Wooooooo! I’m back! Because it’s my favourite almost-holiday of the year and I have a bone to pick.
It’s customary at around this time of year for people to roll out their flags, and their smaller flags, and somebody’s medals if they haven’t already been pawned on account of our horrible veteran welfare programs.
It’s also customary to wave about grand platitudes about the nobility of dead and speak on behalf of me and walk all over my ghost wants and ghost needs.
I want to dispel (or disGHOST) some rumours.
Firstly, the ghost stories aren’t true. You can’t leave the ghost sphere after you slay your true love and have ghost sex. I mostly spend my time haunting all the tubs of your favourite flavour of ice cream.
More importantly, and, I’ll be honest, I don’t care about 21st century rights and freedoms. I reckoned a woman’s place was in chains and probably thought blackface was a great way to pass a Sunday.
The fact is, I was a young man who – persuaded by a beautifully confected and deceptive narrative entangled in lofty concepts like grandeur – signed up to go and kill people I couldn’t possibly know, for political reasons that I couldn’t possibly understand. I jumped on a gunboat, jumped off a gunboat, and was summarily shot by a Turk who held the field advantage because someone fucked right on up and we didn’t even get to the right beach. I understand that these details are unimportant when you’re still willing shake hands with the man mobilising armies against you.
I’ve been dead for a hundred years and you can feel the bullet that gets you forever.
I’d be tremendously obliged if you could stop saying I went to war so you could loiter at servos and get drunk and gamble and misunderstand freedom of speech.
Yours,
ANZAC Ghost
