The week rolls on, resuming it’s normal posture after the “interegnumm” of Anzac Day.
That “one day of the year” seemed to be as popular as ever, defying the naysayers, the ignorant and the politically correct who seem to want to destroy anything of value that has made this country great. Scrap Anzac Day?! The nation that forgets it’s history and heroes is barely a nation at all. We may not have been here long but even the Romans had to start somewhere!
And as far as I’m concerned, the lack of history of the Australian nation is the seed from which the memory of the Gallipoli campaign grew to become sacred. And I think a lot of people, the RSL and revisionist historians among them, sometimes forget that.
Australia had been federated for a mere fourteen years in April 1915. Most people considered themselves British first and Australian second and basked in the glories achieved by the “British peoples” of the previous centuries. The change in our national psyche most definitely began with World War 1.
Large bodies of Australian men began to appear in the middle east, training for war. For the first time, after mixing with soldiers from other nations our men realised they were a bit different. They spoke differently, thought differently and occasionally had a different view of the world to their contemporaries among the “British peoples”. The first seed had been planted.
If you read the diaries and letters of men who landed with the 1st Australian Division on that Turkish shore on April 25, 1915, and I have, you get the feeling that they knew what they were doing. They knew that for the first time fighting soldiers from Australia were to be tested in the cauldron of war and they didn’t want to be found to be lesser men than those in the rest of the British Empire. They wanted to make a name for their country and they did. Australian’s had gone to the Boer War but that had for the most part been in small colonial units. This was different.
Things of course became more prosaic as the horrors of war hit home and the Australian soldier on the Western Front achieved much more in military terms than those on Gallipoli did but their actions gave the nation a history on which to hang their hat and we have never forgotten. Brave men have followed in their footsteps ever since and many have died trying to live up to the legend of those who have gone before.
Many have been saying in the lead up to Anzac Day this year that war shouldn’t be celebrated but I think these ignorant people have missed the point completely. Anzac Day is about remembering the best that the Australian nation can produce. The bravery and the virtues that make Australia great while also remembering the horrors of war and the tragic losses that the Great War produced. It’s the one, true Australian national day.
As an ancient poet once said, “only the dead have seen the end of war”. War is endemic to the human race and always will be. Nations have gone out of existence because they failed to understand the need to be prepared for war, should it come.
So, while we honour our dead and the legends that war created, let’s try to celebrate peace as well and avoid war at all costs. But let us be ever vigilant, for “only the dead have seen the end of war”.
That “one day of the year” seemed to be as popular as ever, defying the naysayers, the ignorant and the politically correct who seem to want to destroy anything of value that has made this country great. Scrap Anzac Day?! The nation that forgets it’s history and heroes is barely a nation at all. We may not have been here long but even the Romans had to start somewhere!
And as far as I’m concerned, the lack of history of the Australian nation is the seed from which the memory of the Gallipoli campaign grew to become sacred. And I think a lot of people, the RSL and revisionist historians among them, sometimes forget that.
Australia had been federated for a mere fourteen years in April 1915. Most people considered themselves British first and Australian second and basked in the glories achieved by the “British peoples” of the previous centuries. The change in our national psyche most definitely began with World War 1.
Large bodies of Australian men began to appear in the middle east, training for war. For the first time, after mixing with soldiers from other nations our men realised they were a bit different. They spoke differently, thought differently and occasionally had a different view of the world to their contemporaries among the “British peoples”. The first seed had been planted.
If you read the diaries and letters of men who landed with the 1st Australian Division on that Turkish shore on April 25, 1915, and I have, you get the feeling that they knew what they were doing. They knew that for the first time fighting soldiers from Australia were to be tested in the cauldron of war and they didn’t want to be found to be lesser men than those in the rest of the British Empire. They wanted to make a name for their country and they did. Australian’s had gone to the Boer War but that had for the most part been in small colonial units. This was different.
Things of course became more prosaic as the horrors of war hit home and the Australian soldier on the Western Front achieved much more in military terms than those on Gallipoli did but their actions gave the nation a history on which to hang their hat and we have never forgotten. Brave men have followed in their footsteps ever since and many have died trying to live up to the legend of those who have gone before.
Many have been saying in the lead up to Anzac Day this year that war shouldn’t be celebrated but I think these ignorant people have missed the point completely. Anzac Day is about remembering the best that the Australian nation can produce. The bravery and the virtues that make Australia great while also remembering the horrors of war and the tragic losses that the Great War produced. It’s the one, true Australian national day.
As an ancient poet once said, “only the dead have seen the end of war”. War is endemic to the human race and always will be. Nations have gone out of existence because they failed to understand the need to be prepared for war, should it come.
So, while we honour our dead and the legends that war created, let’s try to celebrate peace as well and avoid war at all costs. But let us be ever vigilant, for “only the dead have seen the end of war”.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 