KatieO, I must admit I had not seen it that way before.

>>Your parents came here to fill employment opportunities created by the Australian men and women who died in WW2, amongst other things. Is the irony lost on you?<<

Of course, it is all suddenly crystal clear.

Australia had lost so many men and women in the war - unlike Europe, I guess - that it was necessary to import them from a region that had a surplus.

Are you sure about that?

Think of it. A country that was physically untouched by war, in that no battles had taken place in the streets and in the fields and no cities had been bombed flat and burnt. On the other side of the world, whole countries had been devastated, their people displaced, even food basics were rationed.

In a surge of selfless gratitude, we bribe these people to cross the world to help us out, relying on their feelings of helplessness and hopelessness about the situation in Europe to convince them to come.

Let's face it, there weren't many Swiss or Irish in that particular transmigration.

KatieO says to Marilyn:

"Your personal family story is sad, all the more so because of your personal attack on your grandfather. However, it is not part of the ANZAC narrative. You have dragged him into this to tout your own anti-male, anti-war bias. Patronizing."

Actually the consequences of war are part of the Anzac narrative, or should be. Those who support war try to sweep under the carpet the devastating effects of war on the populations involved. 1 million dead in Iraq, for example. 500,000 Iraqis killed before that by our sanctions.

But the other thing the apologists for war ignore is the effect on the combatants. Alcoholism and other drug abuse is common among war veterans as they self-medicate to forget the horror. Typically the noble Government that sent them to do its killing then ignores them.

There is an alternative to this honouring of war. The first world war produced a political radicalisation that saw the Tsar swept away, a revolution in Germany that ended the war, and revolutions across Europe and beyond that swept away the old order and in some circumstances saw Communist Governments with mass support come to power for short periods.

That radicalisation occurred among Anzacs too, something the Anzac story conveniently forgets.

Even the second world war produced a radicalisation of sorts. The Japanese communist party had mass support. The Greek communist party probably had majority support. But Stalin stuck to the Yalta deal where the major imperialisms - the US, Britain and USSR - had divided the world up to share the spoils.

And Churchill, the great Tory warmonger, lost the election. People wanted a better world, one without the horrors of war. The vehicles they chose would not and could not deliver, but nevertheless they rejected war having seen its reality.

Anzac day is an attempt to paper over that and prepare the next generation for volunteering to make the ultimate sacrifice, and justifying our continuing foreign adventures in far away places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn...

Allan Glen, my step Grandad went ashore at Galibolu (Gallipoli) on that fateful day, he was 15 yrs old. I recall him at 83yrs of age (Christmas 1983) cutting down stumps for firewood and chucking them about like he was a 25 yr old. Fondly remembered!

Robert Gibbs, Best Man at my wedding in 1989, went through the Siege of Tobruk with his brothers (3 x) then sent to Atherton Tablelands in QLD for jungle training prior to going to Kokoda Track. Only he survived the war, losing his brothers there.

Rest in Peace.

On the night of the HMAS Voyager Disaster, my upstairs neighbour Mrs Teape lost her husband and the father of her kids. In 1996 I lost brothers in the Townsville Black Hawk incident.

I joined up in 1977 as a 32nd Class Apprentice at Appy School, & still proudly serve 31 yrs later as a ‘Chocko‘ trying to do proud all who came before me. Bob Gibbs passed away in 1994, and still his family will say I was the only person to whom he related anything about his war experiences - I am, as I write, still in awe that he did this after all he suffered for each and everyone of us in this wonderful country today. I am sorry that I was not in the position to write at least some of it down for posterity.

The phrase often referred to:, "No greater love..." rings as true today as then.

The men and women who served and died, and those still with us today should be revered, for if they had not gone before us with their mindset of "can do" - "will do" and Duty Served. Then just what would the Australia of today look like? They would say in return perhaps -" No… we simply did what had to be done..."

Yes war is a folly of the greatest human magnitude, a tragic and undeniably stupid endeavour. But usually driven by politics of the day.

Thank you all and God bless.

Passy,

I find it truly staggering that any remotely functional human being could still believe in “the revolution”. The brutality of communist regimes across the world and their consequent rejection by the people they were supposed to be rescuing has made it abundantly clear to all but the MOST brain damaged among us that Communism is BAD!|!|!

For example your wonderful revolution sweeping away the TSAR resulted in the purges and mass starvations of Stalin. You people whinge that Stalinism wasn’t real communism. Oh Contraire. Stalinism is the inevitable offspring of communism. The pattern is just far too regular to ignore. Just see Mao, Pol Pot, Ceasecu and the rest.

How one earth you get the gall to call Churchill, the saviour of western Europe a war-monger I’ll never know. Certainly there would have been no more revolution in Greece, Yugoslavia or Russia for that matter without Churchill. The Nazis, if they had been able to turn their full attentions to Russia, would have conquered it within 6 months.

In the end it wasn’t Churchill who declared war, it was Chamberlain. Churchill merely pulled together the threads which allowed Britain to resist the attacks of the Nazis, and later go over to the offensive, ridding the world of Nazism. This is a truly great contribution to history. A remarkable man.

SJF,

Sorry which european countries were just handed over? Do you mean the parts in which the Red Army had already driven out the Nazis? You know; that Red Army which was 3 times bigger than the combined Allied forces?

No one gave over those countries. The communists took them and it would have required a war to take them back. Something the Allies were unremarkably not that keen upon.

Churchill did his best at Yalta to free the people of Eastern Europe. Stalin had agreed to the principle of a liberated Europe, which stated that liberated peoples would have the right to democratic self government. Stalin also agreed that Poland would hold democratic, free elections as soon as feasible. As we know Stalin never allowed them.

Paul L

Stalin represented the defeat of the revolution. He established capitalism in Russia where the state became the embodiment of capital and exploited workers.

Read Sandra Bloodwoth: How Workers took power: the 1917 revolution. Or Tony Cliff on State Capitalism in Russia.

Yalta was about the three imperialisms dividing up the spoils after the war. None of them gave a hoot about democracy. Churchill supported Stalin's bloody takeover of Eastern Europe.

Churchill was a warmonger. Look at the Boer war, look at his failed war efforts in World War One, including Galipoli from memory.

His time came when the inevitable war between Germany and Britain erupted, an inevitability made possible by the counter-revolutionary nature of Stalinism, the late development of Germany as a capitalist power, the inability of German capitalism to expand on a world wide scale because Britain, and the US , were dominant, and the failure of the revolutions from 1917 to 1936 to succeed and spread.

Socialism is the working class - the majority - organising production and other facets of life democratically to satisfy human need. Capitalism cannot organise adequately to feed at least 1 bn people. It is for profit, not people.

Mao? The working class played no part in this essentially nationalist revolution which imposed state capitalism on society. Pol Pot? What working class? Actually the US supported him, not the left in Australia. Ceausescu? He came to power partly through Russian arms. What is socialist about that? His execution was a day for socialists to celebrate, just as the downfall of the Berlin wall was a day for celebration for socialists.

As hunger, famine, war, environmental and economic crisis stalk the world, I think the Bolsheviks slogans are more relevant now than in 1917.

All power to the workers councils. Bread, land and peace.

Otherwise there will be the common ruination of the contending classes.

Anzac day is an important part of the propaganda for the system. A bit like all those Red Square days really, when Soviet troops and their new fangled arms paraded in front of the Russian ruling class.

Passy

Good posts!

Pericles

‘Let's face it, there weren't many Swiss or Irish in that particular transmigration.’

I can’t speak for the Swiss. However, your portrayal of Ireland as a nation that somehow profited from its neutrality in WWII shows a woeful ignorance of Irish history. This is understandable, given the tendency of our British-inherited education system to reduce Irish history to no more than an occasional pest in British history.

The Irish came to Australia in droves throughout the 20th century because for much of that century, it was still a society devastated by the aftermath of a colonial occupation that had left it crippled economically, culturally and psychologically. To this very day, no British administration has ever shown an ounce of remorse for its crimes against the Irish people.

These Irish migrants were also war-ravaged refugees. It just wasn’t the kind of war that Australia likes to include in its official narrative of glorious military endeavour.

Paul.L

‘No one gave over those countries. The communists took them and it would have required a war to take them back. Something the Allies were unremarkably not that keen upon.’

Aha!!

Let me get this straight. The Allies could have fought a war with the Soviets to save half of Europe from totalitarian Communism. However, they CHOSE not to have that war.

C-H-O-S-E.

Ultimately, that’s the basis of all wars. Choice. You can choose to have them and you can choose to not have them.

Unfortunately, the choice to go to war is routinely made by effete, cowardly politicians hiding behind armies of young men (and more recently women) who have been brainwashed from birth that it is sweet and noble to die for one’s country.

Commemorations like Anzac Day are essential to that brainwashing. If Gallipoli had not happened, we would have had to invent it.