A DIGGER’S STORY

Thanks to those of you who have been coming to this website and getting order forms for boxes of Slouch Hat chocolates to raise money for the RSL.

It is exciting and meaningful.

And thanks to one generous business in Melbourne. STS – Safe T Surfaces in Thomastown spent more than $1000 buying a hundred boxes. They only wanted forty for themselves and the other sixty have already gone to RSL headquarters for use at Anzac Day functions tomorrow.
All in the spirit of Anzac Day.

There are heaps of stories around about the spirit of Anzac. About bravery. About determination. About mateship. Many are featured every Anzac Day.

In recent years I have done a lot of reading and research about Gallipoli. Went there to Anzac Cove for the Dawn Service last Anzac Day. And read a lot of books, like Les Carlyon’s brilliant and tragic tome, simply called Gallipoli.

But there is a story featured in the news today which I had never heard of that epitomises the lengths young Australians went to to enlist in World War I. To go to far off lands to fight for King and country.

It is the story of Harvey Blackburn. Like a lot of young men he lost his leg.

But he didn’t lose it in the war. He lost it before the war in the railway workshops in Launceston just as the war started.

Harvey had already enlisted and wasn’t going to miss out. He managed to defer his callop until he got used to having an artificial leg and then managed to con the Army doctor during his physical inspection.

He managed to get the doctor to examine his good right leg twice.

He served in France and Belgium in 1917 and 1918 and only his mates knew, and kept, his secret.

A classic example of one young Australian’s determination to fight for his country.

Lest we forget.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002