So we didn't go to Afghanistan or

Vietnam or anywhere else there was a war on?

I can understand the furious European response to President Trump's suggestion they did not pull their weight in those wars because it is much the same as that of those in Downunder.  We did go to war and we lost service people in them. And yes, it does matter to us and to our European allies. It matters a lot.

My first real confrontation with war was in my teens. The Senior Cat was appointed to sort out the problems in an "area" school which was based in the middle of a "soldier settlement". These soldier settlements were a government project designed to give returned servicemen employment on the land. The problems associated with them were many. 

On the Sunday after school started for the year I happened to answer the house phone. There was a terrified voice at the other end. The words still haunt me. ".... my father is trying to kill my mother".  This child's father was chasing his wife across the paddock (field) with a hot poker. The father thought his wife was the enemy. He had, like so many of the men over there, been so traumatised by the war that he was having yet another episode of mental illness. The Senior Cat had been told about these incidents. He had been told what to do. The farmer was stopped before any physical harm was done and taken to the city for treatment but it was an experience I have never forgotten. Yes, frightening but not nearly as frightening for me as it must have been for that family. They considered themselves among the "lucky" ones - they came back alive.

ANZAC day came not too much later in the year. The school stopped for the day. Everyone went to the service. As Guides and Scouts we wore our uniforms - something city children did not do but there was a special dispensation for us. We were expected to participate. I saw grown men weeping for the first time in my life. It was another salutary experience for us. If they went and played "two up" while getting drunk in the local "club" it was understandable on that day.

In my last year at my last school one of the former students was killed in Vietnam. That one of our own was old enough to go to war and be killed did not seem real.  I did not know the boy as I was new to the school but the others had known him well, mostly as a footballer. It was a long time before the days returned to normal and his name was mentioned as a student rather than a soldier. I was careful not to talk about him at all for fear of being seen as "interfering". 

I went on later to university in  London. I met a young man who was by then working as a civil servant. We developed a relationship and were planning a trip back here for Christmas to tell my parents we hoped to marry. He was going to join me in Singapore after he had completed a task in Vietnam. It never happened because he was knifed on a street corner as he waited for a colleague to buy something. He was still seen as "the enemy" even though the war had finished some years before. My life has been very different because of what happened there but Mr Trump would no doubt simply shrug and say, "Too bad. There are plenty of other men out there." No, there aren't. I have never felt the same way about any other unrelated male. Almost two years ago his mother left me her wedding ring. It is in a bank deposit box in England. She felt I was her last contact with her son.  

A former neighbour served in Afghanistan. He won't talk about it but one day the Last Post was sounding on some program on the radio as we were talking outside a business and he grabbed me so hard that I was bruised. I said nothing because there was nothing I could say that would comfort rather than embarrass him. 

The US President has absolutely no idea about these things. The idea that the rest of the world has simply stood behind American service men and women is wrong. That is in no way intended to denigrate their role. It is in no way intended to suggest that the role they played was not important but to suggest that others held back and let them do all the work is wrong. Perhaps I should not criticise the President of another country, a country which is supposed to be a close ally, but I am conscious of the fact that he avoided the draft - college and something to do with his foot, a spur on the heel or something? I know Americans who went to war and then went to college...and some who never got to college because they went to war.

Someone posted a comment this morning that the late Queen Elizabeth II saw more active service than the whole Trump family combined. That is correct. You need to apologise Mr Trump.