"Many of us in our confinement would have seen the fundraising efforts of a 100 year now Sir Tom Moore WWII veteran, who despite being stuck in one place found a way to lead by example.
I was privileged as a young man to have some of my first jobs being a Social Worker in a Repat Hospital in Perth and then later Melbourne. And after seeing Sir Tom Moore, I guess I began to think about some of some of the Vets I had worked with.
In one ward almost all the patients at the time were WWI Vets, a number of whom were in that famous charge at Beersheba, but I particularly recall one veteran who had become blind as a result of poisonous gas on the Western Front. At that stage over 60 years before.
Nearly a couple of decades later in a different place I assisted a senior medical specialist with one of his private patients who had a type of cancer which is typically a result of exposure to radiation. From memory the veteran had been a POW in a nearby camp when Nagasaki was bombed.
I can’t recall a word of complaint from either man. But to me I guess it’s a reminder that none of their continuing witness and service and suffering finished when the conflict finished. And that Australians have indeed been touched by weapons of mass destruction and the misuse of science.
I am grateful for those veterans and grateful that one of Rotary’s goals is to encourage peacemaking around the world and in our local community."
Thank you Phil.
