PANEL 10

ANZAC

The construction of the new Anzac Commemorative Site testifies to the fact that interest in Gallipoli, and in visiting this battlefield, is growing. It is hard to analyse this increasing interest. Most historians would probably rather observe and write about it from the safe distance of years hence when it will perhaps be seen as part of Australia and New Zealand’s on-going search for a distinct national identity at the turn of the 21^st century.

However, historians are certainly ready to offer interpretations of what happened on Gallipoli and how it influenced the course of early 20^th century Australian history.

The phenomenon that shaped the words on this panel is the development of Anzac Day in both countries as THE day of national commemoration and remembrance. Charles Bean, Australia’s official historian of World War I, had much to do with providing the thoughts and ideas that underlie the commemoration of Gallipoli. However, no one individual was responsible for the emergence of Anzac Day. That occurred spontaneously among the Anzacs themselves and in communities throughout Australia and New Zealand. By early 1916, and even before, the word ANZAC itself was entering Australian consciousness. It was not long before people wanted to call their homes ANZAC. Businesses were quick to see commercial advantage and ANZAC hotels appeared.

There has been a fair bit of discussion over the years concerning the nature of Anzac Day. Does it really commemorate war and the glorification of war? This has been firmly denied by veterans and others. They point to the comradeship and personal sacrifice that war demands of ordinary people and they proclaim that Anzac Day is about these simple human values. In seeking out the significance of Anzac Day we should, perhaps, return to the thoughts and feelings of the original Anzacs, those Australians who landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. They were faced on the evening of that day with possible defeat, indeed annihilation and death. One of them wrote of what sustained them in that crisis and his words are as apt a summary of what Anzac Day means as any modern Anzac Day orator striving for emotional effect:

In the early hours of the morning I heard the Officers going along amongst the men, saying ‘Stick to it lads, don’t go to sleep’, and the cheerful reply would be ‘No Sir, we won’t go to sleep’, and my heart swelled with admiration, I knew what the strenuous day before had been, and knew what pluck and determination was necessary to stay awake and alert through the long weary hours of the night, therefore I thought I was justified in being proud of being an Australian and after that night I had no fear as to the result of our operations eventually. Give me Australians as comrades and I will go anywhere duty calls, and I hope to be pardoned for saying so, being one myself.

[Private Roy Denning, 1^st Field Company, Australian Engineers, letter to his mother, 23 July 1915, quoted in C Mongan and R Reid, ‘We have not forgotten’ – Yass and District’s War, 1914–1918, Yass, 1998, p.96]