harrierman🇧🇼

Collecting this morning at Turnham Green tube station for Chiswick Poppy Appeal @ChiswickW4 @TheChiswickCal @PoppyLegion

A man suddenly approaches a group of street musicians and asks, “Can I play with you? I’ve got my pan flute.” When they ask what he wants to play, he chooses Vivaldi’s Winter from "The Four Seasons"—one of the most difficult pieces there is. And then he leaves everyone around him in awe. On the pan flute, Michel Tirabosco delivers an incredibly skillful performance, with remarkable breath control and emotion. Even though this was a planned flash-mob-style setup, the real talent of the musicians and the pure joy they bring still move people deeply. A beautiful moment of music, connection, and limitless passion.

May 24, 1969. Kontum Province, near Ben Het. Australian Warrant Officer Keith Payne is commanding a company of Montagnard strike force troops when a much larger North Vietnamese force hits them from three sides. His soldiers start to fall back. Payne runs from position to position, collecting grenades and throwing them at the attackers. Shrapnel hits him in the hands and arms. The line breaks anyway. The battalion commander, several advisers and a few soldiers pull back. Payne covers them with grenades and his rifle. Then he runs across open ground under fire, gets in front of his own retreating troops, stops them, and by nightfall has the survivors of two companies dug into a perimeter. Then he goes back out, alone, into the dark. For about three hours, under fire, he searches the battlefield. He finds about 40 lost soldiers, many of them wounded, and brings them back. When he gets there, the rest of the battalion has pulled out and left. So Payne leads the whole group, helping carry a badly wounded American adviser himself, through enemy-held ground to safety. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, plus the American Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star. He later spent decades counseling veterans with PTSD. A psychiatric unit for veterans in Brisbane is named after him. Today he is 92. He is the last living Australian to hold the original Victoria Cross.