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April 25th is ANZAC Day

For those who don't know it's the Australian, and New Zealanders' Day of Remembrance for those who fought/died in WW1.

It's referred to in Eric Bogles's And the band played Waltzing Matilda, and the sentiments, still dear; after almost 100 years, in both places, are perhaps best summed up in the first stanza of, For the Fallen

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
we will remember them


The campaign, for which they are remembered, was Gallipoli. A tragic waste, in a war of tragic wastes; no matter how needful it may have been, the way in which it was waged was horrid. Gallipoli has the glory of putting it into stark clarity, in some way which Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchaendale, Chateau Thierry, didn't manage.

Would that we could find that trick, the one we thought; for a brief moment, we'd managed, to end all wars. But we haven't, and odds are we won't.

So, we have Armistice Day, and Memorial Day, and all the other days.

Today is ANZACDay

Lest we forget.

Date: 2009-04-25 03:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wcg.livejournal.com
In peace may they rest.
May we never forget.

Date: 2009-04-25 03:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rm.livejournal.com
Everywhere, EVERYWHERE in Australia are WWI memorials. In the train stations, in parks, in every neighborhood. Plaques and obelisks, often several, clustered together. These are the dead from this trade union. These are the dead from this school, this housing block, this family name that had been here a long time. I can't begin to describe the ubiquity of these things. I can probably think of about 40 off the top of my head in Syndey alone, and I'm sure there are many, many times over that I never saw.

Date: 2009-04-25 03:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] minnehaha.livejournal.com
A bunch of years ago I spent ANZAC Day at Gallipoli.

B

Date: 2009-04-25 04:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pecunium.livejournal.com
It seems to be quite the thing to do. I saw (when searching out links) a number of travel agencies specialising in it, and no sense that it was at all dodgy.

If I were to visit Gallipoli, I think that should be the day I'd like to be there.

Date: 2009-04-25 04:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] minnehaha.livejournal.com
I didn't realize it beforehand. I joined a day tour to the various monuments and trench sites -- I really didn't appreciate how close the trench lines were until I saw them -- and the bus was filled with Australians.

B

Date: 2009-04-25 05:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] errolwi.livejournal.com
It must of been a bunch of years ago indeed, the number of attendees on ANZAC Day has grown a lot in the last several years (up to 15,000 at dawn), well past the area's infrastructure's ability to deal with comfortably. I visited in May 1998, deliberately avoiding ANZAC Day. The experience on a 'normal' day is very different from how the over-crowded event has been described to me.

Our small bus-load virtually had Lone Pine Cemetery to ourselves (as well as most of the other spots we visited). This contrasted with Chunuk Bair http://www.mch.govt.nz/emblems/monuments/ww1.html#gal (where many the NZ missing/unidentified are memorialised) and the Turkish memorial - it happened be Ataturk's birthday or somesuch, and the areas of significance to Turks had crowds, TV crews etc.

Date: 2009-04-25 06:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] minnehaha.livejournal.com
1993, I think.

It wasn't all that crowded, just a few Australia and New Zealand package tours, and another couple of busses filled with random travellers.

B

Date: 2009-04-25 05:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] errolwi.livejournal.com
Thanks for noting the day.

People often compare it to a USAn visiting Gettysburg. As the number of Aussies and Kiwis visiting Europe for multi-year periods grew in the 1990s and 2000s a trip there has become fairly common for those now aged 25-45.

Small point, although it is said 'An-Zac', it is written 'ANZAC Day' (originally Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) or sometimes 'Anzac Day'.

Date: 2009-04-25 04:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kestrels-nest.livejournal.com
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
we will remember them


The rabbi read that at my father's funeral, this January past. And one of the few times I saw my dad cry was when I was practicing and sang The Band Played Waltzing Matilda without realizing he could hear me.

It was the Australians and New Zealanders whose names appear. But they were all ours, as we are all theirs. If each unnecessary death diminishes us, then we all lost someone, and something, at Gallipoli.

Thank you.

Date: 2009-04-25 04:36 am (UTC)

I knew there was a lot of death in WWI

Date: 2009-04-25 04:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dragonet2.livejournal.com
but it didn't really sink in until I joined some out of town Dawn Patrollers at KC's Liberty Memorial WWI museum.

The massacre was grim. I'm sure a lot of towns in Australia and New Zealand, like the rest of the UK, suffered the great losses, in some case all their young men. All of them.

My friend Roger got a bit concerned for me until I explained that I cry a lot. I had to sit down a couple of times and just let the sorrow pass through me and get it over with for the moment.

What a damn waste of lives. Young lives that hadn't seen their potential yet. War is a horrible thing, all around.

Date: 2009-04-25 05:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] niamh-sage.livejournal.com
I've always loved the words of Kemal Ataturk (from the Ari Burnu Memorial at Gallipoli):

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 Mehemets 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 lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

Date: 2009-04-25 07:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] annafdd.livejournal.com
It is Liberation Day in Italy, one time the most important date in the calendar of the Republic since it celebrates the fall of Fascism from which it was born. It's the day partisan brigades march - or did. Not a whole lot of them around any longer, and the current Prime Minister has always made a point of being otherwise engaged on this day.

A few years ago the right started suggesting that it was a day for celebrating all fallen in the WWII, including those who fought for Mussolini's short lived but intensely murderous Social Republic of Salò.

One of them was my late uncle. Most of the people that were recruited for Salò were young and impressionable and easily manipulated, and their deaths are as tragic as any young people's death. They often didn't have easy choices. They did, however, as a body, gladly help the Nazis round up Jews and track Allies and they did torture and kill whoever tried to stop them, mostly the above-mentioned partisans.

The above-mentioned partisans, btw, were often just as young, and just as short of choices. Some of them where soldiers who had to hide in a hurry when our then King (last in a line of really piss-poor monarchs and human beings) betrayed them. Some of them didn't wait for Salò or the Nazis to come find them and press-gang them into service.

It's a day for missing Italy, for me.

"Go on, mate, play Khe Sahn!"

Date: 2009-04-25 05:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] commodorified.livejournal.com
Eric Bogle, Redgum, The Herd, Cold Chisel, a bit of Gallipoli (http://damned-colonial.dreamwidth.org/17973.html).


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