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ANZAC DAY
Australia is a young nation, and so finds it easy to place itself on the right side of history. We are not swung off course by the historical ballast carried by older countries; we fight the right wars, for the right causes. Australian servicemen and women have prevailed in many heroic conflicts. Yet Australia’s national day of remembrance for our fallen is tied to a battle ninety years ago that we lost, catastrophically. The very first Australian soldier to hit the beach at Gallipoli, Joseph Stratford, met a fate that would shortly befall many of his countrymen:
He struggled onto the beach and charged a Turkish machine-gun, bayoneting two Turks before falling over them dead, riddled with bullets.
Stratford wasn’t the first Anzac—it’s an acronym for A. & N. Z. Army Corps—to die. Others drowned before they could even make it to shore. As veterans of that day, and that war, gradually became too frail to march and eventually left this earth, many anticipated that our commemoration of an appalling defeat would fade with them. This hasn’t happened:
Peter Stanley, principal historian at the Australian War Memorial, said the combination of a “round anniversary” and the “fact that it has coincided with the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War” was driving interest in Anzac Day higher.
Mr Stanley said that 25 years ago, many Australians thought Anzac Day was “on the skids”.
“They looked around and saw the ageing veterans and said this day would decline, like Empire Day, and may even die out,” he said.
“Over 25 years, the exact reverse has occurred. It has grown, not just because it is a commemorative event, it has become the de facto national day.”
Today thousands will gather in Sydney and the other state capitals to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1915 landing at Gallipoli. Perhaps 20,000 will be Gallipoli itself, where there will be surprise at the youth of many who died. Some marchers are as young now as were the soldiers they represent when they signed up for service:
Michelle Balfour, 15, will march tomorrow, wearing three generations of medals.
Her great-grandfather, Staff Sergeant John Balfour, was among the first Anzacs to land at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.
“We’ve got to keep the tradition alive. If we don’t keep following it through, people will just think it’s in history and it wasn’t as big as it was.”
Michelle and Michael Harris, the great-great-nephew of James Martin, who was the youngest Australian to go to war at age 14, will carry a replica banner used at the first Anzac Day service in 1916 at the Australian War Memorial tomorrow.
Small towns across Australia will also attend parades to mark a day that defines Australians. Which returns us to the fact that Gallipoli was a doomed conflict; how has this one battle come to shape us so profoundly? A clue may be found in the words of WWII veteran Bill McGrath, determined to march today, no matter what:
“I’ll just tag along at the end and see how far I can go, but I’ll tell you, I’ll be crawling before they put me in a car,” Mr McGrath said.
Anzac Day is less to do with loss or victory than it is to do with struggle and defiance, even when facing certain defeat. But Anzac Day also serves to remind us of Australian triumphs, as reader kisdm001 noted earlier in comments:
If you go to the north of France - as I did with the much better half a little while ago - there is a village called Villers-Bretonneux. This little village was liberated by Australian troops in World War One one year to the day after the landing at Gallipoli - April 25th 1916.
We stopped in at the local bar and had a drink and got talking to the old guy who ran the joint. My girlfriend - who is French - explained that I was Australian and that in the afternoon we were going to visit the Aussie War Graves just outside of town.
Finding out I was an Aussie was enough. The drinks were on the house and - after a second round - that old fella shut up shop and took us on a walking tour of the town. He showed us the flagpole in the village where the Australian flag still flies. He showed us the square where ANZAC Day is celebrated each and every year, usually with a representative of the Aussie embassy from Paris. And then he showed us the local school with the plaque attached noting that it was rebuilt with funds sent back to France from Australian soldiers who had liberated it from the Germans. There is even a kangaroo carved into the stone. 90 years on, this old fella still remembered what his father probably would have told him: Australian soldiers aren’t about killing, they’re about saving; it’s not about destroying, it’s about rebuilding.
Three networks will broadcast the Anzac Day service from Gallipoli. Most of the nation will be watching. The Sydney Morning Herald presents a moving tribute here.
My god! Are you people paying no attention to Michael Leunig at all? What does he have to do, draw you a picture?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 24 at 01:25 PM • permalinkHopefully, this is a little easier to highlight:
http://nowra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass;=
local&story_id=383657&category=General+News&m=4&y=2005</pre>[Link broken into two parts for formatting reasons. Cut and paste each part into the address bar one after the other, leaving no space in between the url sections—Admin.]
The Frenchman’s words about Australian soldiers brings to mind the following passage from Thomas Kennelly’s Schindler’s List (page 288):
[Schindler] found that an Allied bomber, shot down by a Luftwaffe fighter, had crashed on the two end barracks in the backyard prison. Its blackened fuselage sat crookedly across the wreckage of the flattened huts. ... There had two men inside, and their bodies had burned. The Luftwaffe people who came to take them away had told Adam Garde that the bomber was a Stirling and the men were Australian. One, who was holding the charred remnants of an English Bible, must have crashed with it in his hand. Two others had parachuted in the suburbs. One had been found, dead of wounds, still in his harness. The partisans had got the other one first and were hiding him somewhere. What these Australians had been doing was dropping supplies to the partisans in the primeval forest east of Cracow.
If Oskar had wanted some sort of confirmation, this was it. That men should come all this way from unimaginable little towns in the Australian Outback to hasten the end in Cracow.
Men from “unimaginable little towns in the Australian Outback” gave their lives to end the unimaginable evil of Naziism. May God bless Australia and her soldiers.
Posted by Urbs in Horto on 2005 04 24 at 01:46 PM • permalinkBest of luck on ANZAC day. In 1976 and 1978, the Navy sent my ship (the USS Oklahoma City) to celebrate ANZAC Day and the Coral Sea memorials. Never had a better time in my life. Thanks for standing for democracy. Diggers rule.
Mark Percich
Ellicott City, MD, USAPosted by Mark Percich on 2005 04 24 at 02:51 PM • permalinkA Kokoda Track, New Guinea primer, for us foreigners…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 24 at 03:14 PM • permalinkIve travelled around Europe seeing Aussie battle sites, mainly in 1999. Villers-Brettoneux is a fascinating one, a sleepy rural village - I dragged along some fellow backpackers who knew nothing of WWI and they came away amazed that a tiny french town would have streets like “Rue Melbourne” and so on - all named after home towns of Aust batallions who served there. There’s an australian war museum there, with a massive photo of chatswood memorial gardnes in sydney - just up the road! The massive australian memorial that we stumbled across out in the fields… and we made vegemite sandwiches… they left determined to go to their first dawn serice the next year.
In 2001 I then went to galipolli for ANZAC Day (I was 27) and it was bloody awful. Most people I travelled with just partied, there were at LEAST a dozen people near me sleeping or passed out through the dawn service, guys having leaks in the bushes besides the gravestones, people were there for a pissup and someone did the “aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi” in the 2 min silence. Despite all the talk, most people my age (20’s) don’t give a shit about ANZAC theyre there for the cheap beer on cheap package tours from their year “doing” London. None of my friends could believe this. I left ANZAC Cove more saddened at my peers’ unwillingness to try to understand history, than anything else.
Mind you the original anzacs were larrikans who knocked authority and tradition too…
Posted by SheikYerbouti on 2005 04 24 at 06:55 PM • permalinkrichard mcenroe has nailed it.
The Kokoda Track, IMO, was Australia’s finest hour.
The boys of Owen Stanley Range saved Australia from invasion, and the prolonging of the Pacific War for, lord knows how long?
And women like Claudia Black to boot.
Posted by Mart Laar's Beard Shaver on 2005 04 24 at 07:16 PM • permalinkLet’s try that Claudia Black link one more time.
She deserves her own Australian holiday.
Posted by Mart Laar's Beard Shaver on 2005 04 24 at 07:18 PM • permalinkIn memory of all those from Australia who died defending freedom….
I served proudly with Diggers in Vietnam.
U.S. Veteran
Posted by Wallace-Midland Texas on 2005 04 24 at 08:33 PM • permalinkThank you tim for helping to keep the memory of those brave men alive.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2005 04 24 at 08:45 PM • permalinkIn memory of my uncles in two world wars:
- Lt Fred ‘Cul’ Culverwell (1892-1976) 16th Btn, ex-POW
- Lt Geoff O’Shaughnessy (1921-2003) HMAS WarramungaPosted by David Morgan on 2005 04 24 at 10:21 PM • permalinkOn Friday, I had the honour of lunching with remnants of the 2/14th Battalion, featured in Richard McEnroe’s Kokoda link above. Fantastic fellas, all in their 80s and 90s now, they’re more comfortable bulldusting about their off-duty pranks than discussing their courage and skill under fierce, numerically superior firepower.
What concerns me is that Australia will wait, like we have with the original Anzacs, until these grand old soldiers have faded away to make their story common currency.
We should do everything we can in the next decade to have the Battle for Australia as well-known to following generations as the tragedy at Gallipoli. And if you ever come across an ex-Kokoda Digger, ask him about it. It’s a wonderful story that includes lambs to the slaughter (the 39th Battalion), the just-in-time arrival of the cavalry (the 2/14th relief of the 39th), utter guts and determination (39th survivors’ willingness to fight on with the 2/14th), brilliant fighting strategy (the outnumbered by 5/1 Australians’ ploy in over-extending the Japanese supply line with a strategic withdrawal back along the track, before hounding them back to the north coast) and typical Aussie contempt for incompetent authority (the Diggers’ eternal detestation of lickspittle General Blamey who accused them of “running like rabbits”.
Buggered if I know why someone hasn’t made a movie of it yet.
Yes, I’m biased. The old man, who used a bodgy name to sign up when he was 17, is a 2/14th veteran and the bond these blokes share transcends the generations.Rog2 — It’s not that the links don’t work: they’re too long. That’s why the comment box is so wide…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 24 at 11:45 PM • permalinkTo the memory of my uncle, RAAF Sgt Philip Crittenden, killed Oct. 20 1941 over Belgium, and thanks from a Yank to Australia for showing up in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Southern Cross is flying in front of my house today.
Posted by crittenden on 2005 04 24 at 11:56 PM • permalink..and the ANZAC spirit lived on, reflected in this poem from Outward Bound No 1 ... a journal printed on the Queen Elizabeth on Anzac Day 1941, as the next wave of Anzacs were being transported in a huge convoy, from Australia to World War 2, in the Middle East:
ORDNANCE LAMENT
We are not really soldiers
We are only make believe
They gave us all a rifle
Our conscience to relieve
Our ship was built for pleasure
For folk of the idle class
We’ll give them back their blinking ship
For just one shore leave pass.
- A77
Outward Bound No 1
AT SEA: ANZAC DAY April 25th, 1941.——-
..... and after they had been fighting for 18 months,
the Anzac spirit was stiil going strong:DOWN AT EL ALAMEIN
The lights on the desert so quiet and serene
The troops moving up in an endless stream
The barrage all set for 22:15
Down at El Alamein
The guns opened fire again and again
The object was gained by 4 am
The Afrika Corps will rest no more
Down at El Alamein
And when this War is a amemory
And gunners are gunmen no more
We will remember the desert for many a day
The Aussies, the Kiwis all in the fray.
Down at EL Alamein.
- Anonymous.
Above poems are excerpts from an airman’s book, “Through the Eyes of the Harasser”, documenting the activities and movements of the Aussie 450 Squadron ... “The Desert Harassers”.Sorry about the formatting problem with the links in comments two and four. I’ve fixed the formatting problem; unfortunately the encoding that is getting screwed up by the redirects is an ongoing issue that I am still investigating. If anyone has any clues about how to fix this fricking problem in Expression Engine (basically, it’s characters like “&” and “%” and so on in long urls that are not working properly when it comes to redirected links) please feel free to email me at admin-at-spleenville.com.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 04 25 at 12:17 AM • permalinkHappy ANZAC Day. (It’s still Sunday here.) I work with an Aussie, so I’ll have a special greeting for him tomorrow.
This is also the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the
Aremenian Genocide in Turkey.Posted by Abe of Lincoln on 2005 04 25 at 12:44 AM • permalinkThank you, Australia, for being there when we needed a friend. Lest we forget.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 04 25 at 01:16 AM • permalinkThis year Australia’s most northerly dawn service was possibly also the most spectacular, the full moon shimmering off the sea & setting accross the islands. All very peaceful until the recreation of an amphibious landing & an attack on the hilltop dawn service!
Posted by Steve at the pub on 2005 04 25 at 01:33 AM • permalinkWhat I want to know is, when will John Howard apologise for the Tishnek massacre?
Posted by Jim Geones on 2005 04 25 at 04:30 AM • permalinkAnd the old men march slowly, all bones stiff and sore,
They’re tired old heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask “What are they marching for?”
And I ask meself the same question.But the band plays “Waltzing Matilda,”
And the old men still answer the call,
But as year follows year, more old men disappear
Someday, no one will march there at all.Eric Bogle
Failed Leftie prediction #5478578475839Posted by Jim Geones on 2005 04 25 at 04:40 AM • permalinkJust to make a correction. Villers-Bretonneux was saved in a brilliant night attack in 1918, not 1916. Perhaps the most audacious attack of the Great War.
Tim stated that Australia is a ‘young nation’. Are we really? We have had the same system of government and independence for 104 years. How many countries can boast that? Sure there are a few, but the majority are younger than Australia, and many ‘old’ countries have had different political systems in the last century e.g. Germany.Clarke’s (dracula) and her lapdog Air Marshall speeches were an utter disgrace, full of leftist hogwash and anti-British vitriole, memo to morons NZ and Australia would not have existed if they didn’t start as British colonies. To hell with both, hopefully NZ will get rid of this dispeptic gargoyle sooner rather than later. No one clapped at the end of their speeches anyway, there was round applause after Howard’s more personal speech though. Beazley lookinglike the wanker he is more and more becoming “I used to be defence minister so I have a special relationship with all of this boo hoo hoo”
Posted by slamming mo on 2005 04 25 at 09:00 AM • permalinkoh yeah Clarke talked about the invasion of Turkey hint hint,didn’t mention in her speech that today is the same day the Turkish Muslim government began the genocide of the Christian Armenian population (which gave Hitler the idea for the Holocaust) so Muslim Turkey invented the modern idea of genocide, which the Australians and British were fighting against as they are fighting with the US again today in Iraq.
Posted by slamming mo on 2005 04 25 at 09:06 AM • permalinkAs a Yank, I find this WWII-era poster sums up the Aussies pretty well.
Posted by Bud Norton on 2005 04 25 at 09:08 AM • permalinkAs a Vietnamese-American, I would just like to say: Thank you, Australia, and thank you, Australian Vietnam Veterans, for your noble service.
LinkPosted by VietPundit on 2005 04 25 at 03:46 PM • permalinkI was one of the many thousands that got up that bit earlier to make the Dawn Service at the Shrine of Rememberance in Melbourne.
I was so impressed at the turn out and the mix of people that came. There was no minimum age, parents came with toddlers and babies in arms. Old Gentlemen with their medals proudly displayed mixed with Patch-wearing bikies (many also veterans of Vietnam).
I waited about 1 1/2 hours to be able to pay my respect at the inner sanctum after the service. Once inside, I, like all the others placed a small cloth Poppy in a basket in front of the memorial stone. All in total and respectful silence.
The whole event was so moving, so warming. I finally felt I paid the respect I owed to the memories of my fallen countrymen.
I felt thoroughly Australian and very, very proud to be the son of such a decent nation.
Lest we forget…
I heard what I thought was a male voice giving a speech - then I saw it was Helen Clarke.
Posted by David Morgan on 2005 04 26 at 01:22 AM • permalink
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