Lest we keep on forgetting
April 24th, 2009 by Paul Norton | Published in Anzac Day, Crime, Disasters, History, Howardia, Imperialism, Media, Politics, War | 136 Comments
In 2003, an essay on Anzac Day was written by a Brisbane high school student, Joanna Sampford, which made more sense that the outpourings of Australia’s entire corpus of mainstream politicians and commentators. The essay was awarded the Simpson Prize by the History Teachers Association of Australia.
Jo is now studying at the University of Queensland, and I had the good fortune to have her as a High Distinction student in my Environmental Politics and Policy course last year.
With Anzac Day upon us for another year, I’ve decided that the essay is worth posting here for people to read at their leisure and reflect on tomorrow morning whilst waiting for the shops to open.
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“We Will Remember Them”
How and why have Australians commemorated the ANZAC experience?
At the heart of Australian commemoration of the Anzac Experience, there exists a foundational martial myth, a myth that began on the cliffs of Gallipoli, continuing through to Monash’s triumphant victory at Hamel in1918, and to some extent, survives today. Yet of this myth there stands an enduring dichotomy of the experiences of Anzac soldiers and the many and often radically different interpretations of them and their feats by the Australian people. For 87 years, Australians have reflected on the triumphant accounts of their victories in the First World War and of the men who achieved this victory. Yet for all of these years, in our interpretations of the Anzac Experience, ironically, we have neglected the true experiences of our original Anzacs and those who followed.
The image and interpretations of the Anzacs as brilliant martial ‘victors’ has featured predominantly, but not solely for much of the last 87 years Australian commemoration – driven by selectively presented by news reporters, government propagandists and government-employed war correspondents and historians, who publicised each military campaign for its triumph, importance and success.
Contrary to the hardships experienced by troops, those at home were influenced by the first floods of gushing Gallipoli reportage, with the Sydney Morning Herald boldly stating, “[the first stage of the Gallipoli campaign had] been carried out with a degree of rapidity and success hardly hoped for’. The professed success of Gallipoli was heralded with escalating superlatives, ‘it was an operation without parallel’, a tenuous description of a campaign in which heavy prices were paid for slow and insignificant gains of ground. With time, descriptions of the campaign became increasingly romanticised and mythologised, with Sir Ian Hamilton recounting many years later, ‘like lightning they leapt ashore … so vigorous was the onslaught that the Turks made no attempt to withstand it and fled from ridge to ridge pursued by Australian infantry.
The 1918 battle of Hamel, was reported by the Age in glowing terms, ‘There was never a finer fight in the history of our army than fought by the Australians today’. Yet historian John Williams speculates that, ‘there is little to suggest in this dispatch that Hamel, fought on a relatively tiny scale, was a turning point in the war’. This assessment is supported by the primary evaluation of Gen. Blamey (Monash’s chief of corps staff) that it is an isolated instance of tanks doing well with our infantry. This certainly seems a reliable estimation considering his first-hand experience and earlier drastic failures of tanks as occurred at Bullecourt, where British tanks actually began firing upon the A.I.F.
It is likely that the media’s homogenised ‘victor’ interpretation was pressed on the Australian public to justify the 59 000 losses that deeply affected nearly every person in Australia. However, in exploring why, the political climate must be taken into account – the government’s desire to draw public attention away from the losses and military failures for protection of the integrity and loyalty to the British and to command support for recruitment campaigns and the war effort. The government’s sphere of influence extended to war reportage and government-employed war correspondents, such as C.E.W. Bean, who was ‘obliged to keep his reservations … to himself, while describing (for public consumption) the assembled ANZAC force in glowing terms. Australian interpretation and commemoration of the Anzac Experience has been driven by the media, which has maintained a stubborn disregard for the real experiences of soldiers in favour of projecting a positive nationalistic image.
For the Australian soldiers however, the so-called definitive and successful battles and campaigns of the war promised only horrific experiences and heavy losses. Statistically and realistically, Australia’s national debut at Gallipoli was a military disaster. Australian Forces sustained excruciating losses, with the tally for one battle reaching 1000 causalities in a single hour, and for all the years of the war, Australians incurred the largest number of casualties in proportion to enlistment numbers of all the countries of the British Empire. These statistics are not surprising considering soldiers’ accounts: ‘It rained men in this gully; all around could be seen the sparks where the bullets were striking…’ ‘Bullets were thumping into us in the rowing boat … there were many dead already when we got there … and wounded men were screaming for help’. Andrews described the inexperienced Australians undergoing the ‘awful terrain, the flies, the hand-to-hand trench-fighting, dysentery and British command bungling … trench lines of barbed wire backed by machine-guns’. Eight months later the troops evacuated, their sacrifices having gained no political or strategic advantage whatsoever.
The conditions on the Western Front were as bad. A hundred men a day were pointlessly lost to disease, due to poor diet and sanitation, lack of drinkable water not to mention the swarms of flies that plagued the battlefields. An Australian officer described the condition of his men as ‘thin, haggard and weak as kittens, and covered with suppurating sores’. The horror and memory remained for those who returned, as one daughter described of her father’s expression on a visit to the Australian War Memorial, ‘the look of total horror on his face was something I have never seen before and is a memory I will always keep’. In 1919, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported the deep psychological distress experienced both during and after the war: ‘no man entering the battle zone returned to the Commonwealth in a normal condition’.
For the first Anzacs, glory or triumph was not to be found on either on the cliffs of Gallipoli or in the foul trenches of the Western Front. For much of last century, little weight has been given to the truth of the tragedy and horror experienced by the Anzac soldiers, in Anzac commemoration.
Over time, and particularly in the last decade, an emphasis on the victories of 1918 has spawned a whole new ‘cheerleader’ interpretation of the Anzac Experience.
Uniting both images and interpretations has been a stereotype soldier drawn from a series of firmly entrenched qualities of the acclaimed Aussie ‘digger’. Resolute and heroic in both disaster and victory. The official war historian C.E.W. Bean did much to establish the romantic ‘digger’ image by identifying the ‘mettle of the men themselves’ and being ‘true to their idea of Australian manhood. This presumptuous stereotype has clearly re-emerged in the last decade, alongside interpretations of Anzac for nationalism and unity. These qualities have been rehashed continually through the words of the nation’s leaders, such as Paul Keating’s commemoration and indeed glorification of the Anzacs and of their ‘courage and ingenuity in adversity. He spoke also of the Anzacs’ discipline which derived ‘from the bonds of mateship and the demands of necessity.’ Clear parallels can be drawn and coined phrases recognised when comparing his sentiments to those of other contemporary commentators:
‘Those great values that unite us as Australians – values such as mateship, courage, initiative and determination’ – PM Howard
‘Sacrifice, camaraderie, gallantry and resourcefulness – underpin the spirit which our nation has been blessed to inherit’ – Major General Arnison
‘Never-say-die determination, that fired such tremendous determination and helped forge the Anzac Legend.’ – Premier Beattie
Yet revisionist historian Dale Blair asks, ‘Do we really expect that Australian soldiers drawn from different age-groups, from different work-places and social environments, religious denominations and national backgrounds would respond to their collective experience in exactly the same manner? Yet this is exactly what the ANZAC legend asks of us. By chronically defining these men to ten or so recurring words, we limit our understanding of them and their individual backgrounds and experiences, and of the significance of their fats. By professing their mateship and loyalty is to deny the conflicts that occurred between themselves and British command, and even with each other, which remain relevant today. By immortalising them for their bravery, manliness and fearless self-sacrifice, without acknowledgement of their own personal fears is to surrender to the stereotype their humanity, in essence their true ‘Australian-ness’ and the many different experiences that they faced.
I need look no further than my grandfathers, my own two ‘diggers’ for further verification of the shallowness of the Anzac stereotype, whose experiences reflect and yet are but two of the diverse and deep experiences of real Anzacs of World Wars 1, 2 and beyond.
The first came down with rheumatic fever soon after he began naval service, spending 6 months in hospital in a critical condition before being discharged and returning home without ever coming near a battle. The friend and comrade of his died earlier of the same disease. My grandfather never had the opportunity to participate in a battle, naval or otherwise.
The second was an intelligence officer who was forbidden to be within 150 miles of any known enemy.
‘He tried to volunteer for the coast watchers but, as a well-known mathematically gifted concert cellist, was put into naval intelligence and then seconded for the war to General Macarthur where he led a group of clever young men sifting the immense range of material to summarise for the chief what was going on. With every secret of the war in his head, he had to keep at least 150 miles from any known enemy activity – with the planes he traveled in having orders to change course or return to base if necessary. The only time that the enemy came closer was when a surprise aerial counter attack came within ten miles of headquarters. The way he told it, the boffins were issued small arms and ammunition – some with guns and some with ammunition, few with both and none with any expectation of doing any harm to the enemy! He was decorated by the Americans, receiving a Bronze Star – not for bravery but for totally dedicated, disembodied brain power.
Neither conformed to the stereotype of the courageous fighting figure, yet their contributions to the Second World War effort displayed the same importance, dedication and at times heroism as the heroic Anzac ‘digger’ ingrained permanently in Australians’ remembrance and commemoration.
As Australians, we are fortunate to have a large group of individuals who have played so important a role in shaping our history and indeed, our present and future. However, the nature of Australian commemoration has urged a very martial interpretation pushing the triumphs and successes of the war, and a popularised stereotype of the ‘digger’, with often a blatant disregard for historical accuracy and the wide range of contrary experiences. In a liberal democracy, we should be wary of political manipulation of the Anzac Legend – over-emphasising either the victims of imperial incompetence or the national victors of glorious wars. We should look beyond the widely accepted myth of the Anzacs. But most importantly we must rejoice in the variety of experiences and multiple interpretations of the Anzac Experience, for without this recognition, we will have lost touch with the depth and significance of our history.
Bibliography
The following materials were read and assisted in the development processes of the essay, though not all were referenced or directly used as quotes or sources.
Cochrane, P (20010 Australians at War, Sydney: ABC Books
Williams, J. (1999) Anzacs, the Media and the Great War. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press
Cochrane, P (1992) Simpson and the Donkey, Carlton: Melbourne University Press
Andrews, E.M. (1993) The Anzac Illusion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Blair, D (2001) Dinkum Diggers: an Australian Battalion at War. Carlton: Melbourne University Press
Bean, C.E.W. (1946) Anzac to Amiens. Canberra: The Australian War Memorial
Welborn, S (1982) Bush Heroes. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Moses, J and Pugsley, C. (2000) The German Empire and Britain’s Pacific Dominions 1871–1919. Claremont: Regina Books
Darlington, R and Hospodaryk, J. (1999) A History of Australia since 1901. Port Melbourne: Reed International Books
Burke, D (editor) 2002 Anzac Day Commemoration Booklet (Queensland). Aspley: Anzac Day Commemoration Committee (Queensland) Inc.
Clark, CMH (1987) A History of Australia. Vol 6 ‘The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green.’ 1916-1935. Carlton: Melbourne University Press.
McKernan, M (1980) The Australian People and the Great War, West Melbourne: Nelson
What can one say? Marvellous! I hope she’s majoring in history.
Lately I’ve been reading a few books on the experiences of the Australian POWs under the Japanes. These blokes took years after their return to recover from the diseases,beatings, torture, starvation, etc that they had undergone in the camps. Many or most of them suffered horendous nughtmares for years, but only their wives knew and their husbands told them in case people thought they were mad. Others didn’t tell people of their experiences when they got back because they thought they wouldn’t be believed. We are only now hearing from some of these blokes, when they’re in their eighties and nineties. (Though there are quite a few published memoirs that have been coming out since the 1950s.
Nice essay, unbelievably good for someone who was in high school at the time.
I must confess – and confirm the right wingers’ most hated suspicions of this site – that ANZAC Day fills me with nausea and loathing. Despite the lip service paid to commemorating the tragedy of war, the core of ANZAC day is clearly its glorification; a romantic and ‘patriotic’ deception the media and politicans are all to eager to sign up to.
In honesty I would much prefer if Armistice Day was given the greater share of attention. I have always felt that day has a far more sombre and respectful tone. Rather than talk of courage, battling odds and so on, it seems undercut with a recognition that no one’s armies are special, soldiers are just ordinary citizens, war is a tragedy and if we can’t guarantee it will never happen again, at least we can pray, and mourn the waste previous generations have both engendered and suffered from.
Truly, there are no winners in a war, but I feel ANZAC Day is an attempt to posit otherwise.
I hope she’s majoring in journalism.
Patrick, I too gain more meaning from Remembrance Day. As a native Brit, ANZAC day has somewhat less meaning. However I’ve always taken it that ANZAC day is there to commemorate those who came back, while remembrance day is there for those who didn’t. I celebrate both, in different ways.
As someone from a military family I am incapable of feeling “nausea and loathing” in either day. These are feelings I reserve for the armchair heroes who never served themselves and are so eager to see others do so today. I know well that my father and grandfathers did not fight to give me the opportunity to follow in their footsteps, but rather to make sure I would never have to do so.
Superb.
A segue into the post on the Andrew Norton’s blog and the costs, value, efficiency etc of higher education:
what is the value of the essay above in monetary terms?
what a great essay.
ANZAC day doesn’t annoy me a quarter as much as the anzac day football match.
History, journalism, whatever — the important thing is that she keeps writing!
It’s well past time for some rethinking of Gallipoli. I’m reading Robin Prior’s new book at the moment, Gallipoli: The End of the Myth, which reinforces what a complete shambles the whole thing was from its very conception. But I doubt it will be the end of the myth, because the pointlessness and the disasters are actually part of the myth. (And indeed, Prior isn’t really aiming his book at his fellow Australians but at his fellow historians.) This piece by Marilyn Lake is perhaps more what we need, asking why Gallipoli should be our founding myth at all, and whether we can come up with a better one.
Hannah’s Dad, the answer to your question is: the cost of a return flight to Turkey, accomodation during the Gallipoli commemoration there, and incidental expenses. That being the prize for the winning essays.
Yeah good work, gives me some faith in the next generation. She’s actually quite understated, as was the article in yesterday’s Age that Bolt then went on to do the usual right wing shut down on, with personal attacks on the author and her research career.
Beautiful. I have no loathing, but I do feel a growing discomfort as each ANZAC Day arrives, with fewer and fewer living ANZACs to throw cold water on our glorified reinterpretation of their experiences.
I like to hear the bugle at the footy game – 100,000 people in silent reflection – but the scarcely hidden parallel drawn between war and football does make me sick.
It’s a nicely written essay, particularly coming from someone who was then a high school student, and it well deserved the prize.
However, it overstates the extent to which WW1 (or indeed any war) is glorified these days. Watch any documentary or movie, read any book or article, and the horrors of war will be described in great detail. (As they should be.) This ain’t 1915 anymore, and quoting from jingoistic newspapers of the time is hardly evidence of current attitudes towards war.
The essay also quotes Keating, Howard, Beattie and Major General Arnison describing the soldiers’ sacrifice, determination, mateship, etc. Well, what do you expect them to say? All nations pay tribute to those who have fought on their behalf. Can you see Keating or Howard or Beattie denigrating our soldiers? Would you want them to?
Sorry Paulus [at #8] that is, at best, a part answer only.
Do you understand why?
I’m not trying to be condescending, but it seems that you have missed the point and I wonder if you realize what it is.
Once upon a time the ANZAC Myth was a stick used by the Right to beat the Left with accusations of shirking and disloyalty to Empire.
The rationale for that function collapsed at the end of the Vietnam commitment.
Ever since, so much cultural and emotional baggage has been loaded into the ANZAC story that it is in danger of collapsing under the weight.
Now the ANZAC myth can mean anything and everything.
It’s the perfect postmodern occasion of commemoration in that it commemorates cultural amnesia.
I was being flippant there, Hannah’s Dad. You’re operating under a false impression that Norton (or economists in general) can only see the value of things in monetary terms. And that’s just not true.
Sometimes there is a particular requirement to quantify costs and benefits in monetary terms, and economists are the people best qualified to do that, but it doesn’t mean that they are incapable of seeing beyond that framework. I’ve been reading Norton’s blog for a while, and he’s much more subtle and interesting than you give him credit for. Anyway, apologies to everyone for straying OT.
Incidentally, anyone who’s read a Flashman novel knows this isn’t unique to our time or place. Glorification of war heroes is surely a norm of every culture.
Or is ours the only culture with mates?
As others have noted, this is a sophisticated, articulate, and impressively confident response from a school girl. She deserves all the praise and money. However, if it were marked blind, she’d fail. The most wincing arguments of straw, backed by rhetoric she is still not mature enough to understand, and a journeyman’s grasp of the craft of using evidence.
Fab essay, and I rather liked Lake’s too. This kind of commentary lines up neatly with stuff like The One Day of the Year in my mind. Goes all Mythbustery on the negative aspects of troop-worship without denigrating the individual bravery and sacrifice of those who went.
Although apparently a certain class of online cretins lack the ability to see that. Urgh urgh urrrrrrggggghhhh why did I click over to Bolt’s blog post. Pass the brain bleach, please…
Herodotus @ 16, if it were marked blind, surely there’d be no way to judge the author’s ability to appreciate concepts based on their age…?
Actually Joanna’s essay only highlights what an uneducated bogan Professor Lake is.
Na. Ancient Greeks had mates. :)
Well what would one expect from a Greek chauvinist propagandist who libelled me personally and referred to my people as “the Syrians of Palestine”? I’m seeking legal advice about whether I can still sue after 2449 years.
Maybe she should have just cut-and-paste something together eh slimy?
Well picked FDB – was thinking the same myself.
I was just about to suggest that regarding the use of evidence, FDB.
It’s sad to see this site (and this topic) degenerate to the nitpicking and backbiting reactions to others comments which seems to be a trend in recent times. Even sadder to see the apology of Paulus@14 to Hannah’s Dad for the apparently unforgiveable sin of straying from the topic.
Way to raise the tone champ.
I always thought that on ANZAC day we remembered the efforts of the soldiers that fought for our country particularly at Gallipoli. Our soldiers did fight at Gallipoli didnt they??? Then why is it a myth?
Its a myth because a lot of what is believed to have happened at Gallipoli is bull-shit that everybody believes to be true. It’s in the detail of the story, Jamo @ 27. And don’t ask me to expatiate. If I could be bothered expatiating I would have put a post on my blog, but I haven’t, because I can’t be bothered.
And the meaning of the story.
The ‘myth’ refers to the public/media narrative surrounding the event – no-one’s stating that the ANZACs weren’t heroes by using the M word, and I think that’s where some confusion about this topic emerges.
Its all the other ideals that people project on the men and women who served (as a few have now pointed out, erasing their individuality*), and on the alleged meaning of the day, especially the recent attachment of excessive and maudlin sentimentality, the historically ignorant nationalist (note that I didn’t use patriotic, because it ain’t to my mind) chest-beating, the way participants in recent and current wars get almost ignored (what, are they not heroes?), and most importantly to the topic at hand, the way anyone who questions why some of us act the way we do about the day gets vilified by a large portion of their listeners. Don’t think, just salute, etc…
*the recurrent thought that these people were magically better than anyone currently alive also gives me the irrits. They were just like us.
#28, #29, #30, I think that that’s precisely the point of the essay – to unpack the mythology, and foreground the reality of what the actual ANZACs (e.g. Grandpa Sampford) actually did and experienced.
I am always struck by the media unearthing Anzac day stories about this ‘forgotton’ skirmish or an ‘unrecognised’ fighting unit or similar. Each one is usually a means to drag out the myths detailed in the essay. Like their obituaries of prominent but still alive folk kept on file, these April 25 stories are well researched but ultimately crafted to meet the demands of the myth.
Have you also noticed that Anzac day crowds are always bigger than previous years which sooner or later is going to have to be revealed as impossible.
More often than not there is also a controversial lead up. This year’s contretemps would probably have to be the RSL’s decision to ask descendants, young or older, be-medalled or otherwise, to march at the back of the parade. However a late starter would have to be a Newcastle Herald correspondent who has called the whole day into question quoting senior police as promising it to be the most alcohol fueled violent day of the year by far.
But I thought that part of the quixotic charm of the Australian obsession with Gallipoli was that was an unmitigated military disaster. We absolutely revel in descriptions of the squalor that the soldiers endured.
In fact, that’s what I’d have thought the mythology of Gallipolii was about: bravery and laconic humour in the face of overwhelming hardship.
A very good essay and a worthy winner. Different people have different esperiences even when being invovled in exactly the same thing.
Much to the dismay of many contributors here, fortunately ANZAC Day is growing in national importance for many very good reasons.
Tomorrow my Razorette will become the fifth genertion to particpate in the family and National traditions of ANZAC Day. I feel confident that it will be carried on for many more generations.
Lest we forget.
Newcastle Herald = like 1960s uni students in the play The One Day of the Year. Or just some coppers pulling a journo’s leg and he fell for it?
‘Its a myth because a lot of what is believed to have happened at Gallipoli is bull-shit that everybody believes to be true.’
With the greatest of repect that is nonsense. Most people know Gallipoli was a disaster but that doesnt stop us remembering and paying tribute to the soldiers who fought there. Because it wasnt their choice to go and fight.
It’s a great essay. Let me get that across first.
The only quibble I have—and I have it every year—is that ANZAC day isn’t an Australian national day, and the undeniable virtues of the Corps aren’t exclusively Australian. Ask the New Zealanders.
As to remembrance of war dead and their gritty determination, I also approve of one more recent addition to the ANZAC mythos: remembrance of the Turkish fallen.
I’m middle aged and its always been made clear to me that Gallipoli was a defeat. Churchill displayed an unfortunate willingness to engage the enemy on ground of their choosing. I actually remember that talk from primary school – the “why do we ‘celebrate’ a defeat?” talk. I’m sure they didn’t tell us about the Battle of Wazzir and so on, but that’s not the sort of thing we discuss with teh pre-pubescants is it? The only real popular “myth” I know of concerning Anzac Day is the one about the poms having an easy time of it compared to our lads.
The importance of the Australian contingent on the western front has been much more heavily debated. My own conclusion was that it made a real difference; didn’t quite compare to the French contribution though.
Correction.
ANZAC Day is gaining popularity for just about every conceivable reason.
Razor, would you please tell me your thoughts on:
a) why it’s growing in national importance, and
b)what you see those reasons as being?
I’m not being snarky; I’m genuinely interested.
Sorry, I meant why are believe it’s growing in importance, as in what makes you think it’s not becoming less important, etc.
I think the best lefty take would be not that the bravery of the soldiers shouldn’t be remembered, but that the stark lessons the calamity had for:
- our miserable one-sided relationship with ‘empire’
- the foolishness of following distant allies into conflicts with people we have no rational truck with
- the abject horror of war and need to use it only as a last, possible resort in situations of real, uncontested existential threat
etc etc do not appear to have been learned. Not one iota. And this in my view dishonours those awful deaths.
“people we have no rational truck with”
You mean beef, right?
Speaking of myths…
“Churchill displayed an unfortunate willingness to engage the enemy on ground of their choosing.”
On the contrary, the enemy was most keen to fight on the Western Front, where they had the best troops, the most artillery, and so on. The Gallipoli campaign was designed to find a way to defeat the enemy outside the ground of their choosing; had Gallipoli been a victory, the Turk capital was not far away at all.
By defeating the Turks they hoped to turn Bulgaria and Romania into allies, and bring them and Greece into the war, thus forcing the Germans to defend the long southern front of Austria-Hungary, or even force Austria-Hungary to an armistice, isolating Germany.
No doubt there are a few anti-Churchillians around as a result of the defeat. It’s part of the myth that our lads would have won it in five minutes were it not for the uncaring British high command; a myth perpetuated by the movie of the 1970s.
It’s worth noting that after the defeat Churchill resigned as a Cabinet Minister, took a commission and went to the trenches of the Western Front. This would be like having US SecDef Rumsfeld, or Australian Minister of Defence Reith, Hill, Nelson or Fitzgibbon resign and go and fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. We could I think forgive them their mistakes if they did that.
“it wasnt their [ANZACs'] choice to go and fight.”
They were volunteers. There was no conscription in Australia during the Great War. They eagerly volunteered, many falsifying their birth certificates and concealing medical conditions to get in.
“ANZAC day isn’t an Australian national day, and the undeniable virtues of the Corps aren’t exclusively Australian. Ask the New Zealanders.”
Or the Newfoundlanders, or Indians, or British, or French, all of whom contributed troops and suffered casualties; the British and French (including French West Africans) together suffered three times the dead of Australia and New Zealand. And indeed, a good portion of them were born in Britain and Ireland, some from Italy, some Russian, and so on. A good half of them would not have had “Aussie” accents at all.
Yes very good indeed and so young to know it in that way. It makes me think how difficult it was to approach Anzac with any neutrality over the past 12 years under the Howard govt. Howard harnessed the power of the myth and used to it promote a kind of shallow and peurile nationalism which was pretty stark in its intent. It found its expression in the exclusion of any other voices which argued against those very limiting aspects of the national character your student outlines above – terms like “mateship” (cause the national character is solely masculine, natch) and “sacrifice” (like no one else in the world does ‘sacrifice’) and ‘Australian’ (hello?? it was not just Australians. Not only NZ soldiers, as Liam says, but many nationas fought at Anzac Cove – it ws a French-Anglo operation in which French, British and Indians fought, as well as Australians fought.)
“For the Allies, 410,000 British including the Anzacs and Indians fought whilst over were 79,000 French troops fought at or around Cape Helles. The British and its dominion forces suffered 43,000 killed, of which 7,500 were Australians and 2,500 New Zealanders. The French in their sector lost 8,000 dead.”
In all of this simplification and homogenization, the realities of what the soldiers endured were lost. Howard was in the end, for all his posturing, so disrespectful to use the Anzac legend for his own political ends.
My fav war poet, Sassoon, did his fair share of speaking about myth and truth.
“Remorse” by Siegried Sassoon, 1918.
Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
Each flash and spouting crash, – each instant lit
When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders,
“Could anything be worse than this?” – he wonders,
Remembering how he saw those Germans run,
Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees:
Green-faced, they dodged and darted: there was one
Livid with terror, clutching at his knees …
Our chaps were sticking ‘em like pigs … “O hell!”
He thought – “there’s things in war one dare not tell
Poor father sitting safe at home, who reads
Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds.”
“Because it wasnt their choice to go and fight.”
Yes it was, Jamo. They were volunteers.
Since I can’t be bothered taking apart the Anzac myth shred by shred – to support my earlier remarks, jamo, razor et al, let me refer you to Bean’s Gallipoli Diary.,to be read slowly and with great care,which was written, uncensored, on the spot, and then compare it with the public accounts of Ashmead- Bartlett [?], and Bean’s official account, etc. Then you might see what I’m getting at.
When you call it a myth, some are going to interpret it as besmurching the ANZAC’s memory, and to think otherwise is naive. I wouldn’t dare tell anyone who had fought in war anything about their experience. I would just ask them open ended questions and listen.
I don’t think of the mistakes on ANZAC Day. In fact, I don’t think at all about the military command of the day. I think of the soldiers, and what they did, and how they approached it.
Kaishu, are you an ADFA graduate? Did we have this argument already in a long-ago tutorial?
I don’t think it was a strategically well conceived campaign, hindsight or no, and nor was Crete in the next episode. Churchill was, of course, a very successful leader in other ways, and I agree that his actions post Gallipoli could almost make one all misty-eyed for a more honourable age. Of course, the modern equivalent of an aristocrat can’t just go an “be” a lieutenant colonel nowadays.
patrickg – I believe it is growing in importance because most Australians now recognise ANZAC Day for what it should be – a commemoration of those who have served and sacrificed for this nation. The Left has learnt it’s mistakes from the Vietnam era and in general has apoligised for the despicable treatment of returning Veterans. ANZAC Day is not a glorification of war. Anyone who has half a brain knows of the wretched conditions in many battlefields (a mate of mine won the Military Cross in Rwanda – the conditions there were hell on earth), the terrible mistakes and the tragedies.
Should the 25th of April be our National Day of Commemoration? There are greater and much more succesful battles that Australians have been involved in (e.g. Defence of Tobruk was the first defeat of the Germans on land in WWII). But ANZAC was the first time since Federation that Australians from all colonies had gone ino battle in a major formation as Australians. The plan ws known by the Axis Powers. The navigation failed and they shouldn’t have landed at ANZAC Cove. The British leadership was crap. British and French losses were larger at the end of the peninsular. etc etc etc. but it was our first major mational military campaign. Once on land we weren’t pushed off and whether or not you think the Turks knew we were leaving, an amphibious withdrawal is just about the most difficult miltary operation there is – and we did it really really well.
The charachteristics displayd by the ANZACs at Gallipoli continue to define Australian Service Personel who are a reflection of Australian society – Mateship, humour in the face of adversity, courage, loyalty, dedication, a disdain for pomposity and fools, kicking the traces against authority, a fair go and a fair crack, professionalism, etc etc. This is worth remembering.
If you don’t like it – ignore it. if you wan tto protest it – that is your right for which many died to protect.
We will remember them.
Sean – I believe that the Dardenelles campaign was strategically sound but very poorly executed. Befroe it was tried the big strategic picture shows the stalemate on the Western Front. The Dardenelles was the route to the back door. We will never know, but before it was tried it had merit.
Atteh tactical level, there is reasonable evidence to suggest that New Zealanders actually reached the top of Chunik Bair, the vital ground in the defence of the peninsular but were unable to consoldate or hold. If they had it might have been a very different war. The same with the landings at Suvla Bay. Poor training and leadership meant an unopposed landing failed to press home both tactical and strategic advantage. We will never know. However, the lessons learned from those mistakes have produced what we now call manouvre warfare where leadership and training allow tactical and strategic oportuunties to be grasped at all levels.
Oh, and don’t insult me – I am not an ADFA Graduate, I am a RMC Duntroon graduate.
A very worthy essay by Joanna Sampford.
I read all previous contributions expecting to find some comment on the essayist’s reference to Paul Keating’s “commemoration and indeed glorification of the Anzacs and of their ‘courage and ingenuity in adversity.’” Hold on a minute, I thought, Keating had famously declared that he had ‘never been to Gallipoli and never would’ and thereby, in his inimitable fashion, antagonised many.
While Ms Sampford uses quotation marks she does not cite the source of her Keating quotes. They may well be from Keating’s address at the ceremony for the interment of the Unknown Australian Soldier, a speech widely praised and indeed one that I found very moving when I heard Keating deliver it all those years ago at the Australian War Memorial.
Anyhow, I decided to Google “Paul Keating AND Gallipoli” and lo and behold there were links to his speech at the launch of Graham Freudenberg’s, Churchill and Australia, in October 2008. http://www.theage.com.au/national/paul-keatings-speech-20081031-5f1h.html. Freudenberg had written of Gallipoli that “in an almost theological sense Australian Britons had been born again into the baptism of fire at Anzac Cove”. Keating’s response was that:
“Without seeking to simplify the then bonds of empire and the implicit sense of obligation, or to diminish the bravery of our own men, we still go on as though the nation was born again or even, was redeemed there. An utter and complete nonsense. For these reasons I have never been to Gallipoli and I never will.”
These particular words were not available to Ms Sampford when she wrote her essay but I do not find any inconsistency in Keating’s position over the years. Therefore, Ms Sampford’s assertion that Keating’s remarks are “clear parallels” to those of John Howard (& others) would rankle with Keating. Howard shamelessly politicised the ANZAC myth.
Keating has said elsewhere that the Gallipoli campaign was an exercise in nationalism, while Kokoda was more patriotic, with Australians fighting for Australian ideals, not for the empire.
Worthy sentiment, Howard C.
But isn’t that exactly what Ashmead-Bartlett, Bean, Murdoch, etc., etc. did when they set about to create the myth for their readers far away on the other side of the world?
The myth isn’t what the soldiers did, it is what others said they did, always with an intention of telling less than, and more than, the truth.
The received view of ANZAC was created between 1915 and 1918 long before any but a tiny minority of soldiers returned to Australia to tell their side of the story.
Well done. I must contest the Monash assertion though. He continually refused to bow to the English. He constantly bucked the end. He was always doomed to failure, apparently, though he had great success. He was never supposed to ‘get to where he did’. His Jewish backgound was constantly brought up in this cynicism.
‘No man is a hero in his own country’
“I wouldn’t dare tell anyone who had fought in war anything about their experience. I would just ask them open ended questions and listen.”
I agree. When I work with traditional land owners of this country I do exactly that.
I respectfully disagree with you there about the commemoration aspects Razor, however I don’t feel confident speaking for the people in Australia of what they make of the day. I believe different people make many different things of it, but I will say I think you are turning a blind eye if you believe politicians of all stripes haven’t mined this for everything they can.
See I don’t think these things are:
a) necessarily demonstrated at ANZAC cove any more than anywhere else, and
b) particularly Australian traits at all.
This I think is the ‘myth’ that people are talking about, and at the risk of pissing you off more than I may have already (and I truly don’t intend to), the idea that these traits are especially Australian, and indeed that idea that Australians are special for anything strikes me as the other side of the racism coin.
When John Howard used the ANZAC as part of a panegyric of Australian Specialness I felt very uncomfortable for exactly this reason, and I fear that much of the rhetoric I see on ANZAC day is the same kind of rhetoric that hoons in Cronulla were screaming as they ran about in Australian flags beating people.
I’m not saying these two things have to go together, but I think unfortunately that they tend too, or rather are gleefully mashed together by politicians, journalists, etc.
“Kaishu, are you an ADFA graduate? Did we have this argument already in a long-ago tutorial?”
Sean, neither ADFA nor Duntroon for me, I may have felt the weight of a pack once, but I worked for my living :p
“I don’t think it was a strategically well conceived campaign, hindsight or no”
Nor I. But I do think that had it not been carried out, then military historians would be saying, “if only Churchill’s plan to seize the Dardanelles had been tried, it might have shortened the war, it was irresponsible and cowardly not to try.”
“Of course, the modern equivalent of an aristocrat can’t just go an “be” a lieutenant colonel nowadays.”
Churchill wasn’t an aristocrat, he was a Member of Parliament. His commission was not a new one out of nowhere, it was a reactivation of his commission from 1895. He joined up in 1894, and was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in 1895. He fought at Malakand in India in 1897, at Omduran in the Sudan in 1898. Acting as a journalist but at the same time fighting in the Boer War, he was made prisoner by the Boers, but escaped and travelled 300 miles to a Portugese port. He rejoined the army and marched with them on Pretoria, where he and his cousin went to his old PW camp to liberate it. In 1900 he retired from regular service and joined the Yeomanry, and was promoted Captain in 1902. In 1905, he was promoted Major.
In the Commonwealth Parliament, there are rather few MPs with any kind of military service behind them. Mike Kelly is about the only one – and they’ve just given him “Defence Support” – barracks and bevvies. Few MPs have any kind of military experience behind them. So they couldn’t just take up their old commission the way Churchill did.
Nonetheless, many could sign up if they wanted to. But they’d rather send others to fight than do it themselves.
I’ve said many times before, life looks different depending whether you’re sitting behind a desk or standing in front of it. I think we’d see rather different debates about defence spending, whether to go to war and what strategies to use, etc, if a few more of our MPs had felt the weight of a pack, had got constipation from ration packs, had to polish their boots, iron everything, wax the floor, clean their rifles, sweat in a jungle or desert and got chafing from ill-fitting webbing, and so on. Some experience of the two-way rifle range would help, too – but it’s not vital, just the training gives them a better idea than they have as accountants, union officials and so on. It gives them some empathy with the poor bastards who get sent to fight.
That empathy can help, and it can hinder. Churchill’s empathy led him to consider any mad scheme that crossed his desk or his mind, anything that promised to shorten the conflict in either of the two World Wars. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it was his fault, sometimes it wasn’t.
But this notion that every success Australian soldiers ever had is a credit to them, and every failure someone else’s fault – it’s a nonsense. Aussies are quite capable of ballsing things up magnificently, and other countries can do brilliant things. Well, except for the Americans.
Just thought to add – nothing special about military service, I just think that, well, a commentator put it well in the US elections a while back, that there’s a difference between those who shower before work and those who shower after it. I expressed it as the difference between how life looks from behind a desk or in front of it.
We’ve very few MPs who’ve packed shelves, or held a brickie’s trowel, or hefted around sheets of metal, or dug fence holes, or anything like that. The Lib-Nats are mostly former accountants and lawyers, and the Labor lot are mostly former union officials, research assistants to MPs, that sort of thing. So there’s a useful perspective that’s missing.
A perspective which would alter policy fundamentally, I think – including how ANZAC Day is presented, and whether anyone has to celebrate it somewhere dusty overseas.
Casey # 45. Siegfried Sassoon greatly influenced Wilfred Owen and other war poets to use their poetry to influence the politicians and civilians who “sitting safely at home” talked of the glories of war and the ennobling experience of fighting for one’s country. Strict censorship of letters sent from the battlefields made it extremely difficult for soldiers to voice their true emotions about the futility and brutality of war. Poetry could more easily get past the censors and became a powerful tool of protest. Emails, SMS and You Tube are to an extent the modern day equivalents of the protest poetry of WWI. I find Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” even more powerful than Sassoon’s “Remorse” quoted by Casey @ 45. The last verse with its latin tag “It is sweet and meet to die for one’s own country. Sweet! and Decorous!” powerfully excoriates politicians and potentates who use that venal appeal to young men to fight for the honour and glory of their country.
Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen 1917.Stanza 4
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
My view is that ANZAC Day is about honouring the courage, spirit and mateship of our armed forces and that Remembrance Day is about reminding us that such stuff should never ever be squandered.
And never mind ANZAC Day, one of the most charged moments I’ve ever experienced has been in the Melbourne CBD as the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month ticks over.
Everything stops. Trams, cars, cyclists, pedestrians. (Baffled visitors twitch and wonder if it is some flas hmob thing). For one minute we think about time stopping for our ancestors who fought the two most terrible wars ever. No cheering or parades. Just an eerie and thought-provoking halt. When it happens, shivers go up my spine and no one can think of any songs to sing.
One of best things I can say about Australia is that we have no popular martial songs and that all our well-known military heros tend to be healers, not killers. Simpson and his bloody donkey, Weary Dunlop, etc.
This is in no way a reflection on the professional Australian military – but let’s face it, Australians can be good soldiers, are often great warriors but basically the whole military caste and tradition thing just doesn’t click with this country.
But risking your own arse to pull your mate out of a swamp of shell-stirred shit, blood and mud and then bullshitting to your cynical commanding officers about what happened is what this nation was really founded on.
Y’know Tosca there were other war poets beyond Owen, Sassoon and Brooke (Killer Chambers name though)
Like this black flock
“We’re not making a sacrifice.
Jesus, you’ve seen this war.
We are the sacrifice.”
— Ulster regiment, marching toward the Somme
Or like this dude, another member of the British Army’s most artistic infantry regiment ever.
“August 6, 1916.—Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.”
…but I was dead, an hour or more.
I woke when I’d already passed the door
That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road
To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed.
Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,
I saw new stars in the subterrene sky:
A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars,
And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars.
I felt the vapours of forgetfulness
Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless
Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake,
And, stooping over me, for Henna’s sake
Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back
Breathless, with leaping heart along the track.
After me roared and clattered angry hosts
Of demons, heroes, and policeman-ghosts.
“Life! life! I can’t be dead! I won’t be dead!
Damned if I’ll die for any one! €? I said….
Cerberus stands and grins above me now,
Wearing three heads—lion, and lynx, and sow.
“Quick, a revolver! But my Webley’s gone,
Stolen!… No bombs … no knife…. The crowd swarms on,
Bellows, hurls stones…. Not even a honeyed sop…
Nothing…. Good Cerberus!… Good dog!… but stop!
Stay!… A great luminous thought … I do believe
There’s still some morphia that I bought on leave. €?
Then swiftly Cerberus’ wide mouths I cram
With army biscuit smeared with ration jam;
And sleep lurks in the luscious plum and apple.
He crunches, swallows, stiffens, seems to grapple
With the all-powerful poppy … then a snore,
A crash; the beast blocks up the corridor
With monstrous hairy carcase, red and dun—
Too late! for I’ve sped through.
O Life! O Sun!
- Robert Graves
OK, not his greatest poem but I’d to see what any of us can come up, barely out of our teens with our flesh ripped open, bones chopped and guts slashed by white hot metal fragments moving beyond the speed of sound.
“morphine! And a dictaphone too.”
Kiashu’s is an interesting point.
Indeed, the Western Front was not the place in 1915 for the Allies to defeat Germany. Also overlooked in these discussions was the dire condition of Russia. German strategy in 1914 imagined a quick victory against France in the West and a desperate holding action against the Russians. In fact, Germany slashed the Russians to ribbons.
Gallipoli was conceived to support and to supply the beleaguered Russians via the Black Sea. Thus the stalemate of the Western Front would be alleviated by a revivification of the Russian effort on the Eastern Front.
The laughable inadequacy of the Allies’ plan to achieve this worthwhile military objective is too well known to be repeated here.
One aspect of the Gallipoli campaign that is not often discussed is the role of the German Commander of the campaign, Otto Liman von Sanders. Interestingly, despite holding the enormous tactical advantage of the higher ground and a much more secure supply route than the Allies, Liman von Sanders never attempted to drive the invaders off the Gallipoli Peninsula. Rather, he allowed them to remain there as long as they wanted, stewing in their own juices.
Although Germany did not choose Gallipoli as a fighting ground, it proved to be very advantageous for the Germans. And it might be argued that Liman von Sanders did not want this advantage to be terminated by wasteful heroics.
Thus it can be argued that the Germans perceived the Gallipoli campaign to be for the Allies an expensive, embarrassing and inevitably futile effort that detracted from their military efforts elsewhere, and therefore well worth prolonging at very little cost to the Germans.
#59 Tosca — Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” makes an appearance in Paul Fussell’s essay about attitude changes which the war produced –
THE FATE OF CHIVALRY AND THE ASSAULT UPON MOTHER 1988.
http://web.archive.org/web/20021225165210/http://faculty.smu.edu/bwheeler/chivalry/fussell.html
Yes indeed Tosca. Thanks for your great posts by the way. You are right of course. Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est certainly did its work and wiped away the early idealism of the battlefront. And you can’t go past the georgian verse of a forever young Rupert Brooke who died of a mosquito bite on the island of Lemnos (on his way to Gallipoli) for that kind of early romanticism.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
that is forever England. There shall be
in that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
a dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
a body of England’s breathing English air,
washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home…
His Georgian verse is poignant, in its articulation of an imagined world that was lost on those battlefields. Juxtaposed, Brooke and Owen reveal the end of a way of life and the beginning of the uncertainty that was the 20th century.
Ah Rupert Brooks. Thing is Rupe if you died in France then it’d still be, um, France.
.
We can criticize WWI all we want but one thing you have to admit is that it wrought great advances in technology and social relations. It was a whole new way of looking at human resource management.
You might be right Adrien. There may well have been a Rupert Brooks died in France. There probably is. But Rupert Brooke, on the other hand, died in a hospital ship anchored near Sykros and Lemnos on 23 April, of a mosquite bite, and is buried on Sykros. He was on his way to Gallipoli.
“I’m not saying these two things have to go together, but I think unfortunately that they tend too, or rather are gleefully mashed together by politicians, journalists, etc.”
So what? To take something as perceived to go together will get you nowhere.
Kiasho said “In the Commonwealth Parliament, there are rather few MPs with any kind of military service behind them”
Barnaby Joyce and Stuart Robert on the coalition side. At last on Green MP. Not entirely sure about the government ranks.
Also: Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro) was an officer for twenty years, retiring as Colonel.
There are quite a few in the NSW Parliament: the Libs’ Charlie Lynn was a twenty-year career soldier, and Labor’s Lynda Voltz MLC was one of the first female regulars to graduate from Kapooka.
Working for a living, either the military version or the civilian version, is overly romanticised and very much a part of what this essay talked about. Because intel don’t ‘shower after work’ either – but their contributions to was and society aren’t as good? As effective? It’s generally a nice way of dismissing anything that isn’t grounded in the overly masculine ‘real work’ concept. It’s also a nicely middle-class conceit – how many working class people get to talk about how ‘rewarding’ and ‘enlightening’ physical labour is? Why not ask how many politicians have cleaned for a living?
this essay is just disgusting. Anzac day doesn’t glorify war or sanitize the difficulties faced by our service men and women. Anzac day commemorates the sacrifice by them so that you left wing whiners and whingers can actually have a say without fear of retribution.
This girl is clearly a product of a very flawed education system that indoctrinates students with a negative view of our traditions and history. Shame on you all who encourage such thought.
Politicians and the remembrance thing. Minister for such things, Warren Snowden has just recently called for the exhumation of Australian diggers who died at Frommelles in a futile advance with British forces. Some 190 Australians and even more Brits were buried by the Germans in a mass grave which has been located.
Exhumation and identification through DNA testing of relatives will come at some considerable cost. Media accounts of this decision could be said to have been wrapt in the ‘myth’ that has permeated this post. No questionning of the costs, other than that they will be shared with the Brits, has been forthcoming. What of those with no living relatives, hence no definitive identification?
The enemy, the Germans, apparently took particular care to collect and forward personal items and keep records, and we might presume that they buried their fallen enemy with some dignity, but this usually doesn’t fit with the myth.
So who makes the decision to disturb their resting place and put these corpses through this exhausting and far from definitive process? My understanding is that it is the Rudd Government in solemn consultation with those few (to date) relatives who know of Fromelles. And of course the myth with some help from past practice relating to War Graves. As a taxpayer in global financial trouble, I think we have a right to know what lies behind Snowden’s largesse.
Dear all,
It was a blast from the past to see an old high school essay – penned when I was just 15 years of age – on this blog, appropriately on ANZAC day 2009. I hadn’t given the significance of this day a single thought – being buried under a pile of law readings – until a uni friend directed me to it this evening. (In answer to some of your posts, after a brief first-year flirt with Journalism and Literature, I settled on a Law/Arts degree majoring in Political Science and Philosophy).
It is an odd sensation being ‘blogged about’ for the first time, and I read through all 69 comments with a keen interest. I’ve enjoyed the debate, the exchange of ideas, and taken on board your constructive criticisms. Needless to say, the essay should be taken in the spirit of the much younger self which conceived it, but I am quite chuffed that it is a piece that some of you have found thought-provoking and relevant today.
Seven years on, rereading this discussion, the message that still strikes a chord with me is that the ANZAC legend simplifies the diverse experiences of our men and women of war. While the argument that the ANZAC story has been coopted and politicised by parliamentarians and media is clearly (and rightfully) debated, it should not be doubted that we are losing the rich tapestry of experiences in favour of a handful of neatly-packaged, consumer (and media)-friendly narratives. In this mass public ‘forgetting’ I think we do the greatest disservice to our war veterans. This was the main thrust of my essay.
“By chronically defining these men to ten or so recurring words, we limit our understanding of them and their individual backgrounds and experiences, and of the significance of their feats. By professing their mateship and loyalty is to deny the conflicts that occurred between themselves and British command, and even with each other, which remain relevant today. By immortalising them for their bravery, manliness and fearless self-sacrifice, without acknowledgement of their own personal fears is to surrender to the stereotype their humanity, in essence their true ‘Australian-ness’ and the many different experiences that they faced.”
In the three weekends I spent at the Griffith Uni library in the summer of 2002/2003, when all my friends were at the beach or shopping, it was the power of these different stories that struck me, and inspired me to continue through with the essay. They were stories of men who were frightened, disillusioned, critical, humorous, irreverent, ironic. I remember reading the ‘real story’ behind our beloved, mythologised Simpson, who was a British chap who jumped ship in order to get back to Britain, found himself in the army corps, volunteered for the medical team because he didn’t want to face battle, and bought a donkey so that he wouldn’t have to carry a stretcher. This is my imperfect memory of what I read 7 years ago, but it strikes me as so much more human, than the myth I learned in school history classes.
It was also the central message I took away from the 10-day trip to Turkey and Gallipoli that was the reward for lost summer weeks. We visited so many battlefields, memorials, museums and gravestones, hearing not only the Australian, but also Turkish experiences of the battles. We absorbed so many stories, or pieces of stories, and got a feel for the different personalities who shared those fateful weeks in 1915. Some of my favourite messages were often the simplest, most understated; my favourite headstone, at ANZAC Cove, bore the simple inscription “Well done Ted”. These were at odds with the sweeping metaphors and generalisations that were uttered at the dawn service at ANZAC Cove, amidst the cheering, chanting of nationalistic anthems. I remember feeling such sorrow at this contrast, the deep sense of loss, and the disappointment in feeling that some of the arguments in my essay had been realised, that I shed a quiet tear in the bus on the way back from Lone Pine – the only time I cried on the trip.
While there are of course several other arguments and themes in the essay and ensuing comment posts that I could reflect on, this ‘right of reply’ has been an overwhelmingly personal one. Seven years on, I still feel that if we shared and celebrated the individual stories, in all their diversity, we could not only move beyond the politics and nationalism; we would all come closer to our history.
Cheers, Jo
“The Left has learnt it’s mistakes from the Vietnam era and in general has apoligised for the despicable treatment of returning Veterans – Razor
That’s a bit more myth than reality.
Most of the “despicable” treamtent for returning soldiers was simply the paucity of support for them to get back to normal life.
Good on you Jo – you’ve got a great flair for history – so keep writing, please.
I’ve just done up a short post in tribute to my Grandmother’s Uncle, killed in the Gallipoli landing on 25-4-1915.
In truth, we had that before 1915.
And it is nonsense to say that the war aims of Britain in WWI included the defence of civil rights. A perusal of the secret treaties made between Britain and other combatants clearly indicates that the Great War was joined for old-fashioned imperialist values, which included denial of the civil rights of others.
Whether they knew it or not, the First AIF fought to achieve those shameful war aims.
And, of course, it should not be forgotten that the RSL, the government-sponsored mouthpiece and ex-military lobby group, were not above a dose of retribution of their domestic enemies right here in Australia.
# 75 Katz <a href=”http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/04/24/lest-we-keep-on-forgetting/#comment-702516″.Apr 26th, 2009 at 8:23 am
That of course, doesnt guarantee we would have civil rights for all time. Had the Prussian militarists won WWI they would not have hesitated in throwing their weight around in the Pacific. One reason Nipponese war planners ruled against a full-scale attack on AUS was the reputation for military hardiness that the original ANZAC had won in Gallipoli France.
The tree of liberty was, sad to say, watered with the blood of martyrs.
Katz says:
No, thats false and a smear on the 1st AIF’s good name. THe main British war aim was, and remained until Ike left SHAEF, the containment of Prussian militarism in Europe and abroad. This was at base a national interest security policy, not “old-fashioned imperialist values”. Of course Prussian militarists were not exactly considered the friends of civil liberty.
The AIF were worried about “the rights of small nations” like Belgium and Australia. Had the Prussians won the war in Europe they most certainly could have made life more difficult for Australia, given a submarine base or two in ex-British colonies. Their worries were well vindicated by the subsequent behaviour of the Nazis, heirs to Prussian militarism.
No doubt the UK more or less absent-mindedly picked up a few more colonies in the aftermath of WWI. But these were the spoils, not the aims, of the war.
Katz,
Of course Britain’s war aims were not purely altruistic. No nation’s strategic motivations ever are.
But it’s the consequences that matter. What do you think would have been the outcome for civil rights in Serbia, Belgium and France if those nations had been conquered by Germany? Sure, Imperial Germany wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the Nazis. But there would still have been a reduction in civil rights in those countries.
On the other hand, look at what happened after we won. While the peace settlement can be criticised on many grounds, it led to a blossoming of civil rights in Germany and Austria — for a few years, anyway.
And the Australians of that period were justified in regarding the defence of Britain and the Empire as their own defence. If Britain had been completely defeated (perhaps by submarine blockade), part of the peace settlement might have involved transferring Australia, or part of Australia, to German control.
This is not completely far-fetched: the Germans were obsessed by the ‘unfairness’ of the unequal distribution of colonial territories, and would certainly have made demands if they had won. And they already had German settlers in some parts of Australia, giving them a pretext.
Hey, it’s essentially what Britain herself had done in 1763 when ‘New France’ (Quebec) was grabbed as part of a peace settlement imposed on France.
So in my view we were quite right in joining the Allies in the fight against the Central Powers.
“Most people know Gallipoli was a disaster but that doesnt stop us remembering and paying tribute to the soldiers who fought there. Because it wasnt their choice to go and fight.”
Oh, OK then our foundation myth is about a bunch of pathetic losers who were lead by the nose to be slaughtered for no good reason alongside even larger numbers from other countries. Funny but I didn’t hear the ground announcer at the MCG on Saturday refer to that aspect. Still I guess you must be right as that is what happened.
“The Left has learnt it’s mistakes from the Vietnam era and in general has apoligised for the despicable treatment of returning Veterans.”
Now there’s a myth.
Nabs, you might also have read Robert Graves’ account of his WW1 experiences, “Goodbye to All That” in which there were some funny bits ie, the two Welsh privates up before the CO:
And the priceless reply:
(‘Fragging’ appears to be an old concept.)
Shorter Strocchi: I haven’t read the secret treaties.
British intentions have very little to do with results. The world changed immeasurably between 1914 and 1919. The British governing classes recognised that the Empire had to adjust its aims and methods in light of the fact the Britain had lost its dominance by 1919.
I’d like a return to the ancient times where those who stired-up the populace and raised the armies were actually at the battles or in the front line.
*@#*&#$& politicians and the lethal games that they play.
ranter @ 82,
Couldn’t agree more. Trouble is, when the stirrers up are people like Chimpo and Ratty Howard, if they didn’t purposely shoot themselves in the foot during training, the country (here or good ole US of A) probably couldn’t afford the laundry bill for shit-stained and pissed-stained uniforms.A warning siren would probably have been enough to loosen their bowels.
“But risking your own arse to pull your mate out of a swamp of shell-stirred shit, blood and mud and then bullshitting to your cynical commanding officers about what happened is what this nation was really founded on.”
Lest we forget Nabakov’s ability to capture all the good and rot in a single moment.
Actually its founded on the theft of Aboriginal land. Lest we forget the ability to kid ourselves at every turn.
Bulldust.
The Versailles Diktat imposed collective blame on unborn generations of Germans and a fine of 20,000,000,000 gold marks, which was more gold than existed in the world at that time.
The German people were to be permanently impoverished and shackled to a taxation system that was designed to enrich the governments of Britain and France.
Would the Germans have been any better? Certainly not. They’d already showed their form with an equally rapacious Treaty of Brest Litovsk imposed on Russia.
But let’s not kid ourselves that the Allies were morally superior to the Germans.
The one saving grace of ANZAC Day for me has been the unusual hat-tip to the ‘enemy’, aka. the Turks. When I went to Gallipolli, one of the highlights was visiting their war cemetary and hearing their side of the story. I learned, for example, that Mustafa Kemal (Attaturk) defied orders from the Germans in order to retake the highest ground from the Kiwis and drive the ANZACs back on to the beach – a decision that certainly saved the Peninsula, complete with tens of thousands of German troops down the line. I learned that Kemal literally threw everyone – even the unarmed cook – at the ANZACs in order to achieve this, because he couldn’t wait for his reinforcements to arrive. I learned that Kemal was struck by shrapnel, only saved by his watch in his breastpocket, and had his attendants hoist him up “weekend at Bernie’s”-style to keep up troop morale. Their heroism in defence of their homeland was truly unebelievable, and something more and more Australians are appreciating thanks to this strange space in the ANZAC Myth that I don’t see elsewhere.
And then to read the incredible words of reconciliation from Attaturk a few years later – “your sons are now our sons too” – that gets to you. Would we have said that to the Japanese if a few of their men had landed at Darwin? Not bloody likely.
josh lyman @ 87.
Might I suggest there is a similar respect among Australian and British North African veterans for Rommel’s Afrika Korps, from what I’ve heard?
JL @ 87 Have you been studiously ignoring the public recognition of the Turks as honorable enemies for at least the last 25 years?
patrickg @ 57 “I think you are turning a blind eye if you believe politicians of all stripes haven’t mined this for everything they can.”
I’m not turning a blind eye to anything. Politics have and always will play politics with ANZAC Day. Kevin Rudd tried to move a Dwan Service!
Everyhting is politics for politicians. Even the decision to not play politics is a political decision. Every action and inaction (Latham and the Boxing Day Tsunami) is politics.
The austrlaian people are smart enough to know this and to be able to give their own meanings – negative and positive, to ANZAC Day.
There must be something positive about it for 40,000 to drag themselves down to Kings Park in Perth at 5.30 am.
Paul @ 88: well you might, it’s not something I’ve come across.
Razor @ 89: not at all, sorry if my post implied this was a brand new phenomenon. I do think it’s growing though, in part because most Aussie tours of Gallipoli include the Turkish side of the story and more Aussies are taking those tours.
To be clear though, I don’t think it’s just a recognition of their ‘honour’ in battle. What I’m grasping at (badly it seems) is the affection between the two countries. From my position of ignorance, it seems an unusual and unlikely outcome of us invading their patch.
I hadn’t heard that one before, Josh. Are you sure this isn’t apocryphal?
I only ask because it’s the same as the story of El Cid, who in the medieval legend was propped, dead, on his horse, to intimidate the enemy and win victory at the siege of Valencia. Of course he was the Christian warlord expelling the Muslims, but otherwise, sounds like a familiar tale.
jl @ 91 you are probably unaware of the friendships between Australian and US Vietnam vets and their VC and NVA adversaries.
@92
We were told the same story when we visited there in 2002. I didn’t have any reason to not believe it. IIRC I thought the saving item was a cigarette case but I may be getting that confused with some movie or other.
I recall learning at quite a young age that the old ANZACs had a long-standing respect for the Turkish troops expressed in phrases like “the Turk was a good soldier”. I don’t think it’s just a phenomenon of recent decades.
Mutual respect is older than that, Paul.
CJ Dennis, The Moods of Ginger Mick (1915)
All I meant in my #37 comment was that if any country has a right to claim the Dardanelles Campaign and the Gallipolli landings as a formative moment in a national story, it’s Turkey. Including them (and everyone else who fought on the Peninsula) on ANZAC day is the least we can do.
josh lyman @ 87. We accorded the Japanese sub-mariners full military funeral honours after their ill-fated attack in Sydney Harbour in 1942. Newspaper coverage from the time is included in the midget-sub display at the Australian War Memorial. Not surprisingly, many Australians objected but the Military were insistent that the Japanese sub-mariners showed extraordinary bravery and deserved to be accorded full Military honours.
More recently,(?last year) when the missing Japanese Midget-sub was found just north of Sydney the utmost courtesy was extended to the surviving relatives. The decision to leave the wreck as a War Grave was reached in consultation with them.
Liam @ 92: except Kemal wasn’t dead… as Patrick says at 94, that’s what the tour guide (a Turkish Mal Meninga, with the most absurdly ocker accent combined with Turkish melody) told me. It wasn’t the Internet though, so it might not be true.
Razor @93: fair point, and indeed it holds to some extent for us civvies as well (ie. recognition we had no right to be there in the first place, although that’s probably less accepted across the political spectrum than Gallipoli). But Vietnam isn’t our founding myth, so IMHO it’s less significant. But maybe I’m just splitting hairs.
On another point: I’m not complaining, but why do countries around the world that we have attacked let us build war cemetaries on their land? It does seem remarkably hospitable of them!
Patrick @ 94: watches, cigarette cases. My memory isn’t that good!
Jo @ 72
On the Australian War Memorial site http://www.awm.gov.au/ (bottom of home page) there is an ANZAC blog. Seems that a bit of a bond is happening between ANZAC Competition winners. According to one post “the Simpson winners are going to have a triumphant return to Gallipoli for the 100th anniversary in 2015 – so start saving up some money!
Also, ..on.. facebook, we’ve started a group called the Simpson Family where we post our photos from the trip and just keep in touch – we’d love for you guys to join too.”
Bulldust yourself, Katz.
As Niall Ferguson points out, Germany’s national debt in 1921 (Versailles obligations + all other debt) was equivalent to 160% of GNP. Britain’s national debt in that year was 165% of GNP. In some ways, as Ferguson points out, the victors of WW1 (apart from the US) came out of it economically worse off than the vanquished.
And the annual rate of repayment was not crushing. As a % of GDP, it was far more lenient than the Germans had themselves imposed on the French in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. The French just paid up and got on with life. The Germans, by contrast, have never stopped bleating about the alleged unfairness of Versailles — and they evidently still have gullible believers.
The Germans deserved to pay because of the vast economic damage the war had inflicted: in particular, the destruction of 15 million tons of merchant shipping, and the devastation of northern France.
Oh, and “collective blame” was imposed on the Central Powers because they, um, actually started the war. Fair’s fair.
“Because it wasnt their choice to go and fight”
Actually, I’m pretty sure there have been conscientious objectors in every war, certainly over the past 100 years. They
Sorry, the baby leaned on my computer keyboard as I was typing.
My point is that going to war and killing someone doesn’t make you a hero, it makes you a murderer. Taking a life is appalling under any circumstances, but it is just as bad to do so because someone told you that you should. If you did that in civilian life you’d get locked up along with the person who provided the impetus for the crime.
The true bravery in war years is exhibited by those who conscientiously object, and in doing so faced public condemnation as well as actual prison time. To stare down the authorities like that; to risk your future in a way that many men did in wars prior to Vietnam (and some did in the Vietnam war as well) because you didn’t agree with their sodding war was bloody gutsy.
Amen to that.
Liam,
in a radio story last week they said Kemal was injured (saved by his watch) and fought on – for reasons mentioned earlier – then sought treatment more than a day later.
El Cid: have you seen the early-60s Hollywood fillum? Sophia Loren…… (OK, I was but a teenage boy, …..)
Relevance?
The issue is about victors’ justice and the relative moral standing of the war aims of the two alliance systems. A half-attentive reading of my earlier comments would reveal that I stipulated that both sides were rapacious.
Where in the publicly acknowledged war aims of the British was rapacity stipulated?
Ergo, all who served under British colours served for motives that were not revealed to them.
“The Versailles Diktat imposed collective blame on unborn generations… and a fine of 20,000,000,000 gold marks, which was more gold than existed in the world at that time.
The … people were to be permanently impoverished and shackled to a taxation system that was designed to enrich the governments…”
Zonkers! You mean to tell me that Obama was the chief negotiator at Versailles, too?
I knew the guy was smooth, but I never guessed *how* smooth…
Japerz strikes again!
Good to see you mate.
# 81 Katz Apr 26th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
So far as I am aware the UK did not have a secret treaty or secret clauses in public treaties with France or Russia to carve up the Central Powers empires, in the event of a successful prosecution of another general European war.
So “old fashioned imperialist values” are a non-starter as causal agents for British entry into the war. (Italy’s intervention in the War is another story.)
What worried the British war planners was the Kriegsmarine, and rightly so. Its High Seas Fleet was the only military instrument that could wreck the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet. As it nearly did in Jutland.
And its U-boat fleet was the only military instrument that could wreck the Merchant Marine and starve Britain into submission. As it nearly did in two Battles for the Atlantic.
That is why the British General Staff were so skittish about “saving the Channel Ports”. Which explained the positioning of British Armies in Northern France.
A fear shared by the British general public who voiciferously supported the Naval Arms Race. (Dreadnought League slogan: “we want eight and we won’t wait!”) The Tommie in the Street knew that German control of the Channel could throttle Britain.
And that is why Britain joined the War on the side of France against Germany.
A more general explanation of the Great War would explain why it was that Germany sought to acquire such a threatening fleet without having an Empire within which to use. Weber argued that the German military caste failed to develop into a liberal bourgeoise political class.
A case of military-industrial over-development causing a pathological civil-political under-development. Manageable when a brilliant individual, like Bismark, was at the helm. But ultimately unviable without effective institutional processes.
Shorter Strocchi:
The pre-WW1 European alliance’s balance of power was the powder keg ignited by the Balkan fuse. But any fuse could have done because the European security system was inherently inflammable.
No single European power could deal with two monster European standing armies:
- the Prussian war machine – too good.
- the Russian steam-roller – too big.
Hence the EUropean security system evolved a precarious balancing act.
The Triple Entente’s aim: Keep Germany Down in Europe.
The Dual Alliance’s aim: Keep Russia out of Europe.
This was the aim of NATO.
It was only the USSR’s defeat of Nazis in the Great Patriotic War and the US’s defeat of the Bolsheviks in the Cold War that finally solved Europe’s security problems.
You call it rapacity, Katz. I call it just reparation.
I’d imagine that most Allied soldiers expected and hoped that Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey would suffer if they lost. Look at every European war since the year dot: the loser always paid a price of some sort. They might be made to give up border provinces, or overseas colonies, or pay reparations, or surrender a fleet. This was standard practice, and did not necessarily detract from the justness and morality of the war in question.
It would have been extraordinary if Germany had not been made to suffer after a war of such length and ferocity.
P.S. j_p_z, good to see you dropping by!
And Germany would have been at least as harsh had it won, as the September [1914] Programme and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk [1918] show. Annexations, economic domination, reparations, colonies, crushing France for at least a generation …
Shorter thread: They were all bastards.
So let us focus on the individual moments of humanity in an incredibly disgusting time and place.
My favourite moment from the war to end all wars was artfully dramatised in “The Monocled Mutineer” – but nonetheless happened quite lot in real life. Aussie troops cutting loose British troops from Number 1 Field Punishment and generally sending the message to their less well fed cousins, “why are you taking this crap from poncey dickheads who don’t get dirty and bloody with you”?
While the Australian officers carefully turned a blind eye to what was happening while occasionally whacking the odd British Army MP over the head with a (empty) claret bottle.
Disclaimer: Much of my family’s recent martial history was the Royal Navy where you all caught the clap and got sunk in the Med or North Atlantic together- scrambling for the lifejacketsregardless of class. Axis mines, the wine farked sea and dodgy brothels in Alex are great levelers.
And apparently Monash was the first general to realise and and accept that Australian army platoons work better choosing their own NCOs.
OK Paulus, I’ll play it your way.
Where is it stated in the publicly acknowledged war aims of the British that they would demand reparations?
Japerz, you old tart. Returns with an odd marriage of eldritch special pleading and Obama obsession!
Plus ca change.
(Welcome back BTW.)
I really like Marilyn Lake’s piece in last Friday’s Age. Ee have ot grt ver and move on from Anzac Day and the myth. I finally got around to writing something on that holiday on my blog.
“When I was growing up in the 60s that Empire was finally coming to its undignified end. By then Australia had a new great and powerful friend, the United States. And, of course, we were again involved in a foreign imperialist war now on Washington’s behalf, over there in Indo-China. I can rememebr the dominos discourse and the Red Peril (superseding an older Yellow Peril). And I can remember how the ANZAC mythology was used to try and mould us young males into cannon fodder for the imperial ruling classes. It was potent, deadly and noxious but luckily for many of us there were different anthems in the air and, ironically, as in the days of ANZAC’s birth there was a growing and vigorous anti-conscription movement in this country.”
You’ll find all of it here
http://michaelcardensjottings.blogspot.com/2009/04/we-had-holiday-here-in-australia.html
A not insignificant fact which is being overlooked in the discussion about reparations is that the reparations and other concessions were to be exacted, not from the Second Reich generals and aristocrats, but from the fragile fledgling democracy of the Weimar Republic and its long-suffering citizens. If ever there was a time in history when a new democracy needed TLC rather than being punished for the war guilt of the ancien regime, this was it.
“Where is it stated in the publicly acknowledged war aims of the British that they would demand reparations?”
Here, Katz: Prime Minister Lloyd George on the British War Aims, 5 January 1918.
Since Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare had caused vast losses to merchant shipping (sinking more vessels than in WW2), it could readily be inferred that the corresponding reparations would also be vast.
Thus Australian soldiers who served under Monash in the crucial battles of 1918, would have been well aware that Germany was going to be presented with a hefty bill at the end of the war.
Do you have any other historical queries in which I can be of assistance?
Oh dear, Paulus. Read here:
You see, Paulus, in the same document that you quote, LG defines what he means by “reparation”. He specifically rules out “indemnity”.
So far as the soldiers you mention fighting under Monash, they were specifically told in January 1918 that they were not fighting to impose an indemnity on Germany.
But of course, an indemnity was imposed upon Germany.
Bad faith? You decide.
If you need any help with this, don’t hesitate to ask.
Apart from Britain itself, the most imperialist motivated player in WW1 was the Ottoman Empire, which was deservedly so crushed, it ended the war a skeleton in the form of Turkey.
Katz,
I’ll concede that Lloyd George was being a bit ‘clever’ in that speech: we won’t impose indemnities on Germany, just ‘reparations’ for their breaches of international law. (Vast reparations, as it turned out). Well, Lloyd George was regarded as a great politician, and perhaps this is an early example of political spin.
What I won’t budge on, though, is the essential righteousness of the Allied cause in WW1. They were fighting for the survival of liberal democracy in Europe, and that was a cause worth fighting for.
Yes, in some aspects of the conduct of the war, the Allies showed themselves to be greedy and unethical, as with the post-war carve-up of the Middle East. But no one ever fights a war with perfectly clean hands. (We certainly didn’t in WW2 either.) The Allies weren’t pure by any means, but they were still on a different moral plane to the Central Powers.
Here is this argument being presented by someone with vastly greater credentials than I. Trevor Wilson is an Emeritus Professor at Adelaide Uni, and probably Australia’s greatest living expert on WW1. (I took his honours subject a few years ago.) He describes both world wars as being about resisting Germany’s attempt to dominate Europe, which he calls a “very worthwhile objective”. I agree.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/23/2551182.htm
One final comment about that video. Trevor is not some stuffed-shirt Tory who believes in dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. On the contrary, his historical research, and, as far as I am aware, his personal leanings, are towards the Liberal (ie centre-left) tendency in British politics. His feelings towards Imperial Germany derive from the sense that they represented the opposite to, and abnegation of, all liberal and democratic impulses in Europe.
This essay is just plain silly and wrong.
At the heart of Australian commemoration of the Anzac Experience, there exists a foundational martial myth
Whattha? Any evidence?
And seven years later, she still hasn’t learnt.
the ANZAC legend simplifies the diverse experiences of our men and women of war.
As for this doozy
Seven years on, I still feel that if we shared and celebrated the individual stories, in all their diversity, we could not only move beyond the politics and nationalism; we would all come closer to our history
Jo, we do not “celebrate” ANZAC Day, we commemorate. Whoever is teaching you History at uni should be shot.
Adrian,
Your comment is silly and wrong. This in particular is a doozy:
This essay is just plain silly and wrong..
In any discipline, history included, it is considered necessary when critiquing a text to do so with a little thing called an argument. Simply asserting that it’s rubbish and pasting a few quotes you disagree with (without explaining why) is not enough.
The closest thing to an argument you allow yourself is a silly and rather pointless distinction between “celebrate” and commemorate” which, in any case, misreads the essay. Joanna, in the quote you condemn, doesn’t say that we celebrate Anzac Day (which of course we do). She simply suggests that we should celebrate individual stories. What other verb could she have used in that context? She could have used “remember”, but surely not “commemorate”.
In any case, in my capacity as a history teacher (and, unfortunately, she’s not one of my students, so put down your gun) I taught a unit called Australians At War last year which was a lesson in the extent of Australia’s “diversity”. I began the first tutes with an icebreaker, asking each student to nominate whether they, or a relative had been involved in a war. I had five students who were descended from Gallipoli veterans. One was the great grandson of Albert Jacka; the other four were Turkish.
At the heart of Australian commemoration of the Anzac Experience, there exists a foundational martial myth
Whattha? Any evidence?
Adrien is diplaying all the syptoms of Catallaxitus, a disease where assertion becomes argument, insults become the norm, and the pot too often cals the kettle black.
Adrian @ 124, here’s a resource you might be interested in:
National Library of Australia – Australian Newspapers (beta)
Maybe search from the 1/3/1916 to the 1/5/1916 in News, and you can read for yourself about the plannings and executions of the very first Anzac Day.
I liked this one, amongst many others of similar ilk:
The Argus, Wednesday 26 April 1916
CELEBRATIONS AT ST. KILDA.
ENTHUSIASTIC MEETING.
A NEW CREED FOR AUSTRALIA.
The citizens of St. Kilda celebrated Anzac anniversary by a meeting in the St. Kilda Town Hall yesterday evening, the mayor (Councillor Love) presiding. The hall was crowded to the doors. Brigadier-General Hughes, who had recently returned from the front, Mr. Watt, M.H.R., Mr. McCutcheon, M.L.A., and Cr. Hewison (ex Chief President of the Australian Natives’ Association) were seated on the platform, and addressed the meeting. An attractive musical programme had been prepared, and the singing of various patriotic songs added much to the enthusiasm aroused by the speakers.
Mr. Watt said that Anzac Day was scarcely an occasion for joy or sorrow. It was too solemn for rejoicing, and too grand for grief. They wished to lay with respectful hands their offering of gratitude and pride to the memory of those men who had fought and died, and those who had lived to fight on at Anzac. (Applause.) The whole story of Gallipoli divided itself into three sections – the landing, the holding on, and the evacuation. At the landing the boys did what most Australians expected them to do. They took a position which was shod with grim death in sheer defiance and scorn of consequences, with the lighthearted spirit of sportsmen. (Applause.) It had yet to be seen even then what Australians could do after the first flash of excitement had passed. In the long, grim struggle between the landing and ?????ation it came to be known that when the Australians got a trench they kept it (Loud applause.)
“NEVER LET GO.”
In the article which had that morning appeared in “The Argus” Brigadier-General McNicoll had told how the word had gone along the lines held by the Australian boys, “Australia never lets go.” That would be the best title to everlasting record that the Australian divisions had sketched for the men who would follow. (Applause.) It had often been said that Australians were undisciplined. By the strictest obedience the Australins on Gallipoli had made it possible to withdraw the Allied forces from Anzac practically without losing a life. (Applause.) The people at home had shown that they were of the same blood by the manner in which they had taken the news. Complaint had been heard that in the celebration of Anzac Day in England the British troops who took part in the great enterprise had been forgotten. Anzac was especially connected with the Australian and New Zealand corps, but no Australian soldier begrudged the British soldier who fought alongside of him half the honours of the day. (Loud applause.) Australia’s chief gratitude was for the men who would never come back (Applause.) Their duty was to look after those who had been dependent upon the fallen. (Loud applause.) Praise fell lightly upon the cold brow of the dead soldiers unless it was followed by activity towards those nearest and dearest to him. They had also a series of duties to the men who would come home when the war was over. They must see that those men were suitably provided for. He had spoken to many returned soldiers. None of them wanted charity. All they wanted was a chance to get at the sources of production locked up in this continent. (Applause.) It was not beyond the statecraft of Australia to repatriate the men when they returned to the land of their birth.
A FORLORN HOPE
Mr. McCutcheon said that the public mind would not be satisfied until a full inquiry had been made as to how that expedítion to Gallipoli had been landed upon that inhospitable shore, and why the enterprise had been undertaken when there was no expectation that the men would succeed. It was a forlorn hope that had shed such lustre upon Australia’s arms. If those in authority had desired to shed honour upon Australia and hold it up to the gaze of the world they did the right thing when they sent the Australian troops to perform such a task as that. (Applause. ) The glory of Gallipoli could not be exceeded by any earthly effort in the future. He hoped that that future would bring happier moments than they exactly had when they thought of Gallipolli. (Applause.)
Brigadier-General Hughes was received with great enthusiasm, the whole audience rising and giving him three cheers. He said that they were paying a compliment, not so much to him as to the splendid men he had been associated with. When the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, which he had had the honour to command, landed at Anzac about a fortnight after the landing, a thrill went through them all. It was a thrill of pride that they were kith and kin to those who had made the landing, and of admiration and astonishment as to how on earth they were holding on. (Applause.) They were in a predicament. The Turks had the commonanding positions everywhere. The Australians had no artillery positions. Yet the boys showed such dogged personality that they held on.
THE NEED FOR MEN
They were in that position because there were no reinforcements coming forward. He wanted to impress that upon their minds. For seven months the 3rd Light Horse Brigade had occupied the front firing line of the section allotted to it. For part of that time the distance between the trenches was 20 yards or so. For the remainder of the time the distance was 37 yards. For all that time the Turks were more than 30ft. above the Australian lines. It made a soldier’s heart bleed to see the men sticking to their work without a murmur. Yet one could not relieve them because there were no reinforcements. Anzac Day should be one of new resolves. Instead of sitting down and looking upon the past, let them be up and doing. It was no time to criticise. (Applause.) The street-corner general, with all his knowledge about nothing, was one of their worst enemies. Never should they let the words “Too late” be nailed to any action of Australia. (Applause.) The young men should not cudgel their brains for fine words to find reasons why they should be with their compatriots at the front. He had looked through the answers to the appeal for recruits, and he had been pained to see that men he knew had such lame excuses. The Allies were only just beginning the great undertaking, and it would be a long time ending unless the men came forward to provide the reinforcements. If they realised that they were one family working for one end, they would help the lads who had gone forward to keep up the good name that had been won for Australia. He must refer to the splendid work that the Australian women and doctors had done. When he saw such good work being done he wondered that any young man could hang back. They were fighting for bare existence and, for God’s sake, let the men come forward.
Councillor Hewison said that the issue before the Allies was too great to permit of argument. The men who lagged behind and shirked their duty must be made to do it. (Applause.) How could they urge men to go when men occupying public positions said that every man had the right to decide whether he should serve his country or not. They had seen in Monday’s newspaper that one anti-conscriptionist had declared that if the people were told the whole truth about the war the men would be found coming forward. How hard-pushed those men were for argument when there were 6,000 Australian graves on Gallipoli, and 40,000 casualties. It should not be said of Australian men that they had not yet realised the need for more men. (Applause.)
The meeting closed with the singing of Kipling’s Recessional hymn.
adrian – Adrien is diplaying all the syptoms of Catallaxitus, a disease where assertion becomes argument, insults become the norm, and the pot too often cals the kettle black.
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Well that’s horseshit. I know the difference between assertion and argument and people here make plenty on assertions sans substance.
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I haven’t made any comments on this thread ’til now. Whoever Adrian is, it’s not me. Clue: There’s more than one person in the world name of Adrian or adrian or even the Latinate version of it as in spelled with an ‘e’. Other clue: There ain’t no gravatar. That said Adrian’s comments aren’t assertions more criticism of the post. A little thin on substance but whatever. S/he hasn’t insulted anyone as far as I can see. And except for one exception I have never insulted anyone who didn’t do me first. :) .
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Personally I don’t give a royal flying fuck about national mythology. A couple centuries from now this country’s likely to be part of a broader imperial nexus centered either in America or China. Funny how monkeys always get hysterical and sentimental about [insert current polity here]. Anyone remember the Khanate of the Golden Horde, the Ghazi Emirates, Umimiyad, Mazovia, Khorasan?
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No? Funny that.
Would all Adria/ens please report for compulsory issuing of second or nicknames. Ta.
Is this better? :)
Or this? :)
All my dreams are made, oh A-says.
O noes!
Only an idiot would assert that the Great War was fought without purpose.
And equally, only an idiot would mistake general purposelessness with moral purposelessness. Popular cultural renditions of the Great War, such as “Oh, What a Lovely War” were about moral purposelessness, not about motivelessness.
And Wilson is no idiot. However, he does construct a straw man who does idiotically argue the above.
At the risk of needless repetition, the purpose of the Allied war effort can be found in the Secret Treaties. There was nothing moral in those purposes, but neither were they motiveless. Quite the contrary.
The secret of success in a war which required the transformation of millions into cannon fodder, was to construct myths that disguised actual purpose. The ANZAC Myth was one of the most successful and long-lived examples of this process. And let me add that the rhetoric reproduced by Sally R @ #126 is a fine early example of useful rhetoric.
The problem with associating Imperial Germany with the abnegation of liberalism is that Russia supplied well over half the manpower for the Allied cause. Imperial Russia was far less liberal and democratic than Imperial Germany.
Imperial Germany became Britain’s enemy not because Germany was anti-liberal but because Germany’s diplomacy was so inept.
So you’re saying the ANZACs were canon fodder?
[The sound of a half-hearted half-stoned lounge drummer putting his beer down long enough to throw a stick across a snare drum]
Well Liam I had something to say but I’m too knackered from writing my name out.
Well that’s what my name means. But I’ve never been there.
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Sorry I’m gonna stop horsing around now. :)