By Maria Millers
Nobody wins a war
Two thousand twenty four, I hear the drums of war
Echo in the blackened skies with no sign of compromise
Children watch their cities burn, when will we ever learn
We are the spirit of the land to our land we will return
(Ian Whitehead, 2024).
Next Saturday, the 25th April, at the break of dawn all across Australia from small towns to war memorials and shrines in big cities, many will come together to remember those who have died in the many wars we have been a part of since Federation.
A heavy pall of unease surrounds ANZAC Day this year, shadowed not only by the uncertainties of what is happening in the Middle East and its effect on our daily lives but also the arrest of a highly decorated soldier. This challenges many of our beliefs and confronts us with the uncomfortable questions that cut deeply into our national identity based on the Anzac tradition.
None of this will cancel or fundamentally change the commemoration but it can shape tone, messaging and increase public debate.
And this debate divides the community.
Victoria Cross recipient, Ben Robert Smith’s arrest and intimations of others to come, questions the ideal of the Australian Digger as someone brave, loyal and one whose integrity and behaviour are beyond reproach.
But like any soldiers anywhere, away from home and under pressure, Australian soldiers have been involved in serious misconduct in all wars.
Instances of Australian military misbehaving go back to the Boer War. The case of Breaker Morant for killing Boer prisoners and murdering a German missionary is still controversial. It’s also one of the earliest examples of challenging the notion of the always honourable Australian soldier.
Other instances include the behaviour of callow WW1 recruits let loose in Cairo before reaching Gallipoli and the massacre of civilians in the Palestinian village of Surafend after a New Zealand soldier was killed. This remains as one of the darkest incidents involving ANZAC troops.
Despite this, many will attend ANZAC day services and marches to remember long gone family members or mourn those lost in more recent conflicts.
There are however many who question the emphasis placed on the ANZAC tradition, pointing out that as a small country we have achieved much to be proud of beyond fighting other countries’ wars. Our national identity should surely rely on our other achievements in science, technology, the arts and the strength of our democratic institutions. And without a doubt, despite recent incidents and political ploys we have been becoming a successful multicultural society.
ANZAC Day has not always attracted the large numbers of recent times. During the Vietnam War, Anzac Day became deeply divisive in Australia.
In the 1960s as Australians became involved in Vietnam, ANZAC Day was already in cultural decline with low attendances at dawn services and any involvement became politically charged. Over 60,000 Australians had served, 524 were killed and 3,000 wounded. Many still carry the scars today, both physical and mental, and have had to endure public indifference – even hostility – as attitudes were changing and anti-war protests clashed with marches.
All day, day after day, they’re bringing them home,
they’re picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home,
they’re bringing them in, piled on the hulls of Grants, in trucks, in convoys,
they’re zipping them up in green plastic bags,
they’re tagging them now in Saigon, in the mortuary coolness
they’re giving them names, they’re rolling them out of
the deep-freeze lockers – on the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut
the noble jets are whining like hounds,
they are bringing them home.
(Bruce Dawe, Homecoming).
But for politicians the ANZAC legend has always been an opportunity to underpin a certain view of Australian identity and use the day for political advantage.
Bob Hawke was the first PM to make the pilgrimage to Gallipoli Cove. Ever the astute politician he saw the visit as an opportunity to support his view of Australian identity.
Keating, on the other hand, wanted to shift the emphasis from Gallipoli to the Kokoda Trail where we were actually fighting for our country.
But it was John Howard who assiduously worked towards a definable event through which Australians could recognise, identify with and celebrate the ‘national interest,’ Howard turned that part of Australian history into a celebration rather than remembrance through his advocacy of ANZAC Day.
With criticisms of our involvement in yet another foreign war, Howard justified sending Australians to Iraq:
“They went in our name in a just cause to do good things to liberate a people. They are part of a great tradition of honourable service by the Australian military forces.”
For Howard’s model of political conservatism to take form, he knew there had to be a definable event through which Australians could celebrate the ‘national interest’, such as the historical memory of Gallipoli that Howard himself so strongly identified with. He needed to create a focal point within Australian history for people to celebrate.
John Howard significantly enhanced the renewal of celebration of ANZAC Day.
Critics like Lachlan Brown, known for his anti-commemoration sees ANZAC rituals as performative emotion rather than lived experience:
We stand at dawn rehearsing grief
we have not earned.
Today there is pressure for us to become more involved in the Middle East imbroglio, but few Australians are keen. Australia is already indirectly involved in the current 2026 Iran war, and that has a few knock-on effects:
This year’s ANZAC Day with a more subdued public mood is likely to be more reflective than celebratory. But that is not to deny the service and sacrifice of our soldiers.
Next Saturday for many it will be a day of remembering long gone family that may have never returned but whose stories have remained part of the family history or those who have died in more recent conflicts or are still grappling with the pain of that experience. Some will find solace in the rituals of the Dawn service or the mach. Others would rather forget,
At the same time, honouring sacrifice should not mean glorifying war or ignoring uncomfortable truths.
Australia today is one of the most diverse societies on earth with its national story stretching back well beyond 1915 to tens of thousands of years and integrating all these elements is still a work in progress
More inclusive storytelling from Indigenous service to nurses and other non combatant roles to the partners left at home to deal alone with family crises.
Evelyn Araluen reminds us that the myth of Gallipoli ignores Indigenous colonial and ongoing violence this country loves a myth more than it loves the truth.
From Dropbear (2021):
Similarly, Maxine Beneba Clarke criticises selective memory when it comes to ANZAC ceremonies:
whose history gets a bugle
whose gets buried without sound.
If you’re trying to capture Australia as it is now, a single heroic myth like the ANZAC legend probably isn’t enough. Modern Australia is less about one defining story and more about a layered, evolving narrative. It’s less romantic than the ANZAC story, but arguably closer to everyday life.
ANZAC Day has never been static – it’s always been a mirror of Australia at the time.
Ian whitehead ends his song with a verse that poses that pivotal question:
Who are the men in the shadows that start the wars in foreign lands
Blood on their hands as the children cry. They’re never the ones to die
As rifles speak and the canons scream they hurl us to our destiny
Truth lies wounded on the ground never to be found.
Today of course it’s not cannons or rifles that kill most civilians but long range missiles and drones. The result sadly is the sane; the death of innocents. If you’re trying to capture Australia as it is now, a single heroic myth like the ANZAC legend probably isn’t enough. Modern Australia is less about one defining story and more about a layered, evolving narrative. It’s less romantic than the ANZAC story, but arguably closer to everyday life
If you’re trying to capture Australia as it is now, a single heroic myth like the ANZAC legend probably isn’t enough. Modern Australia is less about one defining story and more about a layered, evolving narrative. It’s less romantic than the ANZAC story, but arguably closer to everyday life.
Anzac Day has never been static – it’s always been a mirror of Australia at the time.
Lest we Forget.
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As always in Australia, all roads lead back to the Lying Rodent. It was John fucking Howard – aka the Desiccated Coconut – who politicised Anzac Day. He pumped up the jingosism and flag-shagging. But he didn’t invent the hoary old myth that subsequent Lib AND Lab governments perpetuated.
Howards decision to send Australian military personnel into the American imperialist adventure to steal the known & potential oil reserves of Iraq was simply wrong thanks to the present continuing Australian laws.
Only the Commonwealth Parliament should be able to commit Australian military forces as ”government mercenaries” at Australian public expense, to a foreign war to benefit anybody else, especially the USA (Undemocratic Sewer of Apartheid).
Little Johnnie Howard the drudge of Australian history, was able to live out his personal ANZAC pipedreams from under the shelter of the Canberra Bubble, not at the sharp end of any military action. But then that has been the case since Menzies resigned his Army commission on the first day of WWI.
Lest.we.forget.
Menzies served in the Uni militia from 1915, resigning his commission in early 1921. Two brothers served overseas. Menzies had also advocated for conscription. Had that succeeded, he’d have been off…( Jack Howard was an air cadet at school)
“….But for politicians the ANZAC legend has always been an opportunity to underpin a certain view of Australian identity and use the day for political advantage….”
I’m a mid-octogenarian who was raised in a “military town” and who well remembers headlines of the Korean War and the conflicts that Australia has participated in ever since. My family witnessed deaths and maiming injuries from WW1, loss of the next direct generation from WW2, so ANZAC Day up until the 1990’s was purely a day of remembrance and sadness – definitely not celebration.
As always gullible but well intentioned young men have been lead to battlefields in distant lands by politicians and compliant media to serve causes that bear no existential threat to Australia. (exception: the defence of Australian soil from Japanese Imperialism in WW2).
“…“They went in our name in a just cause to do good things to liberate a people. They are part of a great tradition of honourable service by the Australian military forces.”….” (JWH)
The last sentence of that crass quotation belies the horror of military conflict that JWH never experienced.
Richard Marles’ recent appearance on ABC tv “National Press Club” was all about sycophantic grovelling to the USA/Israeli military-industrial complex’s demands for more expenditure to feed the never-ending hunger of their global war machine. Nowhere did Marles address the genocide by US/IDF forces in Gaza and now Lebanon and Iran. Nowhere did he talk about peaceful foreign policy relationships with our nearest Asian neighbours. It was all about preparing for the next war which may well break out in the coming weeks. He completely ignored the fact that AUKUS expenditure prevents the ability to solve current existential social and national problems here in Australia. Contrary to his view the AUKUS project does not serve Australia’s national interests and he will find out at the next federal election how unpopular this splurge of taxpayers money has become. Always prepared to sing the praises of AUKUS , Marles refuses to address the reality of the ANZUS Treaty that provides no assurance that USA will ever defend Australia in the event of future attack. Nor will he discuss the fact that the US intelligence facility at Pine Gap is already a prime target should provocation of China result in an aggressive retaliation.
We elect our politicians to basically see that we are well fed, kept healthy and happily secure within our geographic borders. Projecting prime Australian military assets far from our shores only produces 3 negative outcomes: Unnecessary risk to Australian defence force personnel, provocation that results in overwhelming retaliation, satisfaction of US/Israeli imperialistic objectives (which are doomed to failure).
This ANZAC Day I will remember the life-limiting war injuries inflicted on my grandfather, who died at age 41. He was a WW1 stretcher bearer in the Victorian 10th Field Ambulance Rgt.). I also remember the severe psychological and social hardships experienced by my uncle on returning from active AIF service in New Guinea until he prematurely passed age 56.
I trust that Richard Marles will be comforted by the fawning presence of cameras and media as he appears publicly on our hallowed day of remembrance.
And yes, I continue to be angry!!
re. the ANZAC ‘legend,’ I spent several years working as a nurse in a public psychiatric hospital in South Aust in the seventies. The hospital had wards full of ex-servicemen, all mad, sad, busted and disgusted, ruined by alcoholism, psyches departed from consensual reality and living in alternative universes… the hidden casualties of one of the world’s great martial adventures, all of them utterly indifferent to the annual razzamatazz of the celebrations of heroism and valour and obedience to higher-uppers who ordered them into battle and thus ensured their lifetimes of suffering. And the beat goes on, as Sonny & Cher so saliently observed.
If the politicians who send us to war had to be the first to enlist and serve on the front line, I rest my case.
@ Phil Pryor: Uhm ….. According to Menzies Military Record that the SUR pulled in about 1967, Menzies resigned his Australian Army commission in the Melbourne University Regiment on the first day of WWI. I read the original Military Record while serving in SUR.
On Saturday I won’t be mourning dead soldiers, I’ll be mourning the dead civilians those soldiers killed.
Cocky, I had learned your type of info, and accepted it, when a young student, only to find that revised and accurate line I put, so (must revise) it seems he re-enlisted once in Uni life and “unfettered”, after a gap in time, once the family decision was settled. ( I’ve had a declining opinion of Menzies since the 1960’s)
This morning in Martin Place the Dawn Ceremony was introduced by a Welcome to Country which was booed by a significant number in the assembled crowd.
I have mixed feelings on this and I don’t believe, as some do, that this was intended to be divisive but I do have to question whether it was appropriate at an event to recognise our fallen we are after all one nation and those of us who do not identify as First Nations people don’t need to be welcomed to our homeland.
What do you think?
A further unrelated thought.
In the United Nations the representative for the Palestinian people asked the question, ‘does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) extend to Palestinians and other Middle East nations or only to Israel. Is it alright to bomb and slaughter civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran with no international condemnation’?
As the primary international standard. Proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, the UDHR identifies 30 fundamental rights—such as freedom from torture, the right to life, and freedom of expression—that are intended to be universally protected.
Does he raise a valid point?
Alternative thoughts about ANZAC Day.
https://supporter.greenleft.org.au/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=2585
Cocky, could you find a Story on Gallipoli in Inside Story, by Mark Baker?
From the cover of the book, Gallipoli. [Jack Bennett, 1981]
“On the morning of April 25, 1915, the first wave of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed under intense Turkish fire on the Gallipoli Peninsula. When the Anzacs crept away, defeated, eight months later, 7,594 Australians had been killed and more than 19,000 had been wounded. About one-fifth of the men engaged in this tragic and mismanaged encounter were under the age of twenty-one, boys who were fired with loyalty for a nation itself not yet fifteen years old.
2,431 New Zealanders died with them. The English forces — which included Indians, Gurkhas, and other colonial troops — lost 119,696 men. The French buried 27,004 soldiers from metropolitan and colonial France. The Turkish empire was bled of 55,127 men. These were the known dead. Many thousands of others were simply posted as ‘missing’; many, many thousands more wounded. Almost one million men were engaged on the bloody Peninsula: more than 500,000 of them, among all the armies, were casualties in one way or another.”
And the politicians still dare to call war ‘heroic’. Shame on them.
That’s right, Terry. Let them slink back into the shadows where they belong. After all, it’s not like over 60,000 years of prior occupation gives you any moral claim to the land …
Yes. I though the TV coverage involving En-Zedders and Aussies just on teev, by contrast, was respectful.
No bragging, instead think of all those lives wasted, except those resposible.
“At the same time, honoring sacrifice should not mean glorifying war or ignoring uncomfortable truths.”
Exactly, and yet the same themes continue unabated because certain people like to have their ‘tradition’ continue without question?
The trifecta of politics, jurisprudence and military traditions need to be questioned and questioned with unforgiving honesty, hence the imbroglio of BRS and just cause.
Check the following, I know it’s a Hollywood version, however the underlying themes still reverberate today, politics, expediency, greed and profit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk
It’s the everyday person and the soldier who believes in the myth that pays the human price.
Leefe
No slinking, no skulking, the First nations’ diggers stand proudly alongside their fellow warriors from many lands.
The question I was posing was an altogether separate issue and, it seems that it is principally the One Nation adherents who object strongly to a welcome to country and that is very much their issue.
Personally I am ambivalent on this subject but I am interested in the views of others.
@ Phil Pryor: This is the only Baker story that I could find on the Inside Story site:
https://insidestory.org.au/first-casualties/
Sorry, Cocky, I do not know how to embed a reference as you and others do, but the story by Baker is on 24 April, entitled ” My God, it would have been easier than I thought.” (2609 words)
Phil, I assume the link below is the relevant one:
https://insidestory.org.au/my-god-it-would-have-been-easier-than-i-thought/