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| 75th ANNIVERSARY of the BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC and UNCLE ANTONY NAMNIK Posted: 14 Aug 2020 10:25 PM PDT
REMEMBERING [With an anecdote, as is my want on such occasions] UNCLE ANTONY NAMNIK. Andrej and Marie had given their five children names beginning with "A" for reasons not passed on: Albert, Andrew, Amelia, Antony, and my father Adolph [aka, Nick]. While they had arrived in Australia in 1912, Andrew had remained in Czechoslavakia for medical treatment and Amelia had died very young. A year after their arrival, Marie had been killed in a terrorist explosion during her visit to Java to perform her music, which left Andrej a widower with three boys aged 13, 10 and 6. Though determined to bring up his boys, Andrej needed to work long days. Due to a neighbor's complaint that the boys were paternally deprived, the "welfare" took the boys away. They were fostered to various families in Daylesford, Victoria. The Great War broke out very soon afterward and being without dependents, Andrej enlisted. Being 58years of age, though accepted initially, he was refused on health reasons. Some say that his application was more than patriotism for his new country, but also afforded him a chance to get to Europe, perhaps to re-unite with Andrew, perhaps to wreak some vengeance on the Germans who had occupied his homeland of Latvia many years before. The fate of Andrew is not known, but it was rumoured that he survived to adulthood and moved to America. Albert did not enlist for WWII, but Antony and Nick did. Nick was deployed as batman to an officer in Northern PNG and such islands as Bougainville and Treasury Island from where he could almost have seen Lt. John F Kennedy's patrol boat cut in half by a Japanese destroyer and the survivors swim to a nearby island. My two closet uncles on mum's side, Tom and Les Riley, had long gone to North Africa to fight the Jerry, the Turk, the Italians and the Vichy French Foreign Legion whom they helped drive out of Syria. Antony found himself cooking in Port Moresby, the capital. Months into his service he took shrapnel from Japanese bombing and returned to Australia for treatment. Shortly after his release to walk unhindered, he slipped on the sidewalk and broke his kneecap. Following his recovery, he returned to Moresby for action. The enemy's only land invasion of PNG had been repelled in the legendary stand at the Kokoda Track, while the invasion by sea had been repelled in the more well publicized Pacific Battle, the very first sea battle to be fought where the combatants were not within each others' sight - apart from the air attacks. Yet, in spite of such victories, the air attacks on Milne Bay remained ferocious and Antony took another hit when his base was strafed. He was returned to Melbourne for good and, like every other combatant, felt both the physical and mental injuries of war, and it had been a long one. He began to fall into self-medicating with both alcohol and at the opium dens to the point of going beyond recovery to health and normality. Though but a tyke, I clearly remember that when I spotted from inside dad's car, the Skipping Girl Vinegar sign, that we were on the way to visit uncle Antony. Dad visited him often as Albert never bothered and Antony had few friends and no loving helpmate. The last I saw of him was a visit when dad took only me up to his unit where I glimpsed my uncle, well spaced out in bed next to an unknown female. His addiction to opium and alcohol took him soon after. I will not resort to sarcasm in belaboring the issues of "white privilege" or "stolen generations" but will simply end by saying that I remember Antony and many others in my prayers. I thank him and his generation for doing it so tough that my generation could have it so easy. ====== =========================== ====== Today marks 75 years since the end of the Second World War.    |
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