ANZAC Day 2019

Hello everyone.

In the next few hours, it'll be ANZAC Day here in Australia. We have these every year.

A picture taken while waiting for the ceremony to begin in 2015.

We usually go into the city, but its gotten too big and crowded in the last few years, so last year we went to the service not too far from us at Bunjil Place.

Australia's use this as a time for reflection on a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand military. I use this to remember those ancestors which have fought - like Memorial Day in the USA. However, this day here is much more solemn here than what Memorial Day is the US.

Credit

On this day, I'd like to remember some of the people who fought both in the military and as civilian. You see, many people think of the soldiers, but what they don't understand is many civilians who were at home and living their lives, ended up in the middle because of the location of where they lived. 

This is people in Belgium and Poland or as many people call it the Eastern Front and the Western Front.

We had family who had farms along the purple line above from Ypres to near Verdun. My father's paternal side lived east of Luxembourg. Credit

Eastern Front in WW1. My grandmother was north of Brest Litowsk Credit

Ask yourself when you remember these types of days, do you remember the normal people who got caught in it because they just happened to live there?

View of the northern French town of Lille, photo 1914/15  

Copyright 

Josef Neubauer

WWI. Russian Poles in war zone living in ruins. The Eastern Front was more fluid than the Western Front. Armies movements over great stretches of land caused extreme civilian hardship. Ca. 1915-1917 Credit

James 'Jimmy' Sherman

Jimmy is my mother's cousin. Her Aunt Florence, her father's sister, married and had Jimmy. He was her only child, but had a few step children from her husband's first marriage. 

He's the only person within the family, that I know of, that's never returned from service. 

He was first listed as MIA and then later KIA in Italy on a training mission. 

Jimmy's wings which he gave my mother only weeks before his death. 

The official report of what happened to his aircraft. Obtained from W. Williamson. 

I always think of him this time of year still on patrol over Italy. 

Tablet in the American War Memorial in Italy from Find a Grave. Thank you to the volunteer who took this picture.

The memorial in Newburgh, NY with James J. Sherman's name on it. Credit: J. Fitzgerald

A memorial of those killed in WW1 and WW2. A close up of his name is above with the finger. Credit J. Fitzgerald