Pocock shot in the face, shot in the back, shot on Hitler's birthday saving France, Belgium and FOSDEM

Every participant in World War I has a remarkable story to tell but there are things about the story of John Smith "Jack" Pocock that are still resonating to this day.

There are a range of connections beyond the name Pocock but we haven't quite confirmed exactly how Jack fits into the family tree. For now, all we can say is that he was a cousin of my great grandfather Robert Edward Ernest Pocock who also fought in World War I. Pocock family history / genealogy page.

John Smith Pocock was born in Bendigo and I also spent a few years in Bendigo. My father was also John.

On his enlistment papers he uses the name John Smith Pocock but elsewhere, including his tombstone, he is referred to as Jack Pocock. Our undergraduate engineering project involved an artificial intelligence framework called JACK(TM), it was subsequently used in the first autonomous drone mission at Graytown which is not far from Bendigo.

As FOSDEM approaches, the annual free software conference in Belgium's capital, it is important to remember that FOSDEM and Belgium wouldn't be the same if Australians like my great grandfather and his cousin hadn't travelled half way around the world to ensure that Belgium and France would continue to be the free countries that they are today.

Jack Pocock's medical history and series of hospitalizations show a dramatic similarity to the rhetoric of voluntary groups on the Internet today. Jack's first hospitalization resulted from being shot in the face on 28 May 1917.

On 12 October 1917, at the battle of Passchendaele, Jack was shot in the back.

Passchendaele was a particularly notorious battleground due to the mud. Many wounded soldiers fell off the duckboards and became stuck or drowned in the mud. Tens of thousands of these casualties were never recovered. Reading the stories about the mud at Passchendaele reminds me of the quagmire in the FSFE GA where everybody is pretending to promote openness and transparency while hiding their own conflicts of interest. Hitler himself was known to have been at Passchendaele around the time that Jack was shot in the back.

After another hospitalization, Jack returned to the battlefield again in 2018. He was injured again on 20 April 2018, the birthday of Adolf Hitler and he lost his left arm. 20 April, Hitler's birthday, was also the day my father died. Ever since then, my family and I have been attacked constantly by the German fascists at the FSFE in Berlin.

Jack was given a hero's welcome when he returned to Bendigo. Belgium and France were liberated thanks to the sacrifices of men like this.

At FOSDEM in 2013, we had a panel discussion about free, open, secure and convenient communications.