The other day I was telling my french teacher about the trip, and she asked "But why did he die there?". "Errmmm, because he was a soldier" I said, and she also was SHOCKED to hear that Australia had been involved. Apparently she must have thought he was on holidays or something. I was surprised that she didn't know (and then I gave her a big tedious lecture on Australia's continuing links with England and the fact that so many Australians signed up to be soldiers because of the desire to travel and have an adventure, which I imagine was fairly different from the motivation of french soldiers. Which I quite enjoyed).
It always comes as a surprise to find that the rest of the world thinks of us so little (except to say how much they want to go to Aus on holidays and how they think it must be some sort of paradise and "Why are you living in Switzerland when you could be living in Australia? What's wrong with you??"). Are we really so irrelevant?
(the military part of the cemetary in Rouen. Some of it, anyway)
5 comments:
That shocks me deeply. I'm also outraged.
I find your lack of exclamation marks/capital letters etc strangely ambiguous, memeweaver, but I'm going to take your sensible punctuation as a tone of TOTAL OUTRAGE, because that's what I think is warranted.
And do you know what the next thing they ask is, when they hear that we were in the war? "What side were you on?". For crying out loud.
Are you sure your grandmother didn't previously know this, but now "forgets" she knew it. In the nicest possible way of course. Kristie
No,no, it wasn't my grandmother! It was reto's mum (who is, coincidentally a grandmother), and my french teacher (who has also recently become a grandmother). They just didn't know.
Oops, didn't read it properly. It's my mind that's going!! Kristie
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