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The Annual ANZAC Commemoration needs a proper perspective

10 May 2011
by Brian Boyd, VTHC Secretary

Last month saw another ritualised commemoration of ANZAC Day. The media outlets, in particular TV and newspapers gave it a lot of coverage.

The ANZAC remembrance day originated out of the unsuccessful Gallipoli campaign in WW1. The Age editorial of the 25 April 2011 said it should be “a day of solemn commemorating, never of celebration”.

No one wants to dishonour the memory of the fallen soldiers of Gallipoli and this will always be so. However, as the same above mentioned editorial noted: “We owe them and veterans of all Australia’s wars, above all a duty of truth”.

What happened at Gallipoli in 1915 was a disaster and a huge waste of life. The decision to invade Turkey was eventually shown to be a whimsical gamble by Winston Churchill, carried out by British generals in an ill-thought out fashion.

Our Australian soldiers (along with others) tried their best, often above the call of duty, to no avail. They never had a chance. We are entitled to explore and evaluate what happened as part of our ongoing commitment to their memory.

This is becoming a more urgent exercise. Governments and others are blurring, as the years go by, the ‘ANZAC legacy’, with what has happened in other conflicts. Besides what happened in Vietnam we now see a push to link into other particular battles like the UN Korean police action, the Malayan Emergency and so on.

Specifically we are being asked to give recognition to the “Battle of Kapyong” from the so called “largely overlooked… forgotten war” that happened in Korea between 1950-53.

That war ended in a “stalemate” more or less where it started, on the 38^th parallel, with the country in ruins. Australia lost 339 killed with 32 diggers killed on a hill in the Kapyong valley. The Australians were apparently in “gallant” retreat when the Canadians stepped up to defend the hill. At one point US planes joined the battle and dropped napalm onto the Australian position, killing two and injuring a number of others in forward foxholes. Earlier, re-enforcements from an American cavalry unit had failed to turn up.

At the very start of the Korean War the Australian Air Force 77 Squadron were sent over from the post WW2 ‘occupying force’ in Japan flying old Mustangs! Later they fought “mismatched” dogfights with MIG fighters in old Meteor jets losing 41 crew!

Again Australian military forces were thrown into the thick of it, just like Gallipoli, with no responsibility from the politicians or generals.

Let’s briefly look at the origins of the Korean War, now that politicians want to ‘spread’ the ANZAC tradition.

After the allies were victorious against the fascist countries of Germany, Japan and Italy, the Cold War was started almost immediately. During WWII the US and Britain armed Russia and even opened up the ‘second front’ into France to secure Hitlers defeat. Similarly Russia eventually made moves on Japan via Siberia, to assist the Americans in the Pacific Theatre.

But in 1946 Churchill declared an ideological war on Russia with his speech at Fulton in the USA, describing the “Iron Curtain” as the new front line.

The Korean War became the first testing ground for this new ‘World War’. Australia, under the UN mandate, ‘rushed’ to join the US. (It would be described later as the new ‘prototype’ for future Australian involvements in Vietnam (1964-72). Iraq (2003-2011) and Afghanistan (2001-?).

In Korea, General Douglas MacArthur would ‘over-reach’ his mandate, driving the UN troops under his command right up to the Chinese border. The Chinese gave many warnings to MacArthur, if he came to close. MacArthur told President Harry Truman that China was ‘chicken’ and he would ‘slaughter’ the Chinese army if they took him on.

General MacArthur thought he could win the Cold War started by Churchill, on his own. As he pushed up to China the Chinese counter – attacked, pushing MacArthur all the way back down the Korean peninsula. It was the worst military retreat in US history. Truman sacked MacArthur for disobeying orders. The war went on and on with countless thousands killed.

When the diggers returned home in 1953, including the survivors of Kapyong, the Australian public was basically disinterested in their story. The battles, trials and tribulations of WWII were still less than a decade old. The Korean conflict was not given any weight. As part of their strategy the US had convinced the UN to call it a ‘police action”, thus giving it little status. Now 60 years on politicians and others with dubious motives want to resurrect the Korean conflict and merge it into the ANZAC tradition. And not that part of the tradition that described WWI as ‘the war to end all wars’.

There is a push to mark the 100^th Anniversary of ANZAC Day on the 25^th April 2015 as a major national day. The previous Rudd government set up the Anzac Commemorative Commission. It’s job, to seek advice and put forward a comprehensive program for the event four years from now.

Many are coming out of the woodwork. Recently a ‘representative’ from some of the Australian veterans that fought in the US war in Vietnam said they want to attach themselves to the ANZAC legend.

One of these people claimed: “War is a character building experience”. (Yes let’s have war, any war for the sake of it because it’s ‘character-building’.)

This ‘representative’ must have choked on his ‘fat-cigar’ when at the recent ANZAC day service at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, RAAF Chaplin Mark Willis spoke about the futility of war adding:

“We do not come to glory in war, nor to celebrate and certainly not to gloat over our enemies,”

“We simply come to remember the ordinary person and to pay tribute to those who put freedom for others before their own interests. We call it selflessness, something I am afraid is mostly missing today.”

The futility of war versus the glorification of war? This is a key question that hangs over the natural human thing to do i.e. pay due respect to the fallen.

The recent passing of the last serviceman that served in WW1 highlights the debate about war that is not finished.

Claude Choules died in a Perth nursing home at the age of 110 on the 5^th May 2011. His son Adrian said his father “hated war” and believed it was “useless” and there would be no ‘military funeral’. Mr Choules was quoted as never seeing “glory” in war and in later years did not participate in Anzac Day ceremonies.

In contrast, the Victorian RSL President Major-General David McLachlan said: “It is the end of an era when a generation of young men did very brave deeds to give us a start to the way of life we have now” (emphasis added). In a similar vein, Prime Minister Julie Gillard said: “Mr Choules and his generation made a sacrifice for our freedom and liberty we will never forget” (emphasis added).  

Any study of WW1 from the battle at Gallipoli to the trenches in France gives no illustration whatsoever to contributing to Australia’s ‘way of life’ or ‘our freedom and liberty’. What any study of WW1 shows is that as a nation we lost many thousands of Australians for no measurable gain. The US and some of the European powers re-carved up their spheres of economic influence in such a blasé, hap-hazard way that the seeds were sown for WW11, only two decades later! In fact WW1 was not ‘the war to end all wars’ as it was deemed to be, especially by the vast majority of the returned soldiers, like Claude Choules.

In amongst the many thousands who annually honour the ANZAC’s are those who wish to glorify war and justify war and offer no criticism of how they started. Worse, excuse the mis-use and carefree exposure of our soldiers on the battlefield itself.

The glorification of war leads to little or no critical analysis of the causes of war.

Conversely accepting the many voices who returned home from war about the futility and waste of war leads, to paying proper due repeat for the dead and wounded, but just as importantly also leads to looking for ways to stop war in the future. All war.