mendiggingOne thing that has always irked me has been the use of the term “digger” as a blanket reference to anyone in the Australian Army, I just can’t help but cringe when someone mentions our diggers in Afghanistan or Iraq.

When I think digger, I think old guy from world war one or two with the oldschool uniforms on and a sense of battle grittiness. I think of young men who went off to fight wars with nothing more then the shirt on their back and whatever the army supplied them. If things broke down or got lost they made do with whatever they could find on the battlefield. Sure they might have been a bit rag-tag and run down at times but it was part of the tour of duty, not because their government was too busy running Halliburton.

You know back when people actually fought in wars and didn’t just set their megaextremeBFGautorifleXP to ‘kill enemy mode’ and then go play cards.

The term digger apparently comes from the reputation our boys had back in the early wars of last century due to “the fact that ANZAC troops were especially good at digging tunnels between their own trenches and the enemies, and were regarded by both sides as diggers”.

Back then I imagine digging tunnels between trenches must have been a nightmare, let alone when you run into an enemy team of diggers and assumedly have an all out firefight. This sort of workhorse and danger is what made the diggers legendary and are the values I respect and associate with the term.

Honestly if someone told me to go halfway across the world to start digging tunnels between trenches I’d go tell them to jump and do everything I could to get out of it. That’s why I’m not a digger and even if I was in the Army today, would feel strange being referred to as one.

I think the primary reason for this is that Australia itself really hasn’t taken any initiative or been an integral part of any military conflict since the world wars. I mean sure, we busted some heads in east Timor so we could get at their oil and we’ve done some peacekeeping  in the pacific but in any of the major conflicts we haven’t really done much.

We did put some effort into Vietnam but nobody really refers to serving soldiers there as diggers, they’re Vietnam Vets (you see you can’t be a digger if the public turn on you).

I think it’s time we came up with a new token name for army personnel, something more reflective of their current duties; like the spectators or the escorts.

At the end of the day the current army personnel riding on the coattails of the achievements of the diggers that fought a century ago isn’t really helping anyone. These days “digging” probably involves some sort of compact Tonka truck style machine which let’s face it isn’t something you’d immortalise in the memories of a nation.



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