I don’t recall much about Anzac Day from my primary school years, and for a number of reasons my high school recollections of Anzac Day are very much coloured by having read Alan Seymour’s play “One Day of the Year” in Grade Eight in 1980 – a play which captured a range of ambiguous reactions to this commemoration. The themes are well summed up in this review by Stephen Dunne of a 2003 performance in Sydney:
Central to Alan Seymour’s modern Australian classic is the paradoxical nature of Anzac Day. We chose as our venerated, inescapable symbol of military remembrance a campaign that was both a tactical fiasco and a defeat.
In the 1980s, the ritual of Anzac Day appeared to be on its last legs. At least in Brisbane, the public commemorations were ill attended, and such commentary as was about often consisted of discussions about whether it had a future, mixed with reflections at Australians’ lack of bombastic patriotism and what I think was a central theme – the immense suffering produced by war. Interviews with old diggers often highlighted this – and while there was also a sense that war had been inescapable, there was also a definite belief that other modes of solving humanity’s problems were much to be preferred. Vietnam Vets, on the whole, were at that time still largely unintegrated in the day.
Indeed, some of the last surviving Anzacs were to have their moment in the spotlight in the 90s, when the official script had generally changed, and appeared out of synch with a revived nationalism – some refused to march, and some would say nothing other than their experience of war had been of its futility. Many resisted becoming symbols of a national spirit, preferring to remember their own personal stories and the meanings the experience of war had for them, their mates and their families.
It’s my belief that Paul Keating was one of the key actors in restaging Anzac Day in the 1990s. Partly, I think, he was trying to integrate the anti-Imperialist Irish strain of our past into a reconciled narrative, and put to bed at last the ghosts of sectarianism and the Conscription referenda of the Great War. Keating utilised the series of 50th anniversaries of key World War Two events which fell during his incumbency as Prime Minister to nudge the story of Australian history in a different direction, at the same time working consciously to revive a certain nationalism. For which he didn’t receive a lot of thanks – as two coincidental posts on Keating hating at Quiggin and Troppo demonstrate. But it’s my view that a less ambivalent and more inclusive nationalism was his legacy – a legacy which ironically enabled John Howard’s particular twist to Australia’s story. But certainly the idea of pilgrimage – to Kokoda or to Gallipoli itself – had its seeds in the flowers Keating placed on monuments far away.
I’d really only planned to do a link post – of some links which popped up in my feed reader (which is by no means a comprehensive or representative sample), but the introduction sort of got away from me.
But I think the multiple meanings, and the ambivalences this day inspires, are present in what’s being written about it on this day.
David Tiley has a couple of beautiful posts, one laconic one contrasting the visual imagery of rows of white crosses in a war cemetery with a family story, and one on the Indigenous women who served in World War Two. At Hoyden, tigtog uses some exemplary images to stimulate some reflections and provide some links, and Helen at the Cast Iron Balcony reminds us of a comment by Jack Robertson here from last year well worth recalling. Under the heading “90 000 men never came back”, Darryl Mason excerpts some quotes from an interview with Peter Casserley, the last surviving veteran of the Western front in the Great War, who died in 2005. Sam Clifford captures some of his own ambivalence, and across the Tasman, No Right Turn argues for no more dead in others’ wars:
Oh, we should remember the dead, and the maimed, and the broken and brutalised, the victims of stupid aristocrats and venal politicians – but as a warning of what happens when we surrender to militarism, jingoism, nationalism and greed. And the message we should be taking from the events at Gallipoli 93 years ago is not how noble and glorious their “sacrifice” was – there’s nothing “noble” about dying to extend someone else’s empire, nothing “glorious” about killing people, and nothing great about being offered up as a calculated sacrifice for butter exports. Instead, we should be remembering that it was bloody and stupid and pointless. But above all, we should be vowing “never again”: never again will we fight other people’s wars, and never again will we let our politicians lead us into them. Otherwise, we might be seeing a lot more names on those monuments.
Update: While I was writing this post, Brian was at work too composing a highly informative and image filled reflection on the Australian war dead lying at Villers-Brittoneux in France.
Further update: More at Airminded and John Quiggin, and Anzac Day atheism in A Strange Land.
We ought to reconsider what ANZAC day means when the last ANZACs have died. Australia’s military is a completely different beast to what it was 90 odd years ago and we need to remember the lives that have been lost. When there are no remaining ANZACs, the parades will consist of family members of dead soldiers who never fully witnessed the impact of the war in the way that their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, etc. did. Should we continue holding parades in their honour if there are no ANZACs left alive to be honoured?
The day should, in my view, take on the role of a warning symbol. Australia lost thousands of its citizens by involving themselves in a foreign war where they fought for the protection of “the mother country”. Let us not make the mistake of allowing our politicians to send our sons and daughters to their deaths defending another nation’s interests.
I’m not sure what you mean by “when the last ANZACS have died”, Sam. If you’re referring to those who were actually at Gallipoli, that milestone was reached in 2002 with the passing of Alec Campbell.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/16/1021544052449.html
Well there you go, then. I was thinking of World War I soldiers and there’s still a Frenchman alive, isn’t there?
My comments, then, ought to be viewed in the present tense rather than the future tense.
For me Anzac Day was something my father hardly ever went to, despite having served in Libya, Syria, Greece and Crete. Somewhere along the line he got blown up, (the details were never clear,) came back with the 6th Div.in January 1942 and was hospitalised till late 1943, early 1944. From what I can work out the war changed him considerably from a happy go lucky person to a violent tormented man who didn’t really recover till his early 60s.
For myself I was called up for Vietnam and naturally enough, failed the medical, so I never got to go. (Thank goodness -it wasn’t exactly something I wanted to do – but if I’d passed that medical I would have went and done my bit, though I reckon I’d have been a terrible soldier – far too nervy.)
My main involvement with Anzac Day has in fact been working backstage on a couple of productions of One Day of the Year in the 60s.I could never see what the fuss was about. So the diggers liked to go and get blind after the march – I reckoned, even back then, by which time I’d become an anti-war activist – initially the source of many arguments with my father, I reckoned the diggers had earnt it.
The gung ho nationalism of recent years bothers me, because I don’t really believe nationalism leads to much good and just gives the old pollies an excuse to send young kids o/s to get killed.
btw, in the end my old man went on the peace marches with me and resigned from the RSL. He’d gentled by then. And he would’ve hated Bob Hawke and John Howard, though not Keating. Reckon he might’ve been a bit suspicious of Rudd though -speaking Chinese like that.
Sam, the last Australian to serve overseas in The Great War, Evan Allen, died in 2005:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/goodbye-to-all-that–the-last-of-australias-great-war-veteransdies/2005/10/18/1129401256761.html
The last French veteran, Lazare Ponticelli, died in March this year:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/13/2188038.htm
Sam,
Even in WW2 a lot of us thought we were British. England was ‘Home”, even though most Australians back then had never been there, if they were born here.. Menzies put it very succintly in 1939- I think the phrase was, “Great Britain is at war. Therefore we are at war.” (I think that’s the correct quote, from memory.)
I put up a comment today at the Long Weekend Salon (Anzac Day edition) post, in which I linked to a New Zealand website, An Alternative Anzac Day Commemoration http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/AlternativeANZACs.pdf
This site summed up much of my ambivalence – indeed, long running annoyance – towards Anzac Day.
One thing I would add here is that, when I visited Ireland for the first time, I was profoundly moved by the many epitaphs to those who had died in uprisings against British rule – in a way that I was never moved by Anzac memorials in my own country.
Many might disagree with me, but I feel that liberation struggles on one’s own soil are worth fighting and dying for, while the mostly imperial wars in which Australia has participated … are not.
On this criterion, the only Australians who really deserve a war memorial are the indigenous people.
Pangur Ban @ 7,
Kokoda was a battle to stop Australia from being invaded by the Japanese (a plan they had not wholly abandoned by that date.)
And I reckon fighting the Nazis, no matter where one came from, was a pretty good thing to do.
That’s one of the things, Paul, I think Keating was up to – in terms of harnessing the symbolism of the WW2 anniversaries. He was really trying to elide the Anzac Day event with WW2 – taking advantage of the fading of the WW1 diggers themselves and of living memory of the Great War. I think his purpose, as I’ve said, was to lay to rest the stoushes over conscription and the massive sectarian divide that Billy Hughes opened up. Implicit in this, and sometimes explicit, was a view that WW1 probably had been futile – an Imperialist adventure. He tried to weave it into a new story, but the hereditary defenders of the British Empire vented their fury accordingly.
Interestingly, as I said, I think Howard largely took over Keating’s view of Australia’s war history with some of the harsh edges smoothed off.
We hear a lot about Keating’s partisanship. But I think he really did try to construct an inclusive national narrative which transcended his own views. I think that’s something he’ll eventually get credit for – but his own style and his inability to contain his exuberant Tory bashing worked against him then and now.
I keep plugging away, every Anzac and Armistice Day, on posts that reflect the way that these “heroic” horrors which focus on the men in the trenches engulfed entire peoples, and put everyone to sorrow. We ask our fathers what it was like, and allow our mothers to watch, silent at the end of the table.
The war in Iraq was produced by a monumental failure of imagination by intellectual and moral pygmies, who excise the reality of war completely. They see the thing as some comic book exercise in manhood with big explosions and stuff falling down, some combination of egomania and masochism. I don’t understand it, but it revolts me anyway.
It led us into a military quagmire which will damage the reputation and political effectiveness of the Anglosphere for a long time, and perhaps forever. It caused the complete and utter reversal of the moral narratives and gut loyalty to culture that was built over fifty years, two world wars, and the growth of a democratic society. We became the baddies. In any just universe, the leaders we in our various countries voted for should be indicted for war crimes.
I know you have all read versions of this rant over and over again, by dozens of writers. You may have lain in bed saying it to yourself in the hours when you should be asleep. I am saying it again, today, because the foul veneration of military glory is the engine of the ghastliness into which we have descended.
Fortunately, the re-invigoration of Anzac Day is a chance to parse the story in many more complex ways, which people are doing. It is a chance for humane and inclusive people to join the debate, to challenge the tub thumpers and thugs at their ugly game.
We keep using the terms racist and sexist, as we should. But it comes with a partner term, which should stay on our mass-psychosis-leading-to-slaughter radar. Militarism.
The nastiest genie in the foulest bottle of them all.
———–
Just an example: The ABC supplies the feed of the dawn services overseas to the other broadcasters. It has demanded very clearly that the broadcast should be delayed until after the footage of Australian events becomes available.
John Westacott, Nine’s director of news and current affairs, was outraged, and is quoted as saying: “These are the rights that the Anzacs fought for and this a blight on the Anzac spirit…”
He is appropriating the Anzacs for a bit of thuggery, and effectively accusing Auntie of a failure of patriotism. What kind of mind thinks that is okay….?
My own, slightly obscure ANZAC Day post: http://airminded.org/2008/04/25/allied-casualties-dardanelles-campaign-1915-6/
Spot on, David.
Regarding WWII, I found this article very interesting. It proposes the common belief that the allies went to war to save the Jews is innacurate and argues this myth arising from the allies’ entry into war with Germany and Japan provided a moral impetus which Bush and Blair relied on to justify the invasion of Iraq
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/25/foreignpolicy.iraq
Brett, I’m adding your post and John Quiggin’s repost of his 2005 thoughts:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/04/25/we-shall-remember-them-reposted-from-2005/
Paul @ 6, the Japanese were a threat to Australia’s security in WWII and so I’m not against our involvement in it. Also, Hitler was killing the Jews and genocide is simply not on.
Cheers, Mark!
I wasn’t even aware that was a common belief, casey. It’s certainly untrue.
David
‘ Militarism./ The nastiest genie in the foulest bottle of them all.’
Agreed. But isn’t this often where the hypocrisy lies? Militarism is easy to demonise, but not so the soldiers, without whom the military can’t exist. For reasons that continue to escape me, soldiers are exonerated from the evils of war and militarism – indeed they are revered, romanticised, even portrayed as victims. And when they return from occupying other people’s countries, they become the warriors victorious, photographed hugging their fiancés and holding their newborns, having kept our freedoms safe for another day.
No matter how much we hate the wars, we are always expected to support the troops. Yet I would ask … how confident would the politicians and generals be about declaring wars if there were not such a ready supply of eager warriors to fight them?
Mark
Back in the 50s and 60s, so I’m told, the May Day Parades were watched by massive crowds 6-deep, while the Anzac Parades were watched by small, scattered groups of supporters along the way.
As I wasn’t around, I’m not sure if this is true. If it is, then the fact that this situation has completely reversed itself is an indication to me that Australia may have sold its soul.
“Implicit in this, and sometimes explicit, was a view that WW1 probably had been futile – an Imperialist adventure. He tried to weave it into a new story, but the hereditary defenders of the British Empire vented their fury accordingly.”
It may well have been PJK’s view but the idea is scarcely original – it’s been at the heart of the ANZAC paradox since the beginning. I don’t recall “the hereditary defenders of the British Empire venting their fury at him” for acknowledging the ultimate futility of WWI. Acknowledgement of the carnage and waste of life is thematic to all the WWI memorials in small towns across Australia and has been writ large in the broader commemoration throughout my life. This too is part of the paradox.
In the 60’s and 70’s, ANZAC Day became indelibly – and in view, wrongly – associated with the glorification of war by the generation whose fathers fought in WWII. Alan Seymour explored this in “The One Of The Day Of The Year” with the son’s revulsion at what he saw as his veteran father’s usurpation of so-called commemoration as an excuse for wallowing in drunken, warmongering reminiscence. ANZAC Day became emblematic of a hidebound conservatism.
The Vietnam War positioned ANZAC Day as a flashpoint between protesters who saw it as an incarnation of militarism, threw paint on memorials, attempted to lay wreaths for the North Vietnamese dead etc and an older generation who were appalled at the disrespect.
I suspect that a more confident sense of who we are and the emergence of a more rational understanding of the paradox at the heart of the commemoration changed perceptions. As did the army of young Gen X back-packing Australians and New Zealanders who began to visit Gallipoli for the dawn service from the early 90’s onwards.
I absolutely agree that Paul Keating correctly assessed the shift in national consciousness and his speech (well, Don Watson’s speech) at the internment of the unknown soldier was a brilliant evocation of it.
going through pics on the Australian War Memorial site last night (as you do) & found this pic of Thomas Harold Green, 2/1 Battalion, an indigenous POW, photographed at Stalag XIIIc, Hammelburg.
http://cas.awm.gov.au/photograph/P04379.003
in recognition of indigenous servicemen, long, long overdue.
Those Gen-X trekkers that GH refers to may well be more confident, but I’m not sure that this confidence is based on better information or greater understanding.
Rather than interrogate the contradictions* (they’re not paradoxes) at the heart of the ANZAC myth, I’d argue that the most recent evolution of national piety seems to be driven by a willing suspension of disbelief and a desire to lose one’s self in the feel-good emotionalism of shared symbols.
*One contradiction is that ANZAC is asserted to be a nation-building experience. Yet all the major national institutions were already in place before the outbreak of WWI. I contrast this with the Turkish experience of WWI, which truly was a nation-building experience.
Another contradiction is that the returning ANZACs comprised the biggest private army, per head of population, anywhere in the world in the early 1920s. This extraordinary phenomenon was noticed by D. H. Lawrence in his novel Kangaroo, but has mostly been a dirty big secret ever since. Such behaviour is contradictory to the rule of law and open democracy.
In the 70s when I was in high school, I remember ANZAC day ceremonies at school, on a school day, which suggests to me maybe it wasn’t a public holiday then. but we still acknowledged it and it was a big fuss. Refusing to go was also my first act of civil disobedience and one where I was very much on my own.
If my memory is correct (and it might not be), it reckon whoever decided the public holiday was on the actual date and not on the closest weekend, had a plan to raise its prominence.
I’m glad to see that you picked up No Right Turn’s post on Anzac day; the ‘n’ and the ‘z’ in the word Anzac do stand for something! NRT linked to my post in his post – ANZAC Day Atheist – Anzac Day Atheist.
Your suggestions about Paul Keating’s role in re-invigorating ANZAC Day seem on the money. A link worth visiting which I found through tigtog’s post is ANZAC Day Atheist
“One contradiction is that ANZAC is asserted to be a nation-building experience. Yet all the major national institutions were already in place before the outbreak of WWI. I contrast this with the Turkish experience of WWI, which truly was a nation-building experience”
I think that the nation-building task might reasonably be expected to extend a bit beyond “major national institutions [being] in place” in a country 15 years old and I’ve no doubt that ANZAC contributed to the process. I wouldn’t want to overstate it but the sense of national cohesion in the face of massive disaster is something we’re all familiar with.
Well, actually ANZAC and its commemoration were a matter of great disagreement in the years immediately after WWI.
Large parts of the labour movement and large parts of the Catholic Church turned their faces against it.
Indeed, the Catholic Church itself became a target of the secret armies that I referred to above.
In 1919, Archbishop Mannix was forbidden to conduct the traditional St. Patrick’s Day march in Melbourne unless it followed a Union Jack. Mannix found an English derelict under a bush in the Flagstaff Gardens, paying him a Crown on the condition that he stagger at the head of the procession with a small Union Jack on a toothpick stuck into his hat.
Meantime, Mannix’s phaeton was attended by six Catholic VC winners riding white horses.
Indeed, Keating’s own ambiguous relationship with the ANZAC myth was fostered here and filtered through Jack Lang’s Catholicism.
Yep, and it’s that sort of history I think Keating wanted to re-integrate through shifting the focus, but he was too caught up in it himself to allow that to be done successfully. The more I think about PJK, the more I’m thinking in some ways he was actually a politician of an older time – which I think also paradoxically gave him much of the impetus for the success he did enjoy.
Kevin and Deborah, I’ve also added a link to that post.
I read ‘The One Day of the Year’ in 1988, for Year 10 (along with Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Macbeth, and Equus.) I remember my chief reaction to it was amusement at the embarrassing angsty teenage reefer madness son Hughie, who I knew had grown up to be my parents and their friends, and the glaring lack of subtlety & compassion, or imagination, in the writing of his uppercrust girlfriend. My own granddad was my yardstick for Alf, and while the war unquestionably fucked up my granddad it didn’t make him into a one-dimensional, pathetic little jingo like Alf.
I felt that the play was about the 1960s first and foremost and it was strange that we were studying it in different terms in the 1980s.
And Deborah, incidentally, it’s nice to come across another addition to my ravenous google reader via that post!
Laura, maybe the difference is in studying that play in 1988 and 1980. The sixties for someone born in 1968 didn’t seem a long time away in 1980 – it was my parent’s recent history.
Angharad, I also remember very perfunctory Anzac Day commemorations at high school. Usually there’d be a bloke in uniform and an Anglican Priest (for God knows what reason – I went to a State High School) and we’d have to all stand out on the basketball court while the whole school (1000 plus kids) sweated in the sun. One year they couldn’t get anyone from the military and the Principal did the honours. There seemed to be little effort to communicate what the point of it all was. My feeling also is that the day itself then wasn’t a public holiday, but I might also be wrong.
Mark, I think it must have been a public holiday, because I can remember watching the Adelaide march in the 60s (hah) every year on the teeve at home, which means I can’t have been at school. We were always looking for my dad, who joined the navy when he turned 17 in 1944, and for a young hayseed deep in the wheat country it was quite a thing seeing your dad on TV in the 1960s. We could always find him because he used to drive over every year with a mate who was in a wheelchair and wheel him along to the sound of the brass bands, so all we had to do was look for the ‘Corvettes’ banner and then look for the wheelchair.
I’ve actually got my dad to write up a few guest blog posts for me about what he remembers of the war years — he’s 81 now, so he can’t remember what he had for breakfast but he has vivid, detailed, technicolour memories of 1939. They’ll be going up soon.
“Yep, and it’s that sort of history I think Keating wanted to re-integrate through shifting the focus, but he was too caught up in it himself to allow that to be done successfully.”
He didn’t need to. Catholic/Protestant tribalism had eroded through the 60’s and pretty much evaporated in the 70’s and as Katz pointed out, Daniel Mannix could draw on 6 Catholic VC’s to draw his phaeton back in 1919. PJK had a seamless Anglo-Celtic historically-revised canvas on which to recreate the narrative by the mid 1990’s.
My Catholic grand-dad was at Gallipoli and while he was a proud Republican I don’t recall him ever expressing an anti-ANZAC commemoration view, on tribal identity terms.
Thanks for the heads up, Dr Cat, I’ll look out for them.
Public holidays of course would differ from state to state. I’m pretty sure, the more that I think about it, that in Queensland back in the day it used to be the nearest Monday rather than the day itself.
laura – i remember studying All Quiet on the Western Front at high school in the eighties. The piece about soldiers running with their feet blown off, on splintered stumps has always stayed with me.
THe first world war had seemed worlds away to a teenager in the ‘burbs, but the book changed the way i looked at old men from that point on.
Almost, but not quite, Geoff, as the reaction to some of what he had to say demonstrated, I think.
Casey [13]:
Heaven only knows where the fairy-story about fighting Nazism to save the Jews came from. When I was a kid, I listened to the conversations of grown-ups, by so doing it was clear that some darling Australians thought Hitler was onto a good thing by getting tough with the Jews and putting them in their place; likewise with the Imperial Japanese keeping those damned Chinks in their place too; these were definitely not the views of any of my family or their friends, I hasten to add! It seems that once War had been declared, such views were not aired in public – but that doesn’t mean they vanished altogether.
Sublime Cowgirl [35]:
Erich-Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet On The Western Front” should be read by EVERY secondary school student – male or female, by every parliamentarian and by every military/naval/air officer. Likewise, that part of Thomas Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” on the village of Dumdrudge [it's only a page-and-a-half]. If we are ever forced to fight another war [and that is very likely] then let us do so with our eyes wide open and not by following fantasies and delusions.
Mark:
Paul Keating did indeed change a lot of attitudes about Australia’s involvement in wars. Having done so much, it is a real shame that he left the job half-done. Had he carried right through, neither Howard nor any similar politician, could ever have turned ANZAC Day into a festival for gangplank-dodgers nor put the lives of Australian service personnel at risk in mere party-political stunts.
Well, Graham, he can hardly be blamed for losing to Howard. It certainly wasn’t of his volition and he did spend a lot of time warning about what Howard would be like, probably not the smartest strategy politically, but still. You may have something else in mind though? Care to elucidate if so?
Mark:
No. No. Of course Keating strived to remain in power.
For one thing, he did focus hitherto unwanted attention on the importance of the Fall Of Singapore in 1942 for the subsequent direction of Australian history – that should have tied in beautifully with his changed focus in trade, diplomacy, culture, etc. from the prevailing obsession with Britain and the United States alone to a more open approach to the countries in our own region but he seemed to let that connection just toddle along. There wasn’t much from Keating that inspired “The Battlers” to see this as being relevant to them at all.
This is what I found surprising; I thought that Keating would made it a high priority to harness the nearness of such military dangers and disasters for increasing our awareness of Asia, a positive rather than a negative awareness. Instead, when Howard got in, all we got was a mish-mash of latter-day yellow peril and business with China at any cost and on any terms.
Keating was on a winner in mobilizing part of our military history – but having mobilized it, he failed to make effective use of it.
I remember some time ago, the Moreland council here in Melbourne (which is quite left wing) decided not to participate in ANZAC celebrations and Neil Mitchell, the most listened person on morning radio on 3AW was pratically staging a campaign about these ‘un-Australians’.
I have no issue with the veterans themselves meeting and reminisce about an event which would have been pretty life-changing for most of them and remember those who died.
What I object is the saccharine schmalz that we get from the media. Please not another story about ‘young people’ being enthusiastic about ANZAC day. Not another child being interviewed and repeating ‘they died for our freedom’ or some other glib line that they were fed by their private schools. It is this exploitation of this event by media outlets trying to outprove about how caring they are about the diggers and how patriotic they are about the ANZACs that make me puke.
Of course this is also a subject I stay quiet about. Being a migrant (especially from a country which was Australia’s enemy in World War II) I feel somewhat restrained from expressing my feelings in public.
I was born in 1940, and remember reading first-hand newspaper reports of the war as a child in the years just after the war. There was a pile of old Toowoomba Chronicles in the cowshed and whenever nature called you grabbed one and disappeared into the bush behind the dam. The Toowoomba Chronicle had much better international coverage in those days.
I’m not sure you needed to know that. I grew up in an enclave of third and fourth generation Australian-German farmers who weren’t interned, but who weren’t asked to fight. They would not have been trusted. So none of our rellies died in either world war.
Casualties in WW1 and WW2 were very heavy by modern standards and families were larger. My wife lost two uncles she never knew. So in her family it was up before dawn to attend the service.
By contrast I felt somewhat remote from ANZAC and all that. When we were young the cows still needed milking and I would think we just carried on with other work for the rest of the day. In the 60s going to university I was close to being a pacifist. The net result is that I wouldn’t speak with any surety about how the ANZAC tradition was observed, but was aware that it was faltering somewhat and then got a boost, mostly in ways that make me uncomfortable.
I do think, however, that there has always been a holiday in Qld on Anzac Day and on the day. I’d be surprised if other states were any different.
Guido’s post [40] brings to mind the attitude to commemorating war held by the father of my best friend in primary school.
He’d joined the RAF at 18, became a tail gunner on a Wellington bomber. He was lucky; wounded just once, and then only in the calf.
He was also very reticent in talking about the war – in the 7 or 8 years I was in regular contact he said extraordinarily little in my presence. Other than those bare details above, about all he ever said was that his experience was unlike the mainstream view of war as a heroic adventure, and that war was not good. But he would never elaborate. He would, however, become restless – agitated might be a better word – whenever programmes like ‘Rat Patrol’ were on TV.
From memory he didn’t march on Anzac Day, preferring instead to spend time with other returned servicemen after the march. More notably – and this was at the height of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War – he was very supportive of his eldest son’s involvement in the Moratorium movement, even though the son was still in his mid-teens.
His near-silence and his non-participation in commemorating the war spoke of more than his words conveyed. He was a teacher by profession; perhaps he thought that non-verbal communication provided the most effective means of teaching we kids something about war.
More likely, I suspect, he thought he had no hope of telling us in any way that we could understand.
“Of course this is also a subject I stay quiet about. Being a migrant (especially from a country which was Australia’s enemy in World War II) I feel somewhat restrained from expressing my feelings in public.”
Guido, I love your point. I saw the son of a migrant speaking on the tv about how Anzac Day means more to a migrant (wtf?) because they chose to come here because of the freedom, love and tolerance Australia offers to all migrants (wtfx2?). I wondered when it was exactly we had slipped into Orwellian territory but concluded it happens mostly on Anzac Day when we all dutifully read from the public script of (white) Australian sacrifice, Anglos and migrants alike. Though there has been a push to recognise Aboriginal soldiers, for the most part, Aboriginals dont even get asked at all. Probably because they would mention another war altogether which interrupts the cult of ANZAC.
And all the children wearing the medals of their ancestors. There is something wrong with that. For some reason it reminds me of Randolph Stowe’s description of the Day of the Dead in Tourmaline. A forgotten procession in a forgotten town. With people forgetting what it was really about. Great novel that.
Guido [40]:
My oath, mate! Me too!
Have you ever noticed how it is that those who push that obscene line are almost invariably the same ones who took damned fine care that they were never in any danger themselves of becoming one of “The Glorious Dead”? They’re nothing but thousand-mile snipers, gangplank-dodgers and long-range patriots …. and they are generally the same treacherous rats who, once the ceremonies were over, went back to their usual amusement of kicking the daylights out of war veterans and their families. The deadly hypocrisy of these urgers must be exposed.
Another annoying thing with the media’s myth-makers is that they censor out any mention of the all senseless waste in war and of how bloody boring most of a war really is.
Enemy? What Enemy? Once a war is over, where is the Enemy? This is Australia. An anectode for you: for a few ANZAC Days years ago, I had the honour of marching with group of fine robust older fellows, many of them migrants – including a former German soldier. German!! Yes, during the Second World War, the badges on his uniform did have a swastika …. however, since that war he had migrated to Australia, raised a family here and become a fair dinkum Aussie. Why shouldn’t he march with us? He was a good decent bloke who had done his best and, like us, somehow managed to survive a war. When he died, his pall-bearers included blokes who, in war, had killed German soldiers with their bare hands …. and they were proud to be pall-bearers at their mate’s funeral. Of course, there were a few whingers and fuddy-duddies who tried to put on a fuss about a “former Enemy” marching with us but we soon sent those boofheads packing
.
Go to North Queensland, where there is a high proportion of the population with Italian backgrounds and you used to find a few Alpini and Bersaglieri veterans taking part in ANZAC Day. Hey, hang on. Wasn’t Benito Mussolini himself a Bersaglieri soldier in the First World War?
Once the war is over, where is the Enemy?
I find the whole day rather bizarre and have since, as a five year old with a recognizably non British name and a father who fought for the Germans, I was selected to lay the Anzac Day wreath.
In those days, the school didn’t send kids to the actual local march, as happens now, but the wreath was laid at the school flagpole (I only went to the one school in Victoria, so I can’t say whether this was common practice).
Anyway, on the day chosen it was raining cats and dogs. I was sent out, by myself, in the pouring rain to lay the wreath whilst EVERYBODY else in the school stayed indoors.
A very vivid memory!
Another memory is of my fifth generation Australian mum picking blossoms from the trees planted in the school’s Anzac day avenue. I told her off, saying that we were told that taking those flowers was disrespectful to the Anzacs – “They were trying to kill your father,” she said.
Nowadays, I find myself officiating at Anzac Day ceremonies and my son organised the school’s one. We’re both anti war so it’s a deeply ironic experience.
At least they’ve changed the oath – only a few years ago participants were required to swear allegiance to the Queen ‘and her heirs’ and there were references to ‘the Empire’ as well.
My impression is that for some people, attending Anzac Day ceremonies is a bit like going to church at Easter and Christmas – it’s not a sign that they believe, but a social ritual which must be gone through.
Certainly, very few of the many children you see at Anzac Day ceremonies are there by choice or through understanding – they are obliged to be there (as I am) because of their position (e.g. Scouts, school captains, etc).
We took ours along a couple of years, until they took to asking very loud questions along the lines of “I can’t see the point of this. War’s a bad thing, isn’t it?”
I agree, Mark.
While time and amnesia heal many wounds, still the association of ANZAC with sectarianism and ethnocentrism can rankle, as Guido has noted above.
Dolly Downer ladled out dollops of poison from that particular well in is royalist remarks as recently as last week.
My overall difficulty with the ANZAC myth is that it’s allegedly unifying characteristics are built upon amnesia, both wilful and accidental.
The most useful lesson to be learned from the ANZAC myth is that social control can be exerted by special interests when those special interests arrogate to themselves the right to define identity.
Even C. E. W. Bean, one of the chief propounders of a more inclusive, democratic version of the ANZAC myth in the 1920s, found himself edged out of the further elaboration of his own creation by the purple-jowled proponents of “King and Empire”.
One of the attributes of the ANZAC Myth that might be celebrated is its sheer malleability over time. But that acknowledgement would rather undercut the purpose of myth, which is to preserve the imagined past from the scrutiny of historians.
According to C. E. W. Bean’sw Galipolli Diary some of those bronzed ANZACS at Galipolli ran away.
And Post WW1, many of the returned soldiers actually joined Fascist organisations like the Old Guard and the New Guard. Even after WW2 one of our most prominent generals, who had organised the fighting of both Nazis and Japanese formed the neo-Nazi White Guard to actively fight and if necessary overthrow those dangerous Socialists in the ALP. So we do need to be a bit careful in our adulation.
OTOH, politicians send soldiers to fight after the pollies have declared war, so, for the most part, unless they’re committing crimes against humanity or genocide, soldiers do not bear direct responsibility for their actions.
I was vigourously opposed to the Vietnam War, as I am to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but I wouldn’t upbraid soldiers for going there. They were sent by politicians, in the case of Vietnam, sometimes against their will.So in my book, irs the politicians who get the blame. (And this includes Labor, for keeping us in Afghanistan.Rhough whether that decision is military or political its hard to know.)
Indeed Katz. As one J Winston Howard was so fond of doing, I mean anti-war lefties “darkies” “poofs” and “wogs” couldn’t be part of the Anglocentric eulogisation of blond headed blue eyed Anzacs; how could they be part?
I still resent and hate politicians usurping the role of the head of state in these ceremonies. I noted Rudd on TV saying something, (which was at the Gallipoli ceremony?). Now while I don’t believe Rudd will ever be as bad as Howard, the whole Anzac thing is only “safe” when pollies of all persuasions while allowed to attend ceremonies (and make speeches otherwise in purely political forms), but on Anzac day in particular, I just wish they would all SHUT_THE_FUCK_UP.
Peter K,
I think it was Hawke or Keating started the Anzac thing at the AWM. The GG was, I think at Gallipoli.I don’t mind the pollies’ participation in Anzac. After all, the GG and State Governors can only be in one place at a time, and it now seems to have become a bit of a ceremonial tradition. Its all the other GG functions Howard usurped I really object to, in his lust to be preserved for posterity.
I want to see us dump Anzac Day in favour of the day we legislate the republic. It had better not be Australia Day. Guido’s statement triggered a very important meme about heritage in a multicultural society.
We are talking about world wars here. Our multicultural heritage which has transformed Anglo Australia occurred precisely because refugees came from parts of the world smashed up by combat, invasion and domestic fascism.
The readers of Larvatus Prodeo all want history to be an active part of our lives and culture, no matter what we think that means. If you valorise Australia Day and Anzac Day, you privilege a tiny part of that history, even from the Anglo point of view.
We excise and forget the huge true story of human experience, which is our accumulated knowledge of consequences. My family and Guido’s know different things about living in society; mine was rescued from the Great Depression by re-armament; Guido’s was living under Mussolini.
I want both to be the story of our society. The reactionary position which swept across us in the last decade thinks our society is only safe if the Anglo view squeezes out the other, purity protected from pollution. To the survivors of Mussolini, that will have a familiar smell.
My sister is the person in our family who had biological children. Neatly for this rant, she married a Calabrian. What bothers me is that her fabulous children don’t care about history at all.
That’s right Paul, quite a few ran away. One of the great things about the Australian Imperial forces was that they refused to let the British Command shoot their deserters. Fallout from the earlier Breaker Morant episode, one would imagine.
A number of NZers, by contrast, were executed.
david t,
I wouldn’t worry about the kids. History is something that grows on you as you get older when you start to ask ‘where did I come from?’, an intimation of mortality.
Thank you for such an intelligent discussion about ANZAC Day. These often seem to disintegrate into a “you’re unaustralian/you’re a flag-waving warmonger” dichotomy. I’ve tried to put my own thoughts together on this issue but have only scratched the surface. The thoughts on Paul Keating’s attempt to create a national narrative that reconciles elements of our history are an interesting addition to my own thoughts as I’ve tried to worked out where the beginning of our revived interest in the day came from. It does seem to precede Howard’s poisoned touch, although it reached its height at that period. I also wonder if the adoption of the day may be some sort of reaction to globalisation and would be interested in other’s thoughts on this.
http://gennevene.blogspot.com/
The Feral Abacus [42]:
War veterans who clam right up and say nothing at all about their own experiences of war are a real worry; time and again, you hear of ones who committed suicide – or worse – never talked about what happened to them in war. In stark contrast, war veterans who talk about such things only to those who shared similar experiences are not much to worry about; their reticence is probably in direct proportion to the number of stupid or offensive questions they have been asked and to the number of outrageous or ridiculous comments on war they have heard. There is a tendency too, to protect those near-and-dear to them from some of the very very unpleasant realities of war.
Brian [41]:
Just on a personal note: my grandfather was an old Prussian German marine engineer who had long settled in Australia, married, raised a family here and worked hard in a shore job. Up to and after the outbreak of the Second World War, he followed current affairs in foreign languages on his short-wave wireless – having been himself, as a younger man, in many of the places mentioned in the news. Stickybeak neighbours thought he was hiding one of Hitler’s battleships in his bathtub and so dobbed him into the “secret service”. Before he could be arrested and interned, war with the Japanese Empire broke out and on that day he volunteered to go back to sea. Later, he was wounded during the Liberation of the Philippines. He was quite entitled to march on ANZAC Day, of course, but like so many of his mates, he refused outright to do so …. not out of any lack of respect for the dead and for the bereaved families – the poor devils – but out of loathing for the pompous boofheads who turned the solemnity of that day into a political circus. Oh, I almost forgot: his nephew, another “square-head”, went into the Australian Army and died a Prisoner of War of the Imperial Japanese. It goes to show, you just can’t trust these Germans, can you?
Katz [46]:
Right! I’m a war veteran and I am fed up with having my commemoration and my respect for those killed and injured while serving Australia repeatedly hijacked by political mongrels and their handful of brown-nosing renegade ex-servicemen. So what practical suggestions do you have for genuine war veterans, their families and ordinary Australians to reclaim ANZAC Day as their own?
glenfie, it’s interesting that you raise globalisation in this context, since I’ve had that in mind as well when reflecting on Keating’s new nationalism. I think Keating wanted both to harness the multicultural creative potential Australia has in order to reshape our image and allow us to compete more effectively globally (as reflected in his ‘turn to Asia’ and his defence of multiculturalism in economic terms) and recreate a sense of national belonging which would nevertheless give us purpose in a globalising world. It’s an inherently unstable project, and perhaps he wasn’t aware of the tensions in it. But the wave of globalisation talk that hit the world in the early 90s also carried in its wake both a focus on locality as a strength, and a worry about the dissolution of local culture. I think his contribution needs to be understood within that context.
Pangur Ban [back at 7]:
Thanks to that link to the Alternative ANZAC. Good …. but although Peace is lovely, it is an outcome, a result, it’s what happens when you get things right and the circumstances are favourable; it is neither a thing in itself nor a process.
Last year, Barista had a topic on Dr Kendall-Smith and his refusal to go to war. The item about Katherine Jashinski on the link you put up glossed over the fact that because she now has a dirty discharge from the military, she is now excluded from so much in the United States [she might better off changing her name, sneaking across the U.S.-Mexican border and pretending she is an illegal immigrant].
Genfie [53]:
Thanks for your thoughtful link.
The insiring words of reconcilliation from a magnanimous victor, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, should be learnt by heart by every Australian and New Zealand schoolchild.
We not only commemorate but celebrate such a defeat because we are mature enough to realize that it is just as important [though less pleasurable] than winning a great victory. Those who celebrate only their victories are twice beaten when they suffer a defeat.
Sometimes, when all else fails and when it is a matter of survival or annihilation, it is necessary to go to war. But …. the only people who glorify war are those who have NEVER had to live through it and who see some financial or social profit for themselves in sending others off to fight and die or – worse still – become maimed and broken. They have never heard anyone take hours to die, they have never smelled a corpse several days later, they have never seen the anguish on the faces of good people who have lost everything. They are thoroughly evil.
Said political mongrels are shameless. They don’t have a better nature to appeal to.
Veterans are inclined to be stoical, which sometimes shades over to self-pity, which makes them easy meat as extras in the tired recitation of ANZAC-fuelled pieties so beloved of political mongrels.
I doubt that veterans have ever tried ridicule as a rhetorical weapon. Ridicule would be particularly powerful when the ridiculers can harness it to the potent rhetoric of service.
(I’ve often wondered what would happen if a march were held comprised of Vietnam Vets and people who protested against the Vietnam War.)
But I’m afraid that any victory would be temporary. The age of mass war has passed. Its participants are dying. ANZAC Day will go on long after the last veteran dies. Necessarily, control of commemoration of war service will slip from the control of veterans groups.
Only mongrel politicians have the drive, the resources and the effrontery to assume complete control.
Katz [57]:
Thanks for suggestion. Yeah, tried ridicule but it doesn’t seem to work.
The gullible war-heroes didn’t like being told how silly they looked crawling and running messages for the mongrels who were too cowardly to fight their own wars.
They didn’t appreciate being told that the homosexuals worked together and so won gay rights but – in contrast – the glorious defenders of freedom and the Empire had allowed themselves to be manipulated, by political and commercial interests, into brawling and backstabbing among themselves and by so doing, lost so many of their own hard-won entitlements, privileges and services. Suggesting that the determination, discipline, organizational skills and effectiveness shown by a bunch of poofters was far superior to that of a far greater number of returned servicemen in long-established organizations didn’t go over well at all. They just couldn’t see the funny side of that. L=O=L
Still. if it will help put an end to the hypocrisy that currently infests ANZAC Day, let’s keep on ridiculing the ridiculous and keep on scoffing and sneering at the obscene misuse of ANZAC Day for political and commercial gain.
This isn’t a direct response to Graham’s question, but one of the other continuing fracture lines around Anzac Day was who “owned” it – the RSL used to more or less claim it was their day – and back in the 80s that caused some consternation in terms of Vietnam Vets and others. Similarly, when the pollies really started getting in on the act, the RSL weren’t happy campers. You can see echoes of that in disputes in some states about vets’ descendants marching.
If someone wrote a really comprehensive cultural history of Anzac day, I think it’d be quite fascinating.
Dave Tiley @ 50 (and thence, et al, re: ANZAC/nationalism) for much the same reason I’ve always found Remembrance Day a more universal, more appropriately gentle ‘war memorial’ day. I think anyone or thing that seeks to parse the human race in any way at all on such days kind of negates the legitimacy of our species’ bothering to remember its war dead at all, which is that they all bled red as they died.
This thread has been a tender melancholy pleasure to read, btw. (Thanks for the retro link via Balcony Helen too, Mark.)
Pleasure, Jack.
I’m with you on Remembrance/Armistice Day too.
Mark [59]:
Yes. Just who does “own” ANZAC Day? Strange but – I grew up with the idea that ANZAC Day belonged to God, to The Dead and to the families they left behind …. and that anyone else who turned up for the occasion – whether politician, clergy, military officer or whoever – had better show proper respect.
Let’s not forget that it was not until after French Army mutinies, the overthrow of the Russian Tsar, the Bolshevik Revolution, the mutiny of the Imperial German Navy and all the hysteria those events generated back here in Australia that the dominant clique got a stranglehold on how ANZAC Day would be conducted and also forced the amalgamation all the local ex-service and patriotic groups into one approved, rigidly controlled and blatantly political veterans’ organization.
Let’s not forget that in the Brisbane ANZAC Day march of 1980, the Viet-Nam War veterans were forbidden to carry the Australian flag [in case they used the pole as a weapon against Police]. When forming up, they were made to reverse-march from their allocated position right back to the end of the parade [some of the Viet-Nam War veterans were so humiliated by that spiteful pettiness that they fell-out vowing never to attend another ANZAC Day event]. When the Viet-Nam war veterans’ large contingent reached the saluting dias, the prominent “anti-Communist” politician on it deliberately ignored the veterans’ salute and instead pointedly jibbered away to a couple of his companions.
Jack Robertson [60]:
Some of us still stop whatever we are doing for a silent two minutes at 11 a.m. on each 11th November [Armistice Day] to remember and honour all those who died in all wars. It’s a very personal thing – even if thousands of others are doing the same thing.
Thanks for that, Graham. Those events are among what I was alluding to with my reference to ‘Nam vets in the post. “Lest we forget” – I’m sure that’s not commemorated in any of the authorised storylines of Anzac Day.
Everyone:
Alright, that’s ANZAC Day – present and past.
What about the future?
How do we give comfort to the bereaved families who will, inevitably, lose loved ones doing things that mean that the rest of us can sleep safely in our beds?
Whether those things are resisting armed attack or dealing with man-made disasters [like the Chernobyl accident] or dealing with natural disasters [like the Yangtze River floods].
How do we change ANZAC Day from being an opportunity for all sorts of bludgers and political scoundrels to reward themselves …. and into an occasion that respects, honours and celebrates ordinary people who had a part in extraordinary events?
I’ve been involved in politics and seen my local member (who I don’t vote for) send out a glossy newsletter for ANZAC Day. It just don’t feel right.
I attended the dawn service for the first time last week, and it was an experience I’ll never forget. The sheer amount of people, the respect being shown was incredible. For whatever reason.
Personally, the elected officials who attend should lay a wreath and not much more. The reason why we are there should be humbling enough.
And for those who argue about wars, and the histrionics of the whole thing: you have 364 days a year to discuss those things. On April 25, how about just honouring the individuals who did act bravely, selflessly, and made the ultimate sacrifice, the last full measure of devotion. For whatever reason.
But that’s not enough Howard C.
There have been many individuals who acted bravely, selflessly, and made the ultimate sacrifice in bad causes.
Therefore, when we observe the ceremonies of ANZAC Day, mentally we draw up two lists of causes that excited these acts of bravery, selflessness and self-sacrifice. We accord worthiness to one list and worthlessness to the other list.
I wonder what consensus exists over the contents of those two lists.
And I wonder whether there is agreement about how those lists are constructed.
For example, is it justification enough to say that an individual sacrificed all in response to the British Empire’s call when at the same time that Empire:
1. Brutally put down a nationalist uprising in Ireland?
2. Signed several imperialist secret peace treaties that put the lie to the assertion that it entered the war to “protect the freedom of small nations”?
If you don’t know what you are fighting for, you aren’t a hero, you are a stooge.
Graham Bell wrote:
I’ll reiterate the general consensus – we need to take ANZAC day back from the urgers, the mindless nationalists and the politicians. Armistice Day originally had a different meaning – to remember and NEVER REPEAT the events of WW1. It wasn’t terribly successful. There will always be an element that seeks to co-opt the meaning of these days into jingoism and that needs active resistance. In the names of all those in our families who fought and died overseas, ANZAC day needs to be a day of silent, respectful and honourable protest against militarism while acknowledging sacrifice.
So, in that spirit, here’s to Robert Anderson, my grandfathers foster brother, buried up in Cairns, who volunteered ahead of my grandfather in order to save him from WWII. There’s nobody left alive who can identify the poor bastard in photographs and all we have left are his service medals and a photo of his grave. I wouldn’t be here without that incredible act of courage.
Katz – I have to disagree with you. I wouldn’t want to call any of those soldiers who died in World War I a stooge, even if they were. I do not distinguish vetween the two. Their efforts were just as brave, if the cause was not.
Also, information was not as accessible in 1914 as it is in 2008.
As I said, leave the discussions of why we were there and why we should not have been to another day. I’m of Irish heritage, and first generation Australian, and have had to put up with an Anglophile I worked with describe the Easter Uprising as “a civil war in the United Kingdom”, rather than the genuine overthrowing of a unwanted and brutal regime.
But on ANZAC Day, we honour the dead. We honour those who will not grow old, as us who are left grow old.
And we honour those who remain, as their number continues to diminish.
Do I understand you to mean that it is right to admire physical courage even in the most evil of causes?
So you are calling the efforts “evil”?
My (admittedly limited) understanding of WWI is that a domino-effect of treaties and alliances caused the War, and that the War was fought on old strategies, leading to mass casualties. I think I need further explanation of the evilness. Just asking, I need to know this stuff.
I know a little more about Iraq and Afghanistan, and I would categories neither as evil. Misguided in Iraq’s case probably, but not evil.
I think Katz is using the rhetorical device of following your own reasoning to its conclusion, Howard, not saying that the diggers were evil.
Unconditional conference of respect and gratitude to all soldiers by virtue of their being such runs a very real risk of exhonerating those who sent them to die in questionable causes.
We can chew gum and fart at the same time, for as long as promoters of simple minded symbolism don’t get their way.
All I said is leave it for April 26. Families have loved ones who died. They read something like this on ANZAC Day, and feel even worse than if they read it another day. Just let them honour the dead on April 25. Discuss the rest – which we need to do – another day.
I, for one, don’t see the tone and spirit of this thread as in any way disrespectful. I thought, by contrast, it was an excellent discussion. Some of this goes to what I’ve been arguing all along – there are deep ambivalences about the significance and the symbolism of the day and who “owns” it and who it’s “for”. It seems to me far from inconsistent to discuss these issues – and issues related to war and politics – in this context. Most apt, rather.
Howard C [65] you said
Yea verily!
ANZAC Day is also an occasion when those who never lost a loved on in war can empathize with those who did. It is also an occasion when we can all reflect on the costs of keeping our way of life and reflect, too, on the costs of dodging our responsibilities and of doing nothing until it is too late.
“ANZAC Day is also an occasion when those who never lost a loved on in war can empathize with those who did.”
Point of order – to sympathise is the most they can do, and then only if they spell it correctly.
*harrumph*
No, in truth. These ceremonies don’t interpret themselves. They’re repeated year after year, but their context changes, and there’s always a new generation who don’t understand what’s going on or see the linkages and relevance. Hence what appears to be timeless is actually very much embedded in time – and requires reinterpretation and reinforcement constantly.
In the 80s, as I said at the outset, the effective claim to “ownership” made by the RSL and the lack of public discussion about the day – just an official laying a wreath – left it as a private remembrance rather than as a public event. That’s why there was so much concern that it would die off as those who were involved in it themselves passed away. Its revival was all about investing it with a broader meaning, and it doesn’t do anyone any good to shut down discussion as to what that meaning or meanings is.
I think David Koch or Kevin Sheedy has as much to do with this interpretation of ANZAC Day as a public rather than private day as does John Howard and Brendan Nelson.
I also think the greater emphasis on the day has benefits, the least of which was my finally attending the dawn service. I probably wouldn’t have thought of doing that 10-15 years ago (also 15 years ago I was 12). It also has drawbacks, like the initial sentence of my original post.
Generally, I have always found that the returned servicemen are the greatest advocates for avoiding war. Another good reason to engage them. But with that in mind, let’s not jump to the conclusion that the decision to deploy troops has been taken lightly.
“let’s not jump to the conclusion that the decision to deploy troops has been taken lightly.”
No, rather let’s undertake a sober, rational analysis, then argue and conclude that it has.
Well, yes, but as I’ve been arguing, I think Paul Keating had the biggest part to play.
No Howard C.
I’m asking you to be as precise as you can be about what you consider worth commemorating.
FDB is correct. It is a rhetorical device deployed for the purpose of clarifying thinking.
Rather than rant at you, I’m trying to pay you the respect of following your own line of thinking to see where it leads.
I consider their personal efforts and sacrifices worth commemorating. They went half way across the world to protect their empire, an empire they very much believed in. They were treated poorly, made to run a fool’s errand, and displayed an amazing courage that I wouldn’t trust myself to show in the same circumstances. They also displayed honour in the way they conducted themselves.
I can divorce my thoughts on ANZAC Day regarding commemorating our war dead with my thoughts every other day of the year when I think about whether we should have gone to Gallipoli, Tobruk, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. All I have (consistently) said is leave that discussion, and those thoughts, for any other day of the year.
It’s not 25 April any more, Howard C.
You seem to wish to mix up private remembrance (and grieving) with public commemoration.
Certainly, it would be very bad manners for any stranger to gatecrash a private memorial service with the object of airing one’s views about the person being remembered.
However, ANZAC day is a public holiday. It is therefore a public event. The public have a stake in this event by virtue of the fact that governments have gazetted it and have devoted public monies to its commemoration.
Therefore this event always has escaped and always will escape the private sphere so long as there is a public stake in it.
As members of the public and a taxpayers we have more than a right to talk about ANZAC Day. We have a responsibility to talk about ANZAC Day.
But you want to talk about military strategy. I want to talk about the people who died and what they did, not about the Generals and the politicians.
Either way, it’s a personal decision, and I’m just sticking up for what I believe. What you do is your business. But on April 25 every year, I’ll leave those arguments in the back pocket.
Fortunately in this country you get to decide what you want to say and when you say it for yourself.
That’s not universally true by any measure, Howard. Indeed, Katz referred previously to Archbishop Mannix’ post-war parade. “Empire Day” – then a public commemoration – was a source of division rather than unity, and a lot of the history of both Anzac Day and Australia Day was the history of trying to find a unifying rather than divisive set of public rituals and symbolism. It’s an interesting history which repays study, not least because its echoes and ghosts can be heard and seen in these sorts of discussions we have today.
So you have decided to withdraw your suggestions about what the rest of us should and should not be talking about on any given day of the year. Good.
They did what they did because they were sent where they were sent by politicians to be ordered to do what they did by generals.
One of the potent rationales for ANZAC Day, like any day of military commemoration is not to remember what happened in the past, but to recommend what should happen in the future.
Self-sacrifice to hidden agendas is precisely what politicians want from their cannon fodder. Where is the celebration of the “Jack-up” where Australian soldiers mutinied in 1918 because they didn’t agree with what their leaders ordered them to do?
The military and civilian leadership caved in and the Diggers got their way. That’s something worth commemorating.
http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/first_aif/mutinies.asp
If you look at my first post, I am actually advocating a reduced role for politicians in ANZAC Day. And my other argument is what I think is right. If a person cannot state what they believe is right without it being interpreted as a recommendation for the imposed behaviour of all people, then I don’t think debate in this country is going to survive for long. We disagree, that’s fine, but I’m not about to force my beliefs on you. I am, however, going to try to convince you that I’m right.
And my stooge argument is basically that that sort of language is counter-productive. Criticize the rationale, but keep away from the namecalling.
Howard C (MkI)
Howard C (MkII)
MkI looks like a recommendation to me.
“Stooge” is an appropriate word whose definition is “One who allows oneself to be used for another’s profit or advantage; a puppet.”
Eat vegetables would also be a recommendation. But I don’t make you eat vegetables. Any belief I have, I would recommend.
I stand by everything I have said. I think we all should honour the dead on April 25, and discuss the rest the next day. But I don’t expect you to do it, and we can do different things because we live in Australia.
And with the use of the word stooge, I am not criticising it for accuracy. I’m just saying that it is a counter-productive use of the word, because a lot of people are going to turn off when you use it to describe an ANZAC. Your argument won’t get a hearing, because people have turned off. And it’s probably unnecessarily mean.
Howard C.
Don’t you agree that it’s meaner to lie to people than to tell them the truth, especially when that truth is not about the private weakness or foible of an individual but rather it is about public policy?
We all tell white lies to individuals in order to avoid hurting their feelings.
Yet, an entire society that lies to itself about itself is a society that is apt to make, or to continue to make, characteristic errors and follow bad policy.
Thus, Australia’s supposed prowess as a warrior nation has been productive of very bad outcomes that have been avoided by Canada, a very similar country to Australia. Canada seems to have avoided many of the pitfalls provoked by the mystique of the warrior myth.
Why can’t Australia be more like Canada?
The answer is that we can, but we have to get over the corrupting effects of some old and unproductive myths.
Tough truths can do that.
God forbid. A nation that defines itself by what it is not- ie its large and vulgar southern neighbour.
But what very bad outcomes has Canada avoided that Australia has not? Did they not both commit themselves to the defence of the British Empire in Europe in World War I, with similar casualties? Did they not again commit themselves to the defence of the British Empire in Europe in World War II in similar numbers, and with the Australian withdrawal from it after 1941 being brought on by the urgent necessity of defending itself against Japan in in the Pacific? Did they not both similarly commit themselves to the defence of South Korea under the aegis of the US and the UN in similar numbers in the Korean War?
As to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and other sundry South East Asian involvements in which Canada did not participate is that not better understood as being the product of rational Australian calculation of its self-interest driven by its geography, which Canada does not share with it?
In the Middle East did not Canada commit more to the Allied war effort in the first Gulf War than Australia’s highly token contribution? Are they not now fighting in Afghanistan in greater numbers than Australian troops committed to that country?
But the answer to your rhetorical question is that Australia cannot be more like Canada because we are not New Zealand. Canada’s ultimate defence lies in the fact that its large and vulgar southern neighbour would, out of pure self interest, never allow any other country to even contemplate attacking it.
Un Zud’s defence is founded on the simple proposition that to attack Un Zud you must go through Australia and that while Australia takes its defence seriously Un Zud doesn’t have to.
Not saying anything is not lying.
A husband is driving home with his wife. He starts to mess around, driving erraticly because he thinks its fun. He loses control, kills his wife but he survives. Do you think the 1st anniversary of her death would be an appropriate time to say “Hey, you’re a real schmuck!”. You wouldn’t do it, and he is culpable for her death.
All I am saying is on April 25, don’t call them stooges, don’t call them idiots, don’t call them fools. Don’t remind them that their efforts were evil, or misguided, or wasted, or unwanted. Don’t say to the families “You’re greatgrandfather died as a white man trying to kill darkie half way across the world. If anything, he got what he deserved”.
Obviously they haven’t earnt your respect. But I’m sure your heroes (if you would care to name some, I can guess people like Keating would be one of them) wouldn’t have my respect.
I don’t think Australians think of themselves as a Warrior Nation, but we are proud of ourselves and our achievements. If we’re not, we should pack up and go home. I don’t envy Canada any more than I envy any other country. Here’s where I want to stay, and we have it better than anyone, and that’s not entirely due to dumb luck.
I don’t think any of us has a monopoly on what is the truth, but I’d rather see the issues canvassed and differing views contend, even on Anzac Day, than have a universally observed form of commemoration which fits the prevailing sentiment and which encourages a mind-numbing conformity of thinking on “who we are” which stereotypes those who are being commemorated and creates a stereotype for those doing the commemorating. I find myself intensely uncomfortable with all the flag-waving that has come to be associated with Anzac Day in recent years and I think that a bit of debate that leads to some introspection is salutary.
Therefore I agree with your comment:
even though I don’t agree with your version of the truth.
Well said GregM.
No. Because it was not rational. Compare Australia’s position in Vietnam and everywhere else since WWII with the position of Canada.
Canada is a full-fledged member of Nato. In return for its commitment to the Treaty Canada has a place at the table in determining policy. Morever, Canada has commitments guaranteeing its security:
Nato Treaty, Article 6.
In neither Afghanistan nor in Iraq does Australia get anything like this quid pro quo for its expenditure of blood and treasure.
That’s how military commitments are forged between grown-up nations. Instead, what Australia gets are the vague promises used to fob off stooges. And Australian troops are deployed without any input into formulating strategy.
Yet again, Australia is to supply voicelessly the cannon fodder.
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And thanks for your statement of support. My use of the word “truth” shoud be read as “truth, as I see it”, in other words honesty. I don’t claim a monopoly of truth. But truth can arise only out of honesty and the good will of persons with sincere disagreements talking honestly to each other.
And I don’t “envy” Canada either. Rather I seek for Australia to emulate Canada to the extent that is suits Australia’s rational self-interest.
Everyone [my final comment on this topic here];
Each generation will define ANZAC Day [and everything else in its history] in its own way.
I can only hope that after I am dead and forgotten …. That the ANZAC Day Dawn Service will continue to be brief, simple, reasonably solemn and respectful. …. That sympathy and support will continue to be given to all the bereaved families and individuals, regardless of who or what they are. …. That the Dead will be remembered as ordinary human beings, not just as faceless numbers. …. That War will not be glorified – and especially not by those who made political, financial and social profit from putting their fellow citizens in great peril whilst dodging any war service themselves. …. That our true allies in bygone conflicts will continue to be honoured and that valiant enemies in such conflicts will continue to be respected. …. That children will be told the truth about what happens in war. …. And that that sadness of the day will be tempered by at least a little joy and fun too.
Cheers