By CASEY NEILL
BERWICK man Peter Neumann serves as a reminder of the other side of war.
His grandfather Arthur fought for Germany during World War I.
“I know he served at the front,” Peter said.
“He was nearly shot on the front line by one of his commanders because he didn’t want to fight anymore.
“Has anybody really won?
“I look at Anzac Day not just as one group of soldiers, but all the soldiers all around the world that fought and people who lost family members through the war.
“I probably look at war differently. War shouldn’t be glorified.
“It’s reality and there were lots of innocent lives lost. It’s been very hard on the families.”
Peter recently donated to Dandenong Cranbourne RSL a periscope his grandfather used, though during which conflict is unclear.
“It’s been kept in the family,” he said.
“I’ve been hanging onto it in the garage. I came across it and being a member of the club here, I thought it was stupid having it in the garage – no-one can see it.
“I’m donating it to the RSL. I know it will be put to good use here.
“I could have sold it on eBay but then it would have been in somebody else’s garage.
“Here, it can be put on display and people can see what was used during the war.”
Peter was called a Nazi and a Jew-hater when he migrated to Australia from Germany.
“I found out that my grandfather on my mother’s side (Joseph Kempf) had actually been imprisoned (during WWII) because he helped smuggle Jewish people over the border,” he said.
“He was supposed to be executed … but what happened was a friend of his who was in charge of the concentration camps, who was also smuggling the Jewish people out, he found out about it, went in there and gave him the lapel badge that said he was working for him, and he was let off.
“It was just hours before the execution.”
Dandenong Cranbourne RSL sub-branch president John Wells welcomed the periscope donation.
“I suspect it’s from an armoured vehicle of some sort. Probably from World War II,” he said.
“We used periscopes in the trenches a lot. Periscopes were wherever you didn’t want to put your head up.”
Mr Wells urged anyone who found wartime artefacts to contact their local RSL.
“It’s part of our heritage. It reminds us of the realities that we once faced and it reminds us that history isn’t always nice,” he said.
“If you want your future to be nice, you need to be aware of the things you did in the past that weren’t.
“It’s important to preserve it where people can see it and understand it.
“It links us, in the sense that the bloke that used this did what I did. His father did what I did. My great uncles did what I did.”
Mr Wells said every ex-serviceman was “in the club”.
“It doesn’t matter whether you fought in Afghanistan or you fought in the Boer War. If you pulled on the boots, you’re in the club,” he said.
“We have Italians who fought against us who march on Anzac Day. We have Turks now. They were our enemy.
“It’s a Turkish story as well. Bottom line is we invaded Turkey and they kicked us out.
“They suffered enormous casualties, far more than we did.
“Surely the Turks that have come here, they’re in the club.”
