ANZAC Day in Tamworth every year sees the time-honoured lowering of the Australian flag to half-mast and then its raising back to its correct position – fluttering high and proud.
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The symbolic act precedes the annual march to the town hall.
Yesterday the lowering and raising ceremony was to be held in front of the flagpole in Railway Square. The lowering precedes the sounding of The Last Post and the raising follows for Reveille.
For those paying their annual Anzac Day respects in Tamworth 2002 however, there was no lowering or raising of the cloth which symbolises the sovereignity of Australia - because someone had cut the flagpole rope down on Wednesday night.
A villainous and loutish act, certainly, but it did not, could not, daunt the spirit of those who gathered to remember the servicemen and women who in many lands and in several wars last century fought for the freedom of their country.
Maurice McIntosh, a rifleman and lance corporal in the A Company, 3rd Battalion, which served in Vietnam, was one of the hundreds who marched from opposite the railway station in Marius St to the town hall via Bourke and Peel streets.
Now 62 and retired, Maurice served in the Citizens' Military Forces for three years and then in the regular army for the next 23 years. A "Viet Vet" in 1968, Maurice saw plenty of hostile action and was involved in the famous Tet offensive, among others.
He lost two of his best mates in "Nam" and remembers one of them – Thommo - warning him that Viet Cong fire was on its way. Within seconds of his warning, Thommo himself was shot dead.
Maurice was also on the spot when his other great mate, a South Australian, went down ... and yes, 33 years later, their friendship is still greatly missed.
Corporal Darlene Macri, a reserve in the 12th/16th Hunter River Lancers, was there as part of the official guard with other Lancers before the march got under way.
Last year she was on duty at both the Curlewis and Gunnedah services and she and her regular army sergeant husband Angelo have two children.
She concedes the odds are heavily in favour of one of them one day serving their country in uniform.
National Party MP John Cull was one of the hundreds who flocked to the town hall for the RSL sub-branch's annual Commemoration of Anzac Day Service. He wore war service ribbons but on his right shoulder, not his left, and explained they were his late father's who, in World War II, was a prisoner of the Italians several times.
"Several times" because he escaped several times. Mr Cull explained that Len, his dad, always took part in Anzac Day ceremonies but never wore his ribbons.
Trevor Schwalbach, a WWII digger now aged 75 who fought in Bougainville, thought the temperature sufficiently hot outside the town hall to justify "a couple of stubbies". Sadly, there weren't any within kicking distance.
He joined the army aged 19, came to Tamworth 10 years ago and was looking forward to the RSL Club luncheon which follows the commemoration service.
Nearly all the onlookers – and there were thousands lined along Peel St – clapped the marchers and those driven to the town hall, to the accompaniment of pipe band songs like "It's A Long Way From Tipperary".
A great and memorable occasion, with many of the marchers being from such organisations as the fire brigades and the SES. There were also hundreds of young people, many of whom were on school
holidays.
The original Anzacs would have been proud.
