Thread by @GrayConnolly

Growing up, in our local parish, was Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly KBE CB DSO, battalion commander in WW2 & Commonwealth Brigade commander in Korea. He was a daily Massgoer & Volunteer at Sydney's Mathew Talbot Hostel, looking after the homeless. He was always known as "Tom"

https://twitter.com/abcnews/status/1402084476067278852

Edward Kenna was awarded the Victoria Cross for his extraordinary heroism in World War II. Post-war, he returned to Hamilton in Victoria where he worked for the local council and played football.

awm.gov.au/collection/P10…

Captain Charles Hazlitt Upham won VC & Bar in WW2 & returned to a successful farming life in New Zealand. His name was in the local phone book and, so I was told, local children would drop by to meet the Uphams for afternoon tea & to ask him about the War for their school project

Must be what all the Anzacs stormed ashore at Gallipoli for .... the chance to make money on the speaking circuit. There is nothing now that will not be debased not even a Victoria Cross. And no one thinks this is remotely weird. Like some washed up Olympian cashing in.

Happy to be considered naive here but had no idea that the Victoria Cross was being cashed in on in this way. It is entirely at odds with our history and represents a further example of the commodification of absolutely everything

We can squabble all we want about the values of a 'modern and progressive Australia' (assuming those are desirable qualities) but everyone can agree that a rampant desire to cash-in is where the moral consensus seems to lie now, given the Victoria Cross is now to be milked, too.