Anzac Day centenary

[julesjones]

One hundred years since the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps stormed the cliffs of Gallipoli. They weren't the only, or even the largest, group to land. They weren't even all Australians and New Zealanders. But so very many of them were from two small and new nations. And so very many of them didn't come home.

I'm old enough to have watched as some of those who did come home marched on Anzac Days past. Old enough to have seen the days when the Vietnam War veterans didn't march alongside the Great War and the Second World War returned services, because it was still too raw and bitter a memory for them. Old enough to have seen Peter Weir's film on a school outing as part of our history lessons that year, and been in tears on the way out along with my classmates, girls and boys both.

Not old enough to have seen the last of fresh generations to march. But there is also this -- Anzac Day is a symbol of both remembrance and reconciliation. The ones who didn't come home have been looked after all down the years by their former enemies, who lost so many of their own young men. And there are memorials to Ataturk in both Australia and New Zealand. Would that all conflicts could end with such determination to set aside our differences in recognition of our common humanity.

Comments

[sallymn]

That is one of the things I love about Anzac Day, the generosity the Turks have shown for so long towards the countries that invaded at such cost and their respect for the men who paid the price... and the fact that at least some of the press always remember to acknowledge that.

[feetnotes.livejournal.com]

- the anzac day commemorative services, and the processions, are history to most young people alive today who know anything at all about gallipoli in the first world war in this country, or confederacy, or disunited kingdom (or whatever it eventually decides it are); and not just history, but getting on for ancient history, at that.

- and perhaps that is as things should be; it may be a better way of achieving the peace of mutual reconciliation between former enemies - the ancient greeks' tradition was that no war memorial should be erected after a battle that would not decay within the lifetimes of those who fought it. but it's a hard thing for people who lost their loved ones to see, all the same: and sometimes there are barbarities committed, that we need to remember that we as a race have demonstrated we are capable of, whether as individuals, in mobs raised by rabble-rousers, or in well-drilled rank upon serried rank.

- but the dreadful losses and injuries at gallipoli were mostly the result of the soldiers' own higher commanders: a systemic insignificance of their men to the generals - or, to the great majority of them - and particularly on the british side, the truly stunning lack of competence of the general in command of the campaign. (essentially, he was given the command "because it was his turn".)

- war is an immensely wasteful tragedy for nearly everyone involved, and there is an awful truth to the grim joke that WWI was all a mistake that should never have occurred - and should never have been turned into a world - well, pan-european - war, even once the fighting started.

- lessons were learned from the death toll and casualties of the dardanelles campaign, by most of the combatants and observers, if not all; not, alas, sufficient to convince generals and dictators to never again start a war where a compromise is still possible, or even might yet be - would that we might learn so much within the next fifty years -or even, this century.