Anzac day 2011

Discussion Open Forum
1

It is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. The most sacred day in their national calendar. The day to remember those who have fought and died for their country in the course of freedom.
A good story for this day.

[quote]You think I’m brave? Meet my mates: Ben Roberts-Smith
[i]"EVEN heroes have their heroes. For Victoria Cross holder Ben Roberts-Smith, the benchmark for valour was set by his mate Sergeant Locke.

The Special Air Service Regiment corporal says Locke’s courage probably saved his life and stopped a heavily outnumbered Australian patrol being overrun on a mountain top in Afghanistan late one afternoon in 2006.

“He was a very, very brave person, Matt, in every sense of the word,” Roberts-Smith says.

“He was one of these guys who would stand up in the middle of a firefight in front of a wave of fire and just hook in.”

Roberts-Smith’s extraordinary tales from Afghanistan, revealed to The Weekend Australian, have opened a rare window into the exploits of our special forces"[/i]…(read more at link)[/quote]

Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith - photo taken moments after the action for which he was awarded Australia (and the Commonwealth’s) highest award for valour in the face of the enemy - the Victoria Cross.

Good Lads All.

2

I’m not particularly sure how my great uncle invading, and dying in, Turkey was for my freedom, but there you go. He probably couldn’t have even shown you where it was on a map. The day doesn’t mean anything to me. I would also say Australia Day is probably more important for many/most, or perhaps even Christmas Day or New Years’ Eve.

3

Your confusion is understood. a key element here is that days such as this are not days of celebration but rather ones of remembrance and honor to those who went and did their duty.
A friend in Australia sent me an email which sums it up rather nicely. Here are his words:

[i]"ANZAC Day is not a day of celebration in either Australia or New Zealand. It is, rather, a day of commemoration.

The day that we remember all of those who have served and died in the service of our country.

It is true that the Gallipoli Campaign was not successful, and ended in retreat and withdrawal. It does, however, represent the first occasion on which Australian and New Zealand servicemen went to war in significant numbers (there were a few small incidents in 1914 and early 1915) representing their own countries, and serving under their own flag, rather than simply as troops of the British Empire (although they remained those). It is the day our countries - 13 and 8 year olds respectively - were baptised in blood.

We commemorate all those have served and died in the service of our countries. In victory. And in defeat. More often the former, than the latter. But we remember them all. "[/i]

He also enclosed a poem:

[i]"Sir - would it help if I shed a tear
I swear it’s the first time since this time last year
My spine is a tingle - my throat is all dry
As I stand to attention for all those who died

I watch the flag dancing half way down the pole
That damn bugle player sends chills to my soul
I feel the pride and the sorrow - there’s nothing the same
As standing to attention on ANZAC Day

So Sir - on behalf of the young and the free
Will you take a message when you finally do leave
To your mates that are lying from Tobruk to the Somme
The legend of your bravery will always live on

I’ve welcomed Olympians back to our shore
I’ve cheered baggy green caps and watched Wallabies score
But when I watch you marching (Sir) in that parade
I know these are the memories that never will fade

So Sir - on behalf of the young and the free
Will you take a message when you finally do leave
It’s the least we can do (Sir) to repay the debt
We’ll always remember you - Lest We Forget"[/i]

4

Nice one, TC. And a good reply. I completely agree. It is a day for commemoration, not a celebration.

It is interesting how ANZAC Day has changed over the years, though. My grandfather was at Gallipoli, and then served throughout then Palestine with the Light Horse before transferring to England for pilot training in 1918 (shudder!) with the then early formation of what later became the RAAF. He rarely attended the dawn service or ANZAC Day marches, although he was very much part of the Returned Services League (RSL).

[quote]Since its formation, the organisation has been politically influential and at times highly controversial. As well as arguing for veterans’ benefits, it has entered other areas of political debate. It was politically conservative, Anglophilic, and monarchist.

Many veterans from the Vietnam War found the RSL, dominated by the ranks of World War II veterans, an unwelcoming, alien environment, and chose not to participate, but have over the past 20 years become actively involved. This may have been reflective of the changing status of Vietnam veterans in the 1970s and 80s.[/quote]
Early after WWI, veterans were divided by a fault line that had one side believing the war was just, and others that argued from the left that the war was unjust and shouldn’t have been fought. The RSL was a highly political beast, and former officers actually formed a right wing fifth column that at one time threatened to mount a coup. The New Guard. While this organisation was separate to the RSL, there is no doubt the two were very closely linked. My grandfather was definitely sympathetic to the New Guard, especially in it’s early days, and was approached to join. It’s always been unclear if he actually did, but I think for him, the politicising of ANZAC Day left him less interested in participating in the parades. This was also the case of many other veterans. Over the years, as the number of WWI veterans dwindled, the media would typically interview surviving veterans, and it always struck me as odd how often they would say things like, “I’ve never attended an ANZAC Day march, but I do stand for a minute’s silence.”

[quote]While the New Guard began as a relatively peaceful outfit that used lawful means to advance its objectives, its platform was immediately popular with many First World War officers and veterans as well as others with traditionalist beliefs and attitudes. The organisation’s activities quickly descended into thuggery and street violence in a reaction to the Australian Labor Party and the Communist Party of Australia.

The New Guard was reputed to have over 50,000 members within Sydney alone (which had a population of 1.2 million at the time), and its membership was organised along strict military lines with ranks, divisions, drill parades and a large private arsenal. It achieved its greatest fame when a member, Captain Francis de Groot, an Irish-born veteran of the First World War and furniture maker, sneaked into the official ceremonial parade on horseback at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in his old 15th Hussars uniform and slashed the opening ribbon with a cavalry sword before Premier Jack Lang had the chance. De Groot declared the bridge open “in the name of the loyal and decent people of New South Wales” and was promptly arrested by a New South Wales State Police officer and taken to a mental asylum for examination. The ribbon was hastily retied and duly cut by Jack Lang. [/quote]
Here’s a famous picture of De Groot cutting the ribbon at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

After the turmoil of the thirties, and WWII, these divisions among veterans began to diminish, and the numbers of veterans partaking of the dawn service and ANZAC Day marches swelled, obviously with a big influx of WWII veterans. However, controversy returned with the Korean and Vietnam war veterans sidelined by the official representative organisation of returned soldiers, the RSL, initially not recognising either Korea or Vietnam as proper wars, so the veterans not fully justified to be considered members, although they did march in the ANZAC Day parades. The term that was bandied about was that these were “police actions” and therefore not “proper” wars.

I think it’s fair to say that Prime Minister John Howard was highly sympathetic to the New Guard ethos, and is largely responsible for re-politicising and re-populising ANZAC Day and the annual marches.

Since Howard’s departure, and the active service of Australia’s military in Somalia, East Timor, Gulf Wars 1 & 2, Iraq and Afghanistan, things have shifted again, and I think at present, the “spirit” of ANZAC Day has fortunately become again less political and more focused on the aspect of commemoration. Personally I think that’s a good thing. I was deeply touched several years ago when the ANZAC Day march included Turkish veterans. That is to say, Turkish immigrants that had fought in WWI against the ANZACS at Gallipoli!! A real measure of what it means to bow your head for a minute’s silence, methinks.

As an aside, as a kid I used to watch the ANZAC Day parades on the TV with my grandmother, after my grandfather had died. Something she would say every year haunts me to this day -“Where have all the wounded men gone?” She was born at the turn of the last century, into a big family, and lost brothers in both world wars. When I asked her what she meant about this, she said that after WWI and WWII, it was very common to see awfully scarred and disfigured veterans both in public, and in the parades. As she noticed, and has since been borne out by research, these veterans tended to die much younger than others, be it as a result of their injuries, or also suicide and alcoholism.

Lest we forget.

HG
Edit: One of the oddities of how Vietnam veterans in particular attained greater acceptance for their service, and especially by the RSL, was from a band that were absolutely opposed to the war, but like many that opposed that war in Australia, completely sympathetic to the troops that served in it.

This is their tune, and I know that you know it, TC. I post it for you and all others that have, and or will ultimately serve. Respect.

5

great post there, HGC

Mod note: HUGE quote removed by moderator. Please do not quote entire, immediately preceding posts merely to make a brief comment on them such as this. Please quote only as necessary to let others know which specific post or point you are addressing.

6

BTW, I worked in a shearing gang with the chap that appears among the pics at the end of that film clip, holding a torch in the tunnel at the 4:08, 4:09 mark. We worked and travelled the Western Australia bush together through 1979/1980.

He was a “nasho” (national serviceman), or conscript who did his “tour” of Vietnam in 1968-69. Typically those that were called up would explain it as “something we thought we had to do.” While not physically wounded, he was deeply traumatised by his time in Vietnam. Something that appeared very obviously in his eyes when he got drunk and talked about it. I doubt he’s still alive now, as even back then he had major health issues associated with alcoholism.

This mention is not in any way to to further distort the already grossly distorted media and general image people have of vets of that war, BTW. There is some very interesting work done to show how grossly misrepresented Vietnam vets have been. See for example the must read Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History. Nonetheless, I knew that man, and I saw his pain, and can only assume the outcome.

HG

7

To me the importance of remembering ANZAC Day is that through it Australians remember their most crushing defeat. I don’t believe we actually celebrate any of our victories; the only important ‘war dates’ on the calendar commemorate our failures (ANZAC Day), our losses (Remembrance Day), or the end of the Second World War (VE Day). I think that’s very healthy. It’s a whole lot better than the offensive military displays you see in other countries.

I have several generations of armed service in my family. My paternal great-grandfather was a Stoker in the Royal Navy during the First World War, and my maternal great-uncle fought in the Somme (meanwhile my great-grandmother worked in a munitions factory). My paternal grandfather was a Brigadier in the British Army of the Rhine (4th Armoured Brigade), during the Second World War, and my maternal grandfather was a Sub Lieutenant in the Royal Navy (HMS Taciturn).

My father was a member of the Royal Australian Navy (but never saw active service), until they found out he was a card carrying member of the Communist Party. :smiley:

I’m always moved by the joint memorial service held by the Australians and Turks at Gallipoli on ANZAC Day. Every Australian I’ve known who has visited Turkey (even just for tourism, like my mother), has commented on the extraordinarily good treatment they received by the local Turks, quite unexpected given we spent several years killing each other in World War I. The positive attitude towards Australians is a curious legacy of Mustafa Kemal (called ‘Atatürk’), founder of modern Turkey, who did an incredibly good job of reconciling Turkey and Australia. His very moving speech at the Gallipoli memorial in 1934 is well remembered among ANZACs today, and is recited at the memorial service every year:

[quote]Those heroes that shed their blood
and lost their lives
you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side
here in this country of ours.
You the mothers
who sent their sons from far away countries
wipe away your tears.
Your sons are now living in our bosom
and are in peace.
Having lost their lives on this land they have
become our sons as well.[/quote]

The poem is displayed on a memorial wall at Gallipoli.

8

Great article TC. I was reading a few stories like that over the past couple of days but I hadn’t caught that one. Even had a good line in it about the Americans. It was a great tribute to his mate.

How’s the dude from Go Daddy?

He seems to be getting on with it.

9

HGC -

:bow:

A walk in the long green indeed.
Strange that one of the VN War movies I can best relate to is an Australian one…lol. Into the mix and back out.
It all seemed like a very weird dream.

I do remember coming out of the bush, in the middle of what we thought was fucking nowhere, and finding ourselves walking into an An Aussie Medical Unit.

With very cold beer. The 5 of us stayed a while…:smiley:

10

TC: Please explain to me what the duty of soldiers going to Gallipoli was and how that was fighting for freedom. The First World War was a pissing match between empires and really had absolutely no other point. The average soldier was used as gunfodder by incompetent and Machiavellian leadership who didn’t give a fuck about them. The whole purpose of the British Empire’s and its Allies’ forces fighting the Ottomon Empire was first to carve off the non-Turkish parts of the empire (see how the British sold out the Arabs after WW1 and divided up the eastern end of the Mediterranean with the French) and even to occupy and carve up Anatolia itself (which they had a damned good go at – if it hadn’t been for Ataturk, they probably would have succeeded too).

What we should be remembering is how a small group of people manipulated everyone else through patriotism and nationalism into butchering each other. Patriotism and nationalism are two of the most destructive ideas known to man. That everyone is now caught up in the giant circle jerk that is remembering our recent “war heroes” shows we’ve learnt absolutely nothing in a century.

11

I believe that’s what is remembered most on ANZAC Day. There are plenty of testimonials from the ANZACs themselves, and their families, about the stupidity of war, and the particular stupidity of that particular war.

12

Quite right, Fortigurn.

We usually avoid a pissing competition on ANZAC Day, preferring instead to play two up. In fact, a lot of good has come of it. It’s a day for commemoration. You can reflect on whatever aspect you want in your minute’s silence, as is the case of ANZAC, Remembrance or Veterans’ days.

And doesn’t it strike you, even for a moment, as just a little insulting to write off the lives of millions as foolish stooges? These commemorations are not about the political motivations that led to these wars, but the people that perished in the conflicts, and those that survived. Their reasons for being their are as myriad as the people and countries involved. I think my grandfather’s motivation was firstly because he thought it was what was expected, and secondly, because the Light Horsemen wore cool uniforms and he could impress the Sheilas, and not necessarily in that order.

If you get down to the crux of what the real motivations were for the individuals concerned, you’ll find that very few hang onto the reasons politicians ascribe as the rationale for any war for very long, and end up merely fighting to save themselves and their mates. Remembrance is what it’s all about, and that can take whatever form you wish. But in the end, it is acknowledgement that something truly ghastly happened. It should be remembered.

HG

13

Humans have a pathological need to engage in, and revere, idiocy.

If all of someone’s mates were joining a gang, or he thought the gang members wore cool clothes, so he joined too, and then the leader of the gang told him to shoot up a whole bunch of strangers (be they from another gang or not), most people would think that was pretty stupid. When it’s endorsed by the state, everyone thinks it’s noble. Unjust or stupid wars still need foot soldiers who bear some responsibility for the injustice or stupidity.

14

I know a bunch of vets from various wars. I’m pretty sure that nearly all of them observe some form of remembrance day. I’m pretty sure none of them observe ANY kind of observance of their great, noble and sage government leaders who bullshitted them into signing up and who murdered their mates in the name of glory and the mother/fatherland. That’s not what it’s about, despite what the various cocknockers in government would have you believe.

15

I don’t believe this analogy is strictly accurate, since many men signed up for reasons other than joining a gang or wearing cool clothes.

I don’t think anyone here would deny that. There are plenty of foot soldiers who have regretted their involvement war. My maternal grandfather refused to discuss his time in the Navy during (and shortly after), the Second World War. It was something he regretted, and just didn’t want to remember.

16

[quote]

I don’t think anyone here would deny that. There are plenty of foot soldiers who have regretted their involvement war. My maternal grandfather refused to discuss his time in the Navy during (and shortly after), the Second World War. It was something he regretted, and just didn’t want to remember.[/quote]

My maternal grandfather was similar. He only joined the army in the 1930s because playing in the army marching band was the only realistic way he could make a living as a musician. He never really spoke of his war experiences other than to say that no one should ever go to war. During the 1960s, he even advised my uncle to do everything he could to avoid joining to the point of draft dodging if need be. His influence when I was young has definitely made the the pacifist that I am.

17

Fortigurn: From what I can see, based upon the arguments in this thread, there seem to be/have been two main reasons for joining the army. One was out of a sense of duty, patriotism, fighting for a cause, etc. The other was for fairly frivolous reasons to do with looking for adventure, trying to impress people, etc.

Both seem flawed to me for the reasons I’ve stated. People then inevitably add the idea of mateship and all of that after the fact. That seems like a kind of philosophical sleight of hand though because when someone is signing up, they don’t think they’re going to be saving Fred’s (as in a particular person’s) life. They most likely don’t even know Fred yet.

18

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Fortigurn: From what I can see, based upon the arguments in this thread, there seem to be/have been two main reasons for joining the army. One was out of a sense of duty, patriotism, fighting for a cause, etc. The other was for fairly frivolous reasons to do with looking for adventure, trying to impress people, etc.

Both seem flawed to me for the reasons I’ve stated. People then inevitably add the idea of mateship and all of that after the fact. That seems like a kind of philosophical sleight of hand though because when someone is signing up, they don’t think they’re going to be saving Fred’s (as in a particular person’s) life. They most likely don’t even know Fred yet.[/quote]

19

Whoa! Nice stuff, Charlie Jack. I’ve always loved that notion of the longue durée, and I guess this is my family’s experience, set aside from the flotsam and jetsam of a single life.

Anyway, GIT, I thought there was no arguments here, just relating experiences.

Publicly at least, my paternal grandfather, while abhorring the horror of it, also thought it was the best time of his life. He would talk about riding a horse around Palestine and Egypt, leave in London, and flying to Paris. About how the girls loved the Lighthorse uniform, until there were pilots, so he became a pilot as soon as he could. He didn’t talk about his bad experiences, except with other veterans. However, my father managed to hear quite a lot of war stories in very graphic detail as the vets got plastered on the station porch. He was an extremely hard old school - “harden the fark up” - bastard, who drank a bottle of whiskey a day. And ten years after he died, my grandmother started to come around to the idea that he was probably a “war neurosis case.” I reckon she’s right.

The upside for him was that he went from the bottom of the social barrel, as an uneducated rural labourer, to an officer and pilot in the fledgling Australian Air Force. This had huge ramifications for him after the war when he promptly became a station manager. A completely different class in then rural society. Before that he figured he had nothing to go home to when the war ended, so stayed back flying between Paris and London as long as he could. That was almost certainly the high point of his life. He leapt into WWII as a more senior officer in the infantry and while too old to get into the thick of things, was in New Guinea, Borneo and the Pacific islands. That’s a considerable amount of travel for anyone in this age, let alone then.

By contrast, my maternal grandfather volunteered in WWII, because he expected to be drafted anyway (interestingly in WWII, Australian conscripts could only serve in Australia or its national territories, which unfortunately included New Guinea and several nearby Japanese occupied islands), and despised every minute of his time in the army, which also took him through New Guinea and the Pacific. Mind you, he had a wife and two young kids back in Australia and was in his mid-thirties. He never talked about it except to say what a shit time it was, avoided ANZAC Day and lived a happy family life glad to be free of the military and telling anyone that looked like doing so not to get involved. Both my grandmothers lost brothers in both wars, and just considered it all pure insanity, but somehow historically inevitable.

My father caught the bug off his father, and was seriously disappointed when the Korean war ended just as he finished his basic training as a national service man (conscript) in the infantry. He later spent twenty years in the RAAF as a radar technician in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, albeit on short stints fixing radar equipment, before finishing his time in Australia. Eventually divorcing my mother and becoming an unashamed old hippie and backpacker ten years after Woodstock. He completely digged the life.

I grew up on air force bases, or at least the married quarters attached to them in Malaysia and Australia. I joined the army reserve at 18, ostensibly to make up for not having finished high school. I did basic training, which oddly enough I quite liked, despite promptly quitting in the window where it’s possible to do so soon after. I was extremely glad that I was blessed to live in a narrow segment in time where it seemed almost absurd to think there would be a war other than a world ending to the cold war. I really don’t know what i would have done if it happened.

I have a nineteen year old son in Australia, who has school mates in Afghanistan, and while I really would like to see something change in that part of the world, I would absolutely hate for my son or any of his immediate mates to ever get caught up in the military. I can see the suck of it, and I can see the necessity of having people at the pointy end of your diplomacy. but I just don’t want it to ever involve any of my family again. I seriously believe WWI impacted two generations and stopped at me, the third generation after it. I am completely in favour of war as something only to be considered when all other options are utterly exhausted and it is utterly unavoidable.

HG

20

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Fortigurn: From what I can see, based upon the arguments in this thread, there seem to be/have been two main reasons for joining the army. One was out of a sense of duty, patriotism, fighting for a cause, etc. The other was for fairly frivolous reasons to do with looking for adventure, trying to impress people, etc.

Both seem flawed to me for the reasons I’ve stated.[/quote]

Understood. On the other hand, when governments these days say ‘Let’s go to war!’, who really complains? Hardly anyone. It’s not really that different; people understand that if you’re going to to spend millions of dollars on training thousands of men and women to kill, then sooner or later you’re going to have to find some people to kill or you’re not exactly getting your money’s worth. And for the most part people believe the government has the good judgment and the God given right to say who should and shouldn’t be killed. My tiny little Christian sect has been one of the few Christian groups consistently protesting against every war since we were started over 150 years ago.

Mateship operated as a contributing factor, but not in the way you suggest. Whole classes signed up, dutifully encouraged by their schoolmaster, out of a sense of camaraderie, mateship, and the desire to share life experiences with their closest friends. They were young, let’s remember many of them were less than 21. Their brains hadn’t even finished developing, and their judgmental skills were significantly suboptimal; programmed for short term thinking. These days those kids would get drunk together at Schoolies Week (which is what Schoolies is for after all), rape a couple of schoolgirls while they’re there (which is what Schoolies is for after all), shoot some smack, fly to Indonesia to collect a range of unpleasant diseases, and probably end up in an Indonesian prison for trying to smuggle pot. Life isn’t that different, except that arguably the guys who went to war 100 years ago were a little more responsible at that age, and had to take a ship to Egypt to get their collection of unpleasant diseases.