THE LAST STRAW

I don’t have to tell you that The Last Post is probably the most moving, most emotional, most revered and most recognised piece of music in this country. Without a word it conjures up images of bravery and sacrifice and mateship and grief. It is what we hear in reverence and in silence at cemeteries and cenotaphs and shrines on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. The haunting bugle notes cut through the dawn at services in cities and towns and hamlets across this country –and across the Tasman to New Zealand for the other half of the Anzac legend.
 
I played the drum roll for it in the high school military band on Anzac Day. Have heard it echo through the dawn at Gallipoli and heard it played last year at my father’s funeral.
 
So why play it today?  Because I want to join the outrage at the Queensland RSL’s well-meaning but outrageous fund-raising idea:  To sell The Last Post as a mobile phone ring tone. I kid you not.
 
They did it for Remembrance Day and also are planning to do it again on Anzac Day. They also sold $2 digital poppies to be downloaded as wallpaper but that’s a different issue. I can understand that.
 
 But I don’t want to hear The Last Post cheapened by hearing it blare out from somebody’s mobile phone on the tram, on the train, at the footy. In a restaurant. It’s insulting and demeaning. To me it is like defacing a monument.
 
As one Digger told me in an email overnight: ‘Please, I implore you to get off your bum and stop this sacrilege. The Last Post is an unsung prayer for our fallen comrades and friends. I find it impossible to tell the spirit of my friends, who stood next to me and died for this country that their song of remembrance is now a ring-tone on a mobile phone. The RSL has sold its soul for the almighty dollar’.
 
So far this has only happened in Queensland. And only on Remembrance Day. Let’s hope the National Executive of the RSL slaps a ban on it by Anzac Day.
 
Because this is wrong. Find some other way to raise money. Don’t exploit The Last Post.
 
Wednesday, January 13, 2010

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2010