The Danger Zone (DZ)

The world we live in today has been inspired out of the teachings of the Christian faith. And so it was that as part of that tradition, in 1912, the Presbyterian Church commissioned the Reverend John Flynn to look into the needs of bush communities in remote outback Australia. The Australian Inland Mission (AIM) was set up in 1912 as a result of his recommendations. Then in 1928 a new and exciting step took place using modern aircraft. It was done as a one year trial to see if it was worthwhile. It was called the AIM Aerial Medical Air Service. This morphed into The Royal Flying Doctor Service. It looks like it was really a good idea.

It was a way of rapidly bringing medical aid to people in extreme need and of rapidly getting those people to the medical aid they needed.

You know what it’s like when you go to the markets. If you see something unique and really great on a stall one month, by the next month that same thing is available on a lot of stands. Aerial delivered medical services were clearly an unbeatably brilliant idea and as the crucial moment of World War 2 in Europe was coming, the invasion of continental Europe by the British, Americans and Canadians on D-Day, there was going to be an urgent need to get the wounded away from the landing areas on D-Day and the following days, back quickly to first rate medical help in England.

This is the story of the nurse volunteers who took to the air, at considerable personal risk to themselves, to bring this urgent medical evacuation help to severely wounded soldiers who bringing liberation to Europe from Nazi tyranny. The “Flying Nightingales” they’re called. One of only two of them perhaps still alive, lives in Malanda, the other in Western Australia. This is their story.

Tag words: Christian; Presbyterian Church; Reverend John Flynn; Australian Inland Mission; AIM; Royal Flying Doctor Service; D-Day; Flying Nightingales; Nazis; Edith Lord; C-47 Dakotas; Red Cross; Women’s Auxiliary Air Force; Nurse Iris Bower; Mollie Giles; Corporal Lydia Alford; Rosa Powell; Leading Aircraft Woman Edna Birkbeck; Leading Aircraft Woman Margaret Walsh; KG406; Leading Aircraft Woman Nora Helen Speed; British Empire Medal; Margaret Wilson; Edith Lord; Camilla Parker Bowles; Flight Lieutenant Michelle Goodman; Distinguished Flying Cross; Wing Commander Charlotte Thompson-Edgar; Associate of the Royal Red Cross Award;

On 14-15 April 1912, the mighty, unsinkable, Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. It took just 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to sink. 1,500 lives were lost. But the size of that maritime disaster was dwarfed on 30 January 1945, when the Germans were carrying out the largest seaborne evacuation in history – 2 million people fleeing the onrushing Russian forces.

One of the ships taking part in this evacuation was the luxury cruise liner, the Wilhelm Gustloff. Built to carry 1900 people, on this night it was carrying 10,582 people, 5,000 of them children. Most of the passengers were refugees. 9,343 of them perished in the icy waters of the Baltic when the Wilhelm Gustloff sank in 90 minutes after being torpedoed at night by a Russian submarine. This is the tragic story of the greatest maritime disaster ever …

Tag words: Titanic; Wilhelm Gustloff; Adolf Hitler; Strength Through Joy; Joseph Stalin; The Patriotic War; Napoleon; The Great Patriotic War; Communist Party; untermenschen; Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee; Tsarist Russia; Ilya Ehrenburg; Pravda; Isvestia; The Red Star; Nemmersdorf; Goldap; rape; Operation Hannibal; Ruta Septys; Heinz Schen; Women’s Naval Auxiliary; Captain Paul Vollrath; S-13; Alexander Marinesko; Nazi; General von Steuben; hospital ship; Combat Order of the Red Banner;

On 14-15 April 1912, the mighty, unsinkable, Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. It took just 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to sink. 1,500 lives were lost. The people who died with the sinking of the Titanic died alone – in the middle of a vast ocean.

Tag words: Titanic; Halifax; Nova Scotia; Mt Blanc; Mont Blanc; World War I; Royal Navy; Battle of Jutland; Taliban; GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb; The Mother of All Bombs; SS Imo; Benzol; Vincent Coleman; J Robert Oppenheimer; father of the atomic bomb; Hiroshima; HMCS Acadia; Frank Baker; Governor Samuel W. McCall; Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee; Thomas Raddall;

There have been three naval military disasters where the loss of life was greater than the 1,500 lives lost in the sinking of the Titanic. The stories are incredible. Over the next three programmes I’ll talk about them, beginning with the riverboat sinking on the Mississippi River in 1865 just as the American Civil War drew to a close – the worst maritime disaster in American history.

Tag words: Titanic; American Civil War; Andersonville; Yankee prisoners; Dr John M Howell; Griggs Holbrook; Secretary of War; Edwin M Stanton; General William Tecumseh Sherman; Confederate; Charleston Harbour; Captain Henry Wirz; Jefferon Davis; Old Capitol Prison; Cahaba; Alabama River; Vicksburg; Mississippi River; Camp Fisk; Sultana; Memphis; 23rd Arkansas Cavalry; Franklin Hardin Barton; shipwreck; President Lincoln; John Wilkes Booth;

Between 1929 and the early 1930s, the Communist government in the Soviet Union had conducted a policy of genocide against the peasant farmers of the Ukraine, called the kulaks.

One of the benefits that was promised to come from getting rid of those vermin, those blood-suckers, would be the establishment of collective farms. Food production would be increased. Everyone would be happy. From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.

What could possibly go wrong with forcing people onto collective farms. Many of the people that were forced onto the collective farms, weren’t farmers. The kulaks had been professional farmers – but they were all gone. And good riddance to them eh comrades!

Now we could get a view from our collective farm – happy days were coming, the socialist paradise was almost here.

Tag words: Soviet Union; Ukraine; blood-suckers; Communists; Joseph Stalin; Czars; Tsars; Nazis; NKVD; starvation; malnutrition; peasants; Vasily Grossman; Life and Fate; Forever Flowing; Anna Sergeyevna; Great Reset; World Economic Forum; Communist Party;

Today many people tell us that we should forget about history, we don’t need it. But then those same people tell us about all of the sins of our past that we must be deeply ashamed of today. If they say history doesn’t matter, then why are they telling us that we should be ashamed of our history. Slavery. Colonialism.

There’s far more interesting history to talk about than those old issues. That history really interesting history doesn’t go back hundreds of years. Times from which there isn’t one living person. This interesting history is about recent times and about people today who will do the same things again if they think it necessary. No European nation, the United States, Australia, New Zealand are going to be bringing back slavery and colonialism. Let’s get closer to current times, with people still alive today who suffered from monstrous wrongs, or whose children are still alive and remember when damage was done to their parents. This history has important lessons for us today. It teaches us a lot about what and why those people telling us to forget about history especially mean forget about the history of their beliefs – and the actions of people from those times that are being repeated today in a different form, and who may still yet decide that it is necessary to do it all over again.

This programme is about one of the greatest horrors that happened less than 80 to 90 years ago. There’s scarcely anything that can rival it. It’s history that you may not have heard about before, but you must.

Perhaps after you’ve listened to this story you might think that you would like to know more about history – that you absolutely must know more about history. Especially when the ideology that murdered over 8 million people is rising again.

Stick around for the next twenty minutes, if you’re willing and learn something that you need to know.

Tag words: Slavery; Colonialism; Soviet Union; Karl Marx; proletariat; Tsar; Mao Zedong; power comes from the barrel of a gun; happiness is a warm gun; Revolution; Collectivization; kulak farmers; All property is theft; Hugh Jackman; Les Miserables; Great Reset; Communists; Heinrich Himmler; SS; Walter Duranty; Mendal M. Khataevich; Soviet agriculture; NKVD; KGB; GPU; Joseph Stalin; Vasily Grossman; Forever Flowing; Anna Sergeyevna; Ivan Grigoryevich; Great Patriotic War; Nazis; Alexander Solzhenitsyn; The Gulag Archipelago; Ukraine;

At the end of the magnificent funeral service for Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, a lone piper stood playing a piece. The piece is known by the name “The Flowers of the Forest”.

In Eric Bogle’s moving song, No Man’s Land, he asks the unresponsive Private William McBride, whose gravesite he’s standing next to, “Did they play the Flower o’ the Forest” at his funeral.

The Flowers of the Forestwas composed as a lament for the army of King James IV, remembering an much earlier war, a much earlier battle when the flower of Scottish manhood were slain with their king on the battlefield of Flodden in September 1513.

In 1513, the Scots had invaded England to support their long and close allies, the French. It was on 9 September 1513 that the Scots army, under King James IV, faced off against the English forces of King Henry VIII, under the command of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. The battle was ferocious and bloody - men were felled by artillery, arrows, pikes, bills and swords. Around 14,000 men died, including James IV, who had the dubious and, I’m sure unwanted honour of being the last British king to die in battle.

The composition of this song began with a fragment of a very old ballad. Mrs Patrick Cockburn of Ormiston drew on this fragment to write a full song. Then in the mid 18th century Miss Jane Elliot, daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Lord Chief Justice Clerk of Scotland, drew on Mrs Cockburn's work to make her lyric a much finer piece than what Mrs Cockburn had originally written.

This pipe tune is well known to anyone who has attended a Remembrance Day service in Scotland, but the song is all too seldom heard nowadays.

The tune is held in such reverence that very often the piper will practice it in absolute privacy, so no one else can hear it. Then play it only in public at funeral service, such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s, or at memorial services.

Now what horrors were the Australians going to have to face, after the bloodbath of the Nek to bring the Gallipoli campaign to an end. Everyone expected a bloodbath if they tried to evacuate. Join me now to learn that final story.

Tag words: Charles Bean; Gallipoli; Prince Philip; Duke of Edinburgh; The Flowers of the Forest; Battle of Flodden; King James IV; King Henry VIII; Thomas Howard; Earl of Surrey; James IV; Patrick Cockburn; Miss Jane Elliot; Sir Gilbert Elliot; Remembrance Day; Australian War Memorial; Ashmead-Bartlett; Andrew Fisher; at Suvla; Winston Churchill; Brigadier-General Charles White; Battle of the Somme; Gaba Tepe; Victor Trumper; Turks; Shell Green; Major George Macarthur Onslow; Brigadier-General Granville Ryrie; Charles Bingham; the Nek; Colonel John Paton; Australian Light Horse; General Monash; 

In my last programme I told the story of the ANZACs heading to Egypt and then the first day’s landings on Gallipoli. At the end of that programme I told you that by night time the commanders on the ground had some surprising feelings about how the landings had gone. I said that I’d talk about that in the next programme. So here I am. Let me tell you about what our generals thought about the Gallipoli campaign.

Charles Bean, the first embedded journalist, who landed at Gallipoli with the ANZACs on that first day, whose inspiration and leadership led to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, and who wrote the official history of Australia’s experience in World War I wrote about the feelings at the end of that first ANZAC Day:

“... clearly something was in the wind. In a minute or two I heard what it was — some question as to whether we were to hold on or to embark at once ... “

The Allied generals were reporting back to the highest command that their brigades were saying that they hadn’t established secured positions. They wanted the troops withdrawn immediately – that night. Things were really grim on that first night. In reality the position of the Australians and our allies never got any better until their withdrawal in December.

But it would have been a huge call to end this massive undertaking in less than 24 hours. The reputations of some of the top people in England would have faced ruin. But that’s not a good reason to make that sort of decision and there was in fact a good reason why no evacuation took place that night – or could possibly have taken place that night. Evacuation, with the resources that they had was impossible. So the opportunity to bring this doomed operation to an end quickly was either missed or more probably wasn’t even an option. Many lives were going to be lost over the next months without anything to show for it, except that Australia, as a strong, proud and independent nation was emerging.

Tag words: ANZAC; Gallipoli; Charles Bean; Australian War Memorial; Victoria Crosses; George Moor; Hampshire Regiment; General Henry de Lisle; Major Cass; Colonel James McCay; ANZAC Cove; Lone Pine; the Pimple; the Nek; Russell’s Top; Baby 700; Australian 3rd Light Horse Brigade; Lieutenant-Colonel Noel Brazier; 10th Light Horse; 

In 1995 the TV Series “Mr Bean” went to air for the first time. It was a strange programme. Mr Bean was mostly silent – with only a handful of words being spoken by him throughout the whole three series. The audience reaction to him varies a lot. I think the cleverness of the wordless comic actions is brilliant and I love the show. My wife finds Mr Bean to be an incredibly nasty human being, which he is. She also can’t contain her discomfort at the situations that he gets himself into.

There’s a saying "Nothing can be made foolproof because fools are so ingenious". And that is what the Mr Bean series is all about.

But ANZAC Day’s approaching and this programme all about ANZAC Day. So why am I talking about Mr Bean, his silent comedy and foolishness? Well because it echoes my story about ANZAC Day, how the experience of the fighting at Gallipoli changed how Australians had seen themselves from Englishmen abroad to start with, to Australians completely at home with themselves as the War dragged on, and the remarkable qualities of those Australian soldiers compared to the English soldiers that they were fighting alongside with.

And no, I haven’t gone completely mad. There is a Mr Bean in my story. Mr Charles Bean. He was the first embedded war correspondent in modern terms. He was also the man who was destined to write the official history of Australia’s experience in World War I – and written by a man who had seen it up close and lethal.

So the whole silent movie thing of Mr Bean harkens back to the time of the Great War and just afterwards, with comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. And some of the things that happened – well they could have been funny if thousands of men didn’t pay with their lives, or in the case of those lucky enough, or maybe not, to have survived, who carried the scars of what they went through until the very day that they died. Mostly with their families, sometimes never leaving the hospitals that they were sent to after being gassed or losing their minds. Their families typically knowing nothing of what they had been through and perhaps grateful for it.

Tag words: Mr Bean; ANZAC Day; Gallipoli; Charles Bean; Charlie Chaplin; Buster Keaton; British Empire; Peter Weir; Mel Gibson; Mark Lee; Frank Dunn; Archie Hamilton; 10th Light Horse; Edwin Bean; Lucy Bean; Oxford University; Hertford College; Justice William Owen; Sydney Morning Herald; journalist; Official History of World War I; HMS Powerful; First World War; Lieutenant-Colonel Ernst Swinton; Eye Witness; Admiral Horatio Nelson; Battle of Trafalgar; HMAT Orvieto; Australian Imperial Forces; HMAS Melbourne; Emden; HMAS Sydney; Royal Australian Navy; Kapitan Karl von Muller; Dardanelles; Turks;

The remarkable thing about chess is that you can’t lose. I mean you’re looking down on the board. You can see every piece that your opponents has and where they are. You can see every piece that you have and where they are. Does it get any better than that! You can’t lose. But is that the right way to look at it? Because that’s how some of the top military people in the US thought it worked when the second Gulf War was looming. They were totally wrong. I’ll tell you exactly how disastrously this panned out for them. What they thought would happen and what really happened.

Tag words: Gulf War; Operation Desert Storm; Saddam Hussein; Kuwait; Communist China; Joint Forces Command; JAFCOM; Millennium Challenge; Common Relevant Operational Picture; CROP; Napoleon; Kevin McAlister; Home Alone; Paul Van Riper; President Harry Truman; Korean War; Mike Company; 1st Marine Division; Marine Corp; Gary Klein; Sources of Power; D-Day landings; German High Command; Malcolm Gladwell; Blink;