It was about 1980 when you started to notice that the number of servicemen marching in the Sydney Anzac Day Parade was beginning to peter out. Those old men who turned out every year for the day – who had fought in The Great War, The War To End All Wars, World War I – slowly graduated from walking slowly in small and dwindling groups to just a few here and there riding in the backs of the taxis. I recall in the late seventies two Boer War veterans riding in an open car then those three elderly brothers who had been together in the legendary Light Horse – they continued to parade each year on horseback in full uniform with their feathered hats until one by one they were gone. I think it was in 1981 that the last surviving brother led the parade on his horse and then that was it…

Then into the eighties, and then nineties…now there are no WWI vets left at all to march in April. The hands of time are moving on and now it is the WW2 vets who are dwindling in their ranks – in the Sydney parade in 2009 there were just 1000 WW2 veterans who marched. I remember when their ranks stretched the full length of the streets of Sydney. I also recall when the first of the grandchildren started marching along with their grand-dads back in 1990′s as a special treat for them and how everyone thought it was so cute to see. It is not so cute now because it has gone too far;  last year those 1000 war vets were obscured by close to 7000 family members who all thought it their privilege to take part in the march. The trend to replace Dad, grand-dad or great-granddad in the march quickly caught on but now it has got to the stage where the descendants have taken over the march. Time for this to stop because it is wrong. I don’t want to see great-grandchildren marching along in jeans and t-shirts, waving at the crowds and the tv cameras as if they have earned the right to do so – because they have not.

This parade is for those who fought; it is for those who fought and survived to march and remember those who fought and died. It is not an opportunity for the descendants, however well meaning, to wander down the streets of Sydney waving at crowds who expect to see war veterans. Now it is hard to tell who are the war heroes and who are merely casual participants, this should never have been allowed to happen to the Anzac Day Parade. I lived in France where they revere their war vets more than any other nation, and now that no more WWI vets exist their Remembrance Days are celebrated with a service at a Cenotaph rather than a parade full of people who never wore a uniform but want to march anyway. That is the way to do it – we all must have known that one day the Anzac Day Parades in Sydney, and around Australia, would one day be very thin on the ground for ex-servicemen and we should accept that and deal with it.  Once these men are gone we cannot replace them, their grandchildren do not replace them, nobody who has not fought a war can ever replace them. The parade is for them, no-one else.

It will be hard to deal with the fact that one day no ex-servicemen from before the Vietnam War will march on April 25 but it is a fact of life – until then they, and only they, must be allowed the privilege of marching down the streets of Sydney. The applause, the respect, the crowds are there for them and them only. Their descendants can watch and wave and be proud…from the sidelines. As the line in Eric Bogle’s ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda‘ goes “Soon no-one will march there at all…”

And that’s how it should be – once they are gone that’s it, end of. It will be the end of an era for Australia but that’s what happens to great era’s – they all have to end sometime. And I want to see it be taken out by the men and women who lived through it…nobody else.