John Michael Murphy, RIP. The Man behind the iconic Anzac Image

John Michael Murphy, The Man behind the iconic Anzac Image

Where I am temporarily based now, I see young men, bulging with muscles and covered in tribal tattoos. It looks tough, but thanks to the troubles of the last few years, we all learned that true courage has a different look.

John Michael Murphy was one of the bravest men I know.

A quiet man, he ended up on many stages defending the real values that his medals represented.

In every march he attended, he cultivated hope and decency.

In other words, John managed—through having the courage to defend his principles—to live up to one of the great poems of his youth.

IF

Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

I recorded this Interview with John In Williamstown

Michael