ANZAC Day

[foreversnow 5]

Originally Posted By: Mantas

It's not a day for celebration and flag waving, it's a day of rememberence and gratitute.

I have to agree Mantas. We go to the dawn services and to the parades and it has NOTHING to do with patriotism. It is my way of thanking those brave diggers for what they did. Every year I shed tears thinking about what they went through, the friends they lost and the terrible things they would have seen at such a young age. My dad was in the navy by the age 14 and has some unbelievable stories. A lot of my relations where war hero's and one of them even had a movie made one of the missions he was on.

So on ANZAC day when I stand there with tears in my eyes it is with great thanks for the freedom I have today.

[Mantas 3]

>I took my 4 boys to Dachau<

 

Mama, I've been inside the gas chambers at Mauthausen in Austria.

There is an old saying "Evil reigns when good men do nothing".

Well the good men of Australia didn't do nothing, they fought the evil bastards and they WON. At no small cost.

Our contribution to the wars as a whole was very small but the sacrifice of a Nation was huge. The courage shown by Australian soldiers in battle has been well chronicled in the diaries of officers from Australia, England, Germany (Rommel himself), Japan, turkey and many more. For that I am immensely proud.

[JA2340 16]

I think the resurgence in the "popularity" of ANZAC day in Aus is more to do with a bit of pride in what our grandfathers (and for some great-grandfathers) did to ensure the continued existence of Australia as a free and democratic country. It had (in the times when GN was here) been seen as a glorification of war (in particular the Vietnam invasion) but has become more a celebration of the values we have, and continue to have, as a result of the sacrifice of diggers of all times.

 

My old man (now 86 and not in the best of health) was in Broome WA, in the RAAF, and now (after many years of denying any war service) marched last Saturday with the only other ex-serviceman in his small village.

 

Students from local schools marched as a sign of respect, even though the day was in their school vacation. There are significantly differing opinions about the schools marching, but I believe that the kids do it out of a sense of duty - to remember and venerate the diggers in all wars, who did not return.

[Go Native 70]

JA I think you're all kidding yourselves. I don't believe those kids are doing anything out of a sense of duty. Unless by duty you mean showing that they are good little Aussies and being properly patriotic.

 

Don't get me wrong I also have nothing but the utmost respect for the sacrifice made by Aussie soldiers last century and the few poor buggers still involved in some current day conflicts. I just don't think they have very much to do at all with why ANZAC day has become more and more popular over the last decade or so.

 

Anyway all this talk of gas chambers and school kids with a strong sense of duty brings to my mind the Hitler Youth and the Brownshirts. A stark example of where a strong sense of patriotism can lead...

[HelperElfMissy 42]

Hang on a sec GN....by taking our kids to Dachau, and Pearl Harbour and other places of historical signifigance, and examining both sides of the historical battles, the results, and the lessons, we are not breeding rampant one eyed patriots.

 

We are raising insightful and well educated new generations able to make intellegent decisions and hopefully avoid repeated disasters like the wars of old (some of those ongoing as well I suppose).

 

There is nothing wrong with national pride - the problem comes when that national pride is replaced by bigotry. Australia as a nation was sorely lacking in national pride in the past, in my humble opinion, and it is great to see an improvement. Racism and bigotry are much less able to flourish in educated and empathic communities, so I am all for more people teaching thier children to feel history.

[Mantas 3]

There has been no increase in patriotic activity on Australia day in recent years so why would there be on ANZAC day? To be honest mate, it sound like you have no clue about what goes on here anymore. You don't live here, you don't raise children here and you don't go to ANZAC commemorations here. The fact that you suggest that Aussies are a naive and gullible flag waving bunch being manipulated by the whim of the government of the day is a little insulting. Plus the fact that you use this forum like some kind of therapy to constantly remind everyone (and perhaps yourself) that you no longer give a shit about Australia, doesn't help your credibility.

[JA2340 16]

I think Mantas meant that to refer to GN's post, rather than Mamabear.

 

A bit harsh, methinks.

[Go Native 70]

MB national pride is one of the main things that breeds bigotry and racism. It's one of the main problems with pride and why it's almost universally associated with sin in all religions (not that I'm religious). You see you can only have pride if you have comparison. So you can only be proud of Australia if you compare it to elsewhere. As soon as you start going down this road you elevate yourself above others and start thinking you're better than others.

 

And Mantas I've only been gone from Aus for 4 years, I can't imagine it's changed all that much. My observations are from how I felt about Aus before I left. And frankly I did feel that a large portion of Aussies are a naive and gullible flag waving bunch. And I couldn't give a toss if you find that insulting. You know Pauline Hanson's One Nation party was once polling at 22% of the vote? They won 11 out of 89 seats in Qld. Sure it all declined later as even dumbass racist Aussies started to see just what a nut job she really was but yes a very large portion of Aussies are just redneck, dumb as dog shite racist swill.

 

Obviously all you guys like Mantas, MB, etc as part of an international ski crowd are not exactly in the lower economic echelons of Aus society and you're all probably reasonably open minded and educated. And I don't question your own motivations for going to ANZAC day. You also probably have always gone to ANZAC day. People like you though don't explain it's ever growing popularity.

[Mantas 3]

Originally Posted By: Go Native

A very large portion of Aussies are just redneck, dumb as dog shite racist swill.

What was that you were saying about elevating yourself above others and thinking you were better?
I'm happy for you GN that you have been lovingly embraced by your new 'home'. and excepted like an equal. Just when will you be receiving your Japanese citizenship and passport?
Might be best to keep that "redneck, dumb as dog shite racist swill" Australian one safely tucked away in that bottom draw until that day eh? lol

[Go Native 70]

Japanese are about as racist as they come Mantas although they are extremely polite about it!

Plus living in a place that gets 12m+ of snow each season makes it all that much easier to handle the proud racist pricks

[Rag-Doll 0]

This is from today's Aussie. It gives some internesting insight into the hackneyed ANZAC myth.

 

JEFFREY Grey worries about the way we commemorated the Anzac spirit early this morning. It's not because the history professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy does not think the nation's war record is worth remembering. It's just the way we do it. "Too many dawn services have a carnival side now: mobile phones ring, people talk during the period of silence," he says.

 

And he is distressed by attempts to emulate the annual Anzac Day party at Gallipoli at the northern French village of Villers-Bretonneux, the site of a great Australian victory in 1918.

 

The Anzac legend also upsets him because the way it is too often told has nothing to do with what Australian front-line fighters accomplished and underestimates the price they paid.

 

"The risk is we will lose a sense of loss and, as we continue to engage in deployments overseas, we need to understand they come at a cost, guys coming home in boxes and the price their families pay every day," Grey says. "It's been true for as long as we have sent soldiers overseas and we need to bring this back into the public consciousness. There's nothing necessarily wrong with feting our military prowess, provided it's understood as only offering one dimension. We are not super-soldiers who are uniformly successful."

 

He's not alone. Other academics argue the real Australian story on the battlefield is very different from the legend of natural soldiers contemptuous of authority. Rather than mateship and an ability to think for themselves, the roots of Australian success were the same as in all other armies: discipline and training.

 

According to Garth Pratten, author of a new study of mid-level commanders in World War II, "Australian success in both wars was based on professionalism and the way they turned experience into doctrine."

 

But it's the story of Australians as natural-born killers who overcame the odds and did what the British and Americans could not that sells. Popular historian Peter FitzSimons's books on Kokoda and Tobruk have sold in the hundreds of thousands. So have Les Carlyon's more measured studies of Gallipoli and the Western Front in World War I. It's the success of these authors, whose sales exceed scholarly works by factors of 20, that upsets academics.

 

"Yes, he can tell a story, but he really doesn't understand his subject," military historian Peter Stanley wrote in The Australian Literary Review of FitzSimons's book on the Australians at the siege of Tobruk.

 

"The story of Australians at war is not a rugby tour with bullets," Grey says.

 

In fact the people who know most about military history argue the popular writers get it wrong, that there is nothing unique about the Australian achievement at war.

 

This is a long way from the myth of the Digger born at Anzac Cove, that Australians are egalitarian and irreverent, constitutionally opposed to authority but loyal to each other, factors that make ordinary blokes superb soldiers. "The stuff that sells repeatedly reworks old veins, celebrating and valorising traditional Australian qualities of mateship and endurance, but it's nostalgic, not inquisitive," says Stanley, research director at Canberra's National Museum of Australia.

 

But much of it is hardly military history, with little detail to be found about battles. Matthew Kelly, who has published some of the top-sellers about Australians at war, explains: "You have to tell a story in an uncomplicated way by finding the crucial point in a campaign and bringing the focus on it down to a human level. The reader has to understand what humans went through. You don't want books that rely on maps with arrows on them."

 

Although errors irritate him, the power of the old legend and the deficit of detail does not bother Stanley, whose easygoing manner disguises a capacity for a stoush; he enraged self-appointed keepers of the legend that Diggers on the Kokoda Track saved Australia in 1942, by debunking the Japanese invasion myth in a 2008book.

 

"I am sure chefs rail against McDonald's, but historians should say their piece and accept that people get cross. In the end the truth will out," he says.

 

But other historians are less relaxed about the way legends born at Gallipoli are still accepted as truth. Neil James, executive director of the Australia Defence Association, says we are in a golden age of conventional military history, written by "professionals and talented amateurs". But while he rattles off a dozen names of writers he admires, he also says the way books by journalists perpetuate legends - that the Kokoda campaign saved Australia and that World War I commander John Monash was a genius - is "a great tragedy".

 

Grey agrees, arguing popular history and the need of television producers for an angle can misrepresent what really happened. He points to the way Monash is presented as a citizen soldier who outperformed professional British generals. "Certainly Australian soldiers have done remarkable things at different points, but the way it is presented is tied to Australian issues, investing all worth in private soldiers rather than officers," Grey says.

 

James objects to the way popular authors prosper while scholarly book sales stay small, and he also argues the myth of the Digger is pernicious: "If we are natural soldiers, why spend on defence?"

 

It's an argument as old as our military history. Pratten says politicians in the 1920s were arguing the achievements of the Anzacs proved that we did not need a professional army.

 

But the main reason this myth of military genius in every Australian has survived is because it suits our self-perception.

 

"A lot of people want to celebrate the old Anglo-Australia, it's their country. They want to revel in it and be reassured by it, and new Australians want to learn about Anzac in the same way they go to the beach and the football. It's a way of connecting with their country," Stanley says.

 

The irony is there is nothing exceptional about Aussie exceptionalism. According to Grey, "the Canadians are responsible for some of the silliest stuff about World War I. You can insert 'Canadian' for 'Australian' and get the same sort of arguments."

 

In fact, he argues, in World War I the British settler societies, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, produced similar sorts of soldiers. One of the most enduring ideas about the original Anzacs, supposedly setting them apart from other armies, is the ill-disciplined Digger. But Stanley says while the idea was established in World War I, it simply wasn't so, at least among the men at the front.

 

"While there were lots of shirkers behind the lines, there was a high level of discipline among the fighting soldiers," Stanley says.

 

Nor is that other foundation of the Anzac legend, the incompetence of the class-ridden British Army in World War I, all that accurate. Pratten argues that "Australian success in World War I relied on British tactical training. The idea that Monash's victory at the Battle ofHamel in 1918 was genius is rubbish, it reflected tactical innovation in the British Empire armies."

 

In fact, there is a scholarly consensus that a willingness to learn rather than a larrikin independence is what accounts for Australian success in both world wars.

 

Ross McMullin's biography of perhaps the best-loved senior Australian officer in World War I, Harold "Pompey" Elliott, emphasises the regime of intensive training he created in hisbrigade.

 

Pratten also shows how World War II battalion commanders came from the educated middle class. While Australia's relatively flat social structure made it easier for commanders to relate to their men, most leaders were officers in the pre-war militia, where the costs that came with a commission excluded workers.

 

No historian denies Australian infantry battalions did great things in Papua and New Guinea in World War II, adapting British Army doctrine to jungle fighting, then teaching the result back to British forces fighting in Burma. But Pratten warns there was nothing unique about the Australians. "They were not necessarily better than the British and Americans," he says. "By the end of the war well-qualified, cohesive units were common in all armies."

 

Yet while professional historians say there is no uniquely Australian way of war, they agree that the nation's military history has much to teach us, especially about the importance of education and training.

 

As Pratten puts it, successful commanders respected their subordinates and were team players. They recognised talent and behaved in an honest and predictable manner. "And they weren't full of self-importance, like modern corporate managers," he says.

 

It's not an especially exciting lesson and it hardly fits the legend of the dinkum Digger who arrived on the battlefield fully formed. But it is based on evidence, not myth, and it reflects the present strength of serious writing about Australians at war.

 

As James puts it, "Sometimes I am depressed at the state of military history and sometimes Iam cheered up. I'm in an up phase at the moment."

[Rag-Doll 0]

JA - a bit slow, but thanks for correcting my reference to the Pogues.

 

All this discussion about nationalism and even JA's comment about fighting for his country (maybe some others made the same comment too) intrigued me. I wonder whether I would now fight for "my country' or whether I would simply pack up my family and go somewhere else. When it comes down to it, what is a country? I've lived overseas for 10 yrs now, as much as I enjoy returning to Aust, if I never did so again I doubt it would bother me. Maybe one day it might, but I don't feel that it would now. Is Australian society or Australian generally so unique as to give up my life, and leave my children fatherless, for either? I don't think so. What is it about Aust that makes it more deserving of these sacrifices than any other place I've lived in in the past 10 yrs? Nothing, is the answer.

 

All non-indigenous Australians are the product of people leaving their homeland for self interested reasons. Leaving the country while it is under attack seems to me to be just another self interested motivation.

 

My country, right or wrong? Not this little black duck.

[HelperElfMissy 42]

In reference to the VERY long article above....hmmmm...well... embellished stories sell. BASED ON A TRUE STORY is used very often, and then ficton is applied to make stuff a good read. I would thing most people would be buying books for the entertainment factore rather than just the pure factual historical account. I know my personal library is probably only one factual book to every 10 to 15 novels.

 

Take the Boy in the Striped PJ's for example. Current story - so why not. Factually based, but a work of pure fiction. Does it educate - you betcha. The danger lays where fiction is misrepresented as fact.

 

 

 

The Gimp:

I identify strongly with Australia as it is my only home. I have never lived oversea's (just visited) - and my parents, and my sibling and my children are all here. THIS IS HOME. Therefore I would defend it if we were invaded. Papa has always felt this way, but I have only felt strongly about it since having children here.

[Rag-Doll 0]

A perfectly reasonable view Mamabear but what are you defending?

 

The lives of your loved ones - much better for all concerned to do a runner.

 

Your way of life - life and the way it is lived actually isn't that different in many other places and immigration and general cultural hegemony will mean that the society and culture of your upbringing will be very different to what your kids are experiencing and their kids in turn will experience something different again.

 

Non-liquid personal wealth and assets (home and stuff) - ok, maybe.

 

 

The notion of country and identity and self belonging are curious things - on our own terms we're quite flexible about how important these things are but if changes were imposed, well, then its "man the barrades"!

[Mantas 3]

I've read Peter Fitzimmons book Tobrouk. I agree with much of what is said above. He certainly lays it on thick about the 'irreverent Aussie digger'.

In his defense though, he did not distort the facts or glorify anything that wasn't worthy. He simply wrote a Populist book with a particular angle aimed at a particular audience.

The fact remains though. Australian soldiers outsets the Italians from the port of Tobrouk in a matter of days even though they were heavily outnumbered. They then held their position against Rommels army, that rolled through Europe in a matter of weeks, for over 8 months.

No mean feat.

Gimp- If people started rounding up my friends and family and gassing them to death in gas chambers I'd stand and fight. If you run, you will never stop.

[Rag-Doll 0]

I haven't read the Tobrouk book so wasn't really making any specific point about that, just the mythology of the much overused "ANZAC" term. I like military history generally though - Anthony Beavor (Stalingrad, Fall of Berlin) is a bit of a fav.

 

Fair point on the gas chambers, though one would hope if things get to that stage one is already long gone.

 

Here is a strange thing - objecting to small but regular numbers of culturally and racially different immigrants is racist but objecting to 10 years' worth arriving in uniform over the space of 2 weeks isn't. Go figure.

 

 

I'm just padding this discussion to get my 1,000 posts badge! Only 2 more to go....

[SnowJapan 178]

There's always this one The Gimp

 

http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/267101/Just_a_useless_post_to_get_my_.html

 

[big-will 7]

No only serious posts in that thread.

 

Must say before this thread I had never heard of this.

Very interesting. Thanks.

[Rag-Doll 0]

Originally Posted By: SJForums

There's always this one The Gimp

http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/267101/Just_a_useless_post_to_get_my_.html

Thanks SJ but as an Australian I couldn't possibly go with the crowd and use that thread, it wouldn't be in keeping with the ruggedly independent ANZAC spirit!

Phew! Only one more to go.

[Jynxx 4]

Very interesting and valid point you have raised there Gimp.

There is a tendency in Australians that we do not have any culture or tradition since we are a young country. Recall, winning the america's cup. sydney 2000 bid. Any occasion that gives us a sense that we have added something to our national history book is cerebrated, in a rock-concert, occidental way. Plus we have our dark history, too.

The aussies have been cannon fodder for the brits in africa since 1885, or something like that.. We can't separate military history from the colonial history and it's all history, and history can be re-written. I hope we don't forget the FACTS and not some concocted ANZAC legend...

 

Good thread this one... Lot's of views

[HelperElfMissy 42]

LOL!

 

Love how conversations evolve

 

I concur with Mantas' view on if the family were being rounded up. I am of the firm belief that "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing."

 

Dont get me wrong - I would move if I felt it better for my family, might even make an inernational move - after all my father did it at 15 leaving London for Perth, and my maternal grandmother did it on the arm of her RAAF new hubby at the end of WW2. But I would not run and hide like a little girl in the face of an invasion force, leaving those braver than I to stop the invasion. Might get the kids out - but I would stay and defend.

[Jynxx 4]

Ma'bear you remind me of my parents who told me what was happening during ww2.

The americans were carpet bombing all the major cities in Japan (there were no distinction about civilians, or humane war crap) and the kids were moved to the country side. Even though, my dad told me he got raked by a gramann fighter when he was at school.

The whole population was going to defend the homeland with bamboo lances... you hear that!? Extinction. Where the japanese going to be treated like american indians? The first A- bomb shaped the future. The second, totally unjustifiable, disgusting.

There is a wiser way to fight a war than just being dumb which is just showing one's pity bravado, and out of peer pressure, and I think this attitude proves that we are slow to learn.

I don't really think most westerner understand that the japanese had any expectation of surviving that war. At least the for the soldiers, the only honorable way out was death by fighting. Being a POW is an utter disgrace to your mates, family, god..

Now, stating those facts, it is also disgusting that our current japanese generation makes a mockery of those who gave up those lives with the only salvation being honored at Yasukuni shrine after their death, by making a political issue about the right and wrong of a war shrine.

At least, the ANZAC gets national honor.

[Weegeoff 0]

Please don,t forget the brits on that morning The Lancashire Fusiliers won 6 VC,s

[Mantas 3]

Originally Posted By: Jynxx

Very interesting and valid point you have raised there Gimp.
There is a tendency in Australians that we do not have any culture or tradition since we are a young country. Recall, winning the america's cup. sydney 2000 bid. Any occasion that gives us a sense that we have added something to our national history book is cerebrated, in a rock-concert, occidental way. Plus we have our dark history, too.

That's pretty acurate Jinxx. If you look at the Golipoli campagn from the Turkish perspective, I doubt it would even get much of a mention in their history books, even though they were the victors.
BUT this is OUR story, and it's a good one. We must make sure it is re-told to future generations and not let the fiction get in the way of the facts.

[Weegeoff 0]

BUT this is OUR story, and it's a good one. We must make sure it is re-told to future generations and not let the fiction get in the way of the facts.

Sorry but it is not just your story