poodles could well have been out for a walk, or Mish beat him to the draw to tell her mother that Daddy had finally gone off the deep end. Fran no doubt went for the police and the nice young men in the clean white coats with the butterfly net who’d take him away to the Funny Farm, where life is beautiful all the time...

* * *

Like Australia itself, the ANZAC Day veteran’s march now contained many nationalities in addition to the British Commonwealth. Phil used his limited Vietnamese with South Vietnamese vets and traded jokes with the Sikhs and French.

After the march there was again no answer at his home, but there was at the Sanford’s.

Tory hysterically screamed,

‘Phil, why the hell don’t you get yourself a telephone!!! Mish was in an automobile accident early this morning on the way to the Dawn Service!!!’

The poodles were whining in fear and sadness. Tory stopped her scolding when she felt Phil’s silence.

‘She’s all right, Phil. Fran’s on her way to Sydney with two airplane tickets, she’ll meet you at…’

‘”Early this morning???” How is she???”

‘She’s out of danger and she’s regained consciousness. The doctor says she’ll be all right, but she wants to see the both of you…Want to hear something funny? The doctor said she had a hallucination about seeing you and you telling her it wasn’t her time to go yet!...Phil?...Phil! Are you there, Phil?...PHIL!!!...’

FIN

Author Notes: Lest we forget...

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