Next week it is Anzac Day (26 April) here in Oz and in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. For us always a difficult day. Being blow-ins we are not really connected to the spirit of mateship and cameraderie that was forged on the battlefield between the Kiwis and the Aussies during WW I in trenches in France and Turkey. We go to the parades, but the significance of the day is largely lost on us. However, if it was not for the Anzacs, we would not be able to live in a free and democratic Oz and/ or NZ today. It is as simple as that in our books and we respect that.
Here, since last year, Anzac day also marks another occasion. Two gold miners got trapped in a rock fall in Beaconsfield, Tasmania on Anzac Day. A third miner was killed. Against all hope the two were found alive 3 days after the rockfall that dumped 1000 tonnes of rock on top of the little cage that they were working in. We figured they would be out quickly - but the increasingly complex and dangerous rescue effort dragged on until the 9th of May. The two men did not really know each other beforehand and were at best just polite workmates. Then trapped together for 14 days. I remember switching on the radio and tv every morning with the question: Are they out yet? Yes, I did think of them, not what they were talking about or even their injuries, but the dark and the cold and how terribly lonely it must be 1km underground with all that rock on top of you. And that you could not go anywhere, not even in your head. They did say afterwards that they thought about family, children and how they would never put a foot underground after their ordeal. Then, on 9 May, they walked out of the shaft lift, punching in the air, clocked out (yes! put their little cards back on the rack) and hugged family and friends.
It was in 1999, I think, that the Russian submarine Kursk sank to the bottom of the ocean in the Black Sea. 19 men on board if I am not mistaken. Putin, still KGB to the core, could not or would not ask for help. By the time the British Naval rescue mission got there it was too late. They ran out of oxygen and food. It really wrenched at my heart, that incident. What were those young men thinking? What went through their heads in the cold and the dark? In the Red Army, where soldiers do not even get paid every month, this made even less sense. Why would anybody want to join? We have not been in New Zealand for very long when that happened and the days were short and the nights very dark and long. I could not even begin to imagine how terribly, terribly scared they must have been. Of course the inquest found nothing wrong on the part of the Russian Army. One would expect nothing less with Putin in charge. Once KGB, always KGB.
In this age of technology and information overload, why do communist countries still think that information will miraculously stop at their borders? The same happened with China and SARS, the same with the Beslan tragedy and the Moscow theatre siege.
The blame is always bigger and elsewhere. And sometimes we celebrate the humanly impossible rescue and other times we mourn the unspeakable loss of freedom.
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