#ausarmy

You know when you have a burning desire to ask a question - but fear, fear of rebuttal  fear of rejection, paralyses you every time you try and work up the courage to ask or even just contemplate it? 

When I was in my first year of high school, my english class were given an assignment on grandparents - a newspaper article with information compiled from an interview with them. My one surviving grandparent, I call him Pap, is a quiet, loving man whom, at the time, I quite frankly knew nothing about. A retired vet and a devoted husband to my mother's step-mother, widowed at an early and remarried not long after. And that was it - hell, I didn't even know what force he was in. I am eternally grateful for that assignment because I gained so much knowledge of Pap, which made me appreciate my surviving grand parent all the more. I found out the following: He was Sergeant-major Jim Edwards in his youth of the Royal Aus. Infantry Corps, deployed in Malay and Vietnam, and receiver of a British Empire Medal for military service in the Malay Emergency in 1966. 

Now, eight years later I have heard enough stories of service from Pap I could write a whole book. The setting of these stories, however, is always the Royal Military College, Duntroon, where he trained officers for 5 or so years. I have never heard him mention his deployment. It's hardly unusual for vets not to talk about the horrors they have experienced (<sounds like a cliche, doesn't it?), and our family have certainly never pushed it. But that burning question sits in the back of my mind - What was the British Empire Medal awarded for?

Why is it important to me? As you may know, hopefully I will one day join. Now, my grandfather is a hero no matter what. Any person who remains by the side of his wife who suffered from alzheimer's disease, essentially putting his life on hold, and spending every hour of the day improving her quality of life as her illness deteriorated for 15 years, is brave to me. And I love my Pap more than anything. So this question that I so desire an answer to is not for the sake of seeing my grandfather for more than he is, for he is a hero to me anyway. This is for the sake of legacy. One day, with the inspiration and drive that knowledge of this story may give me, I hope to serve my country and comrades as my grandfather did. In the words of General MacArthur, I hope that it will give me "rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn".