Here I go again

Australian War Cemetery – Villers-Bretonneux France

I regret to advise that the Badger is leaving you again. This time on yet another tour of Battlefields and Cemeteries.

This will be Badger’s third visit to Normandy, the Somme and Verdun but he never tires of it.

He is endlessly fascinated by the Somme and Verdun - where there was such a spectacular waste of human life that is impossible to really comprehend the magnitude of it - or indeed the bone-headedness of the nitwits in charge – and on both sides.

Nothing much has changed. Nitwits are still trying to win an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. The less said about Iraq the better.

And wherever there is a futile war with Britain and America involved you can just bet that there are Australian politicians just itching to feed young Australian men into the mincer.

I was ready to be minced in Vietnam when we could not wait to join the Americans in the colossal Goat Fuck that was the Vietnam War. What a good idea that was.

I was in the ‘Birthday Ballot’ but my number did not come up. Had I done so I could have joined some of the nearly 200 Australian conscripts who died for absolutely nothing.

I think about this every time I see the graves and memorials of the many thousands of 18 to 20 year old Australians who died in the Somme in France.