Lest we forget: a life in the shadows.(rememberance of war veterans)

• Author: Ward, C.J.
• Position: 134672594
• Pages: 31(7)

We are now in the fifth year of the new millennium. In the new century we still remember the dead of the two World Wars and other arenas of conflict. Anzac Day and Remembrance Day come and go with regularity and we are still commemorating the anniversaries of significant events of war--Korea being the latest. We remember with sadness those who died and celebrate with pride those who march past. We have stood in all weathers and watched as they pass--soldiers, sailors, airmen, the women's services, nurses and children of the deceased, proudly bearing the medals of their loved ones.

The marchers include those who have not been under fire but logistic and support personnel who are behind those in the field, and rightly so. The ranks are not as straight as in their heyday and, as the years advance, numbers are thinned by age, incapacity and death. However, heads are held high with pride and the returned do their best to keep in step with the many bands.

Those most traditionally honoured are those from the Boer War and the two World Wars--the war to end all wars and the fight against the malevolence of Nazism--honourable wars. Thanks to politicians of various stripes, the place in history of those who served in forgotten or unpopular wars is now assured, from Korea, the Malayan emergency, confrontation with Indonesia and finally, at long last, Vietnam. In a real way, both dead and living have all come home from the Boer War, the Gulf and East Timor deployments. The misty-eyed reaction of crowds who attend remembrance services, stand to applaud or watch marches in cities and towns across the nation, show that we are as one in respect for the fallen and the returned. And around the country in small towns wreaths appear on memorials and churches bear the names of the dead.

However, we must ask ourselves about men and women who have served their country with equal dedication but are not mentioned and do not appear among the ranks of the marchers, unless they have a military background. I refer to those for whom there are no memorials, marches or public recognition--those who served during the period of the Cold War in Australia's security and intelligence services. And now, in 2005, we are hearing, from both the United States and former Soviet sides, the Cold War described as World War III and the horrific prediction that the War on Terror will be World War IV. True, World War III was more of a war of ideas and ideology and thus, for the main combatants, a "cold war" fought with guile, mind-games and, for the most part, little direct violence.

The policies of Kremlin leaders from Khrushchev and then Brezhnev rested on the doctrine of "peaceful coexistence". In essence, this meant there would be no direct military confrontation between the Western and Eastern blocs, thanks to the real threat of Mutually-Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) based on the sheer weight of nuclear weaponry held by both sides ... This rested on the sure knowledge that, in the event of a nuclear exchange, mutual annihilation could occur--a lesson learnt in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961. Not that the policy was infallible. There were high DefCon (Defence Condition) alerts on both sides at the times of the Soviet incursion into Czechoslovakia in 1968 and unrest in Poland in 1980-82. A spate of Soviet defectors in the late 1970s--and, more importantly, intelligence officers being run in place by the West--revealed an apparent irrational belief by Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1983-84 that President Reagan would launch a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. This belief appeared to cause...