ANZAC Day

ANZAC Day, which is basically a counterpart of US Veterans Day, always starts with a Dawn Service. This year I attended a different kind of morning ritual… but we certainly counted our blessings that the war stories we told over breakfast were about big fish we saw or jellyfish we narrowly avoided instead of something more somber.

Later in the day I went out for a bit of metal detecting. Here’s what I posted to the Facebook group dedicated to that hobby…

“Went to the beach for an ANZAC Day hunt. Found a few items with a military theme as the Warbirds flew overhead: .22 shell casing, a lead soldier, and a Ukrainian 5 hryvnia coin. Among the crusty coins I did get three silver thruppence, so that’s a win.

“The gold ring rang up as a 34 on my Deus 2, which is normally the foil liner from a milk or juice bottle. But it was a strong tone, so I figured it would be shallow and I could get it off the beach. I went through the whole spectrum of detectorist emotions and reactions when the ring came out… excitement of course, followed by suspicion because of that low VDI number, then furtively looking around to see if I need to hide my treasure from marauders (luckily none were spotted), then hopefully but oh so casually looking for a hallmark, then sadly concluding that it rang up like a piece of foil because it sure ain’t gold!”