11 Nov 2017
I finally got the brush cuter machinery back into one place - away from Rex and his naturally inquisitive nature, and only submersed in about two foot of water. His game of running off with anything that is mine has been something he has done from the beginning. Well its only puppy play after all. I can't complain.
Today - this weekend, is one of great significance across all military families. Rememberance Day. And for all countries involved in WW1. Australia has its own day of national mourning - ANZAC Day. The 25th April in 1915 when Australian and New Zealand troops landed on Gallipoli beach in Turkey. But today is 11 November - Armistice Day - an international day of reflection; and services are to be conducted across the country - the world. I find it a difficult concept to address, as the rememberance is ongoing all year round really - do you ever forget?
One day I'll go to France and the battlefield cemetery to see my Great Uncle. He died three days after arriving on the front, at Fromelles. Buried in Arras cemetery, row and number in history now committed to memory. I remember clearly the national museum download I accessed and reading the diary of his regiment, marking the entry for the artillery bombardment that saw the death of the three soldiers on that day, 23rd July 1916. One of them my family. So much loss, so many young men.
It was in February 2004 that we had a surge of internees arrive in the detention centre, Shaiba, Iraq. Multiple operations had netted a greater number than usual for interrogation, and the tempo had suddenly gone up. Hours abruptly changed from being chaotic in a average sense to completely so. I was being pulled from one interrogation straight onto the next. My head was prickling with pain from cognitive interpreting banging. There was no end in sight. We would work through the night said the OC, to process all the new arrivals. Somewhere in the dark I could here crying from a cell. Sometimes it would sob, then scream. Then nothing for what seemed hours. All the while the routine continued unabated.
IRCC (Red Cross) cards had to be completed first; in order to get some sense of connectivity for these poor souls. The main concern was getting detail right - how many ways can you spell Mohammed? Quite a few I soon found out. But we had to collectively structure the translations into a system that was, well, a system. And if the IRCC had any sort of database for lost individuals then the naming system at source had to be correct. It reminded me of lost families out there searching for loved ones, separated during gun battles or house searches. Names had to be systemised - no pressure then.
So we designed an transliteration alphabet for the other local translators working with us, brought in when tempo rose with influx of prisoners. This was meant to standardise the translation, but I still had to recheck each card, as vowels were non existent in Arabic, this meant each name being rewritten over and over. The local translators couldn't come into the interrogations - obvious security reasons forbade that, but there presence was still necessary and awkward during the initial debriefings. Many a time an angry young detainee would shout at the locals demanding to be listened to. And every time I was obliged to intervene. No asking questions - just answering mine. And the interrogations hadn't even begun yet.
With these events so far behind me now, I am surprised to see how much is remembered, how much comes back to me once I start writing. I can still see their faces too. The angry ones; the scared ones, the ones who looked blank and obviously hiding something, something that shamefully or not could endanger my colleagues. And so we did the job of interpreting to get the information, to become intelligence - which was ultimately to save a soldiers life. That I will always remember.
As the breeze blows across the farm from the south east, the temperature is starting to rise. Time to get moving and outside to work. To work that will help me forget.
I finally got the brush cuter machinery back into one place - away from Rex and his naturally inquisitive nature, and only submersed in about two foot of water. His game of running off with anything that is mine has been something he has done from the beginning. Well its only puppy play after all. I can't complain.
Today - this weekend, is one of great significance across all military families. Rememberance Day. And for all countries involved in WW1. Australia has its own day of national mourning - ANZAC Day. The 25th April in 1915 when Australian and New Zealand troops landed on Gallipoli beach in Turkey. But today is 11 November - Armistice Day - an international day of reflection; and services are to be conducted across the country - the world. I find it a difficult concept to address, as the rememberance is ongoing all year round really - do you ever forget?
One day I'll go to France and the battlefield cemetery to see my Great Uncle. He died three days after arriving on the front, at Fromelles. Buried in Arras cemetery, row and number in history now committed to memory. I remember clearly the national museum download I accessed and reading the diary of his regiment, marking the entry for the artillery bombardment that saw the death of the three soldiers on that day, 23rd July 1916. One of them my family. So much loss, so many young men.
It was in February 2004 that we had a surge of internees arrive in the detention centre, Shaiba, Iraq. Multiple operations had netted a greater number than usual for interrogation, and the tempo had suddenly gone up. Hours abruptly changed from being chaotic in a average sense to completely so. I was being pulled from one interrogation straight onto the next. My head was prickling with pain from cognitive interpreting banging. There was no end in sight. We would work through the night said the OC, to process all the new arrivals. Somewhere in the dark I could here crying from a cell. Sometimes it would sob, then scream. Then nothing for what seemed hours. All the while the routine continued unabated.
IRCC (Red Cross) cards had to be completed first; in order to get some sense of connectivity for these poor souls. The main concern was getting detail right - how many ways can you spell Mohammed? Quite a few I soon found out. But we had to collectively structure the translations into a system that was, well, a system. And if the IRCC had any sort of database for lost individuals then the naming system at source had to be correct. It reminded me of lost families out there searching for loved ones, separated during gun battles or house searches. Names had to be systemised - no pressure then.
So we designed an transliteration alphabet for the other local translators working with us, brought in when tempo rose with influx of prisoners. This was meant to standardise the translation, but I still had to recheck each card, as vowels were non existent in Arabic, this meant each name being rewritten over and over. The local translators couldn't come into the interrogations - obvious security reasons forbade that, but there presence was still necessary and awkward during the initial debriefings. Many a time an angry young detainee would shout at the locals demanding to be listened to. And every time I was obliged to intervene. No asking questions - just answering mine. And the interrogations hadn't even begun yet.
With these events so far behind me now, I am surprised to see how much is remembered, how much comes back to me once I start writing. I can still see their faces too. The angry ones; the scared ones, the ones who looked blank and obviously hiding something, something that shamefully or not could endanger my colleagues. And so we did the job of interpreting to get the information, to become intelligence - which was ultimately to save a soldiers life. That I will always remember.
As the breeze blows across the farm from the south east, the temperature is starting to rise. Time to get moving and outside to work. To work that will help me forget.
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