All politicians from:

- Little Johnny (Khaki Election) Howard,

to

- (Symbolic Rump up in the air while kissing stone on Kokoda Track) Keating

should keep their beaks out of the ANZAC Legend and Remembrance Day.

There is a difference between dignified remembrance of those who died and the exploitation of the memory, for political purposes or book selling.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/2008/04/anzac-day-songs-25-april-australias.html

Remembrance is also Armistice Day and recognises the signing of the armistice that effectively ended World War 1. I certainly agree that those who served in Vietnam and all of the others who endured the nightmares of other wars and conflicts around the world should be recognised in their own right.
just_dulcie

The comparison between Gallipoli and Vietnam, while valid and well argued here, is not half so interesting as the comparison between Gallipoli and the Western Front in WW1.

Jonathon King, in an article in The Age today argues that Australia's preoccupation with Gallipoli has overshadowed realities of the Western Front to such an extent that it hardly appeared on the historic radar. Yet that theatre was actually 'five times more important' than Gallipoli.

King argues that, while Paul Keating criticised Australians making the pilgrimage to Gallipoli, he could have taken the debate further by asking us to look beyond Gallipoli towards the real battlefields in France and Belgium.

Gallipoli is often described as a glorious failure, so why do we revere it when we ignore great achievements at the Western Front?

King's assertion that the Western Front was 'five times greater than Gallipoli' is part mathematical: because five times as many Australians served there - 250,000 AIF men served there not just 50,000; 46,000 perished there not 8709; Australians won more than five times more Victoria Crosses - 52 not nine; and Australians troops fought there for 2½ years, not eight months.

But the maths are not the main game. Unlike at Gallipoli where Australians were directed by the British (ultimately shown to be incompetent), by 1918 all Australian troops were led by an Australian, (General Monash). "Most significantly, what happened was not a defeat like Gallipoli because this all-volunteer army of World War I helped win the war...The AIF only constituted 10% of Allied forces but won 25% of enemy territory, prisoners of war, arms and ammunition."

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/honouring-forgotten-victories-20081109-5kv2.html

There seems no compelling reason for us to continue the mythology of Gallipoli when there is a much greater positive to remember. Why celebrate a defeat - and glorify gallant losers - when we can remember our soldiers as winners?

The totally unnecessary Vietnam War was fought under different circumstances and with more enlightened attitudes than was WW1 and the humiliation of Gallipoli. It is more comfortable to remember the distant past than the more recent past for people who really think that fallen soldiers need that sort of thing.

Dwelling on Gallipoli, to me, seems perverse; the slaughter of Australians at the hands of English officers for absolutely no gain. The annual hoo hah and pilgrimage to the battle site is more of an insult than an honour.

How the author can say that the circumstances of Gallipoli and Vietnam are almost the same is hard to figure. There is no similarity between a World War, and intervention in a small country which was no threat to Australia or any other country. The threat came later, after the ignominious defeat, when ‘boat people’ start to flood in here. The same will happen after Iraq and Afghanistan.

There was fierce objection to the Vietnam involvement; fiercer objection to conscription to a war which was none of Australia’s business. There was division and even hatred in families.

While soldiers, particularly conscripts, who fought in Vietnam should never be disparaged, the less said about the Vietnam debacle the better. As the author says, Vietnam is “still tangible”, unlike Gallipoli; and it is still “in living memory” – and that’s the point. We can still remember the division and bitterness Vietnam caused. The division and bitterness will continue as long as people who remember hear the name ‘Vietnam’.

The author says: “The way I see it, if you support the ANZAC legend and Gallipoli, you need to support the Vietnam War. The two are connected.”

Well the two are NOT connected, and it is high time that we stopped ‘supporting’ the ANZAC legend and Gallipoli too. Australia seems to have moved on from its reverence for criminals like Ned Kelly, and it’s well past time we stopped idolising humiliating military defeats.

It is a revultion to me how we NEED people to die for us
[or die for our sins]

lest we forget means we wont be allowed to forget the legend,
yet never know the reality[of young children pressured into pat-rot-ism to die]

what is important about men being forced to enjure stupidity of the highest order[is that it not happen again[yet it sems those more determined to remember keep sending others off to the next war to die.

war is the tool of murder[any soul-dier is FORCED into kill or be killed

it could be said that the only heroes are those who died

[a killer can hardly be a hero[death by any other name is murder]

but there we go indoctrinating CHILDREN about how brave they were to die for us,[BULL ,they died for greed]

how they wont grow old[as we who didnt die grow old
how they didnt see their lovers or children again[in this life]

see that those who glory invading other lands and conducting murder are not heroes

this bells and wistles rememberance[and glorification of war,[or is it dying]is set up to create myth when the reality is any death is futile]and ANY WAR the highest treason to its people

we have the cold blooded murder of millions of young men,
forced to rot in trenches flooded with water

then when they were all sick to bring them home
how conme we dont talk about the flue plague they brought home to kill millions?

it is time to say never again

[and incase you missed the point this celibration [remenberance]was not a victory,and set up the banker take over that even now is bleeding us from our last dollar[less than these brave[but decieved] children got to die on foreign shores[for foreign banker buisness and oppressive cause]
#
banks fund both sides
its time you knew[the war to end wars didnt end war]

[it never does]
it gives the cash injection to the big buisness of war

[that is paid for in others blood]that feeds the war maCHINERY TILL THE NEXT WAR

‘The tone is reverential for Gallipoli but not for Vietnam. Why this disconnect? The circumstances are almost the same except that Vietnam was a counter-insurgency war and shown on television.’

This ‘exception’ IS the reason for the ‘disconnect’. Advances in mass-communication technology have made it impossible to bury the evidence about our widespread opposition to the Vietnam War. By contrast, the deep and bitter divisions in the Australian population over our participation in WWI has been expunged from virtually all teaching on the subject and from virtually all media coverage on Anzac and Remembrance Days.

Average Australians – drip-fed on sentimental tales of young lads putting up their age to enlist – are unaware that our WWI enlistments had actually dried to a trickle by as early as 1915. Neither are most Australians aware of the two conscription referendums in 1916 and 1917, both of which were defeated (the second by an increased majority, and helped by a majority No vote by soldiers serving at the front). Neither are they aware that, despite our wartime censorship laws being excessively draconian, even by the standards of the time, WWI peace and anti-conscription rallies still managed to draw up to 6-figure crowds in Melbourne and Sydney – astonishing even by today’s standards.

‘All of this tells us that the ANZAC legend has been embraced by nearly all of the community and is alive and well.’

I beg to differ. When The Australian newspaper ran a poll in conjunction with its coverage of Paul Keating’s recent comments that Australians make too much of Gallipoli, 67% voted in favour of Keating by the time the poll closed

Vietnam was ugly and Gallipoli was romantic. Ray Martin knows the difference.



U.O.G. I’m with you on this. The entire war industry, past and present, is a crock. Legend status makes it palatable for whoever wasn’t killed or whoever killed another, as well as give shallow purpose to today’s youth looking for something to hang a flag on.

Not sure why the article berates one PM who loathed ceremonial guff but doesn’t mention another who turned Gallipoli into a nationalist shrine, pop music and all.

I’m still chuckling over the Australian Army’s TV advertising campaign a few years ago showing images of smiling, tanned Aussie soldiers comforting poor darkskinned children, building shelters and essential infrastructure. The new caring, sharing Army. Travel to far away lands, meet interesting people...and kill them.

memo to author – PTSD is common in all shooting wars. Rwanda was a mess from day one; can you cite a war that wasn’t?

I have an article on Remembrance Day on my blog (www.enpassant.com.au) which OLO is going to run, I think.

My argument is that the war glorifiers have won the battle for the soul of the Day. They use it to prepare the next generation of Australian workers to die in a war for capital.

Australia has historically sent troops in support of its Big Imperialist brother as an insurance policy - to reinforce the Alliance and to enable us to act as imperialists in "our" region.

"Dwelling on Gallipoli, to me, seems perverse; the slaughter of Australians at the hands of English officers for absolutely no gain. The annual hoo hah and pilgrimage to the battle site is more of an insult than an honour."

"How the author can say that the circumstances of Gallipoli and Vietnam are almost the same is hard to figure. There is no similarity between a World War, and intervention in a small country which was no threat to Australia or any other country."
Turkey posed no threat to Australia. North Vietnam, unless you believed in the Domino Theory, also posed no threat to Australia. Australians went to Gallipoli to support the Mother Country. In 1914 most Australians still had near relatives in England. So they, like Canadians and New Zealanders and Souths Africans and Poms went to war.
With Vietnam, rightly or wrongly the Menzies governmment like the Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon governments decided to support the South Vietnamese Government. Like Gallipoli our efforts were in vain.
"the slaughter of Australians at the hands of English officers". Cripes in 2008 do we still have persons blaming English officers for the slaughter? The slaughter was not restricted to troops commanded by English officers; look at the casualities of the Turks at Gallipoli and on the Western and Eastern fronts look at the horrible casualities on both sides.
"The annual hoo hah and pilgrimage to the battle site is more of an insult than an honour."
An insult to whom? Do a little bit of family history research and you will find just about every family in Australia in the war years had a relative killed or injured in the Great War. Think how lucky we are.
We had conscription for Vietnam to top up our volunteer army. In the Great War, Australia was the only country that had a volunteer army.( which by the way was the highest paid). Just read a little bit about the soldier's lot in the Great War before you in the safety of 2008 demean their effort and those of subsequent generations who honour them.

"By contrast, the deep and bitter divisions in the Australian population over our participation in WWI has been expunged from virtually all teaching on the subject and from virtually all media coverage on Anzac and Remembrance Days."

"Average Australians – drip-fed on sentimental tales of young lads putting up their age to enlist – are unaware that our WWI enlistments had actually dried to a trickle by as early as 1915. Neither are most Australians aware of the two conscription referendums in 1916 and 1917, both of which were defeated (the second by an increased majority, and helped by a majority No vote by soldiers serving at the front)."
Dear SJF
Just read a little about Australia's involvement in WW1. Australia was the only country supporting the Mother Country that never resorted to conscription. "dried to a trickle by as early as 1915". Where did you pluck this statement from? Australia had no engagement until Gallipoli in April 1915.
"Neither are most Australians aware of the two conscription referendums in 1916 and 1917, both of which were defeated (the second by an increased majority, and helped by a majority No vote by soldiers serving at the front)." Yes the volunteer soldiers at the Western Front voted against conscription. Why? Because even they would not wish the "shirkers" back in Australia to suffer the horror that they and their comrades endured.
Who has expunged the divisions in Australia over conscription? Divisions in Australia certainly occurred over conscription but they were the result of Archbishop Mannix and his support for Irish Independence and opposition to conscription, divisions which affected Australian political and social life right through to the 60s. But this was about opposition to conscription not Australia's involvement in the war.
SJF pop down to your library and read a little more or get your teacher to help you. You might find it rewarding

‘“dried to a trickle by as early as 1915". Where did you pluck this statement from?’

Yes. My wording here was sloppy. I meant that the process by which the enlistments finally dried to a trickle by 1917 had started as early as 1915 – not that it WAS a trickle in 1915.

In all, only 37% of eligible Australian men enlisted during the four years of the war. The year-by-year enlistment figures are (Source: ‘A Military History of Australia’, Jeffrey Grey):

1914 - 52,561 (4 months only)
1915 - 165,912
1916 - 124,355
1917 - 45,101
1918 - 28,883

On the rare occasions this information ever makes it into the war literature, the drop in numbers is explained away by the receipt of news of mounting casualties at Gallipoli and the Somme.

This is only partly true. The more likely explanation is that the initial intakes of the earlier war years comprised mainly those young men who believed in the righteousness of the war or who succumbed to the guilt and shame of being called ‘skulkers’, ‘shirkers’ and weaklings – leaving behind those who didn’t.

‘Divisions in Australia certainly occurred over conscription but they were the result of Archbishop Mannix and his support for Irish Independence and opposition to conscription …’

… as well as the Australian Catholic Church in general, International Workers of the World, the ALP (which split with the PM over the issue), the trade union movement, the internationally aligned Women’s Peace Army, the Queensland Government (alone among the states), the Quakers and concerned citizens. Many were shamed, harassed, physically attacked, jailed and/or deported for their efforts, indeed for their very beliefs.

WW1 recruiting was a problem in the first half of 1915. So much so that the height restriction was lowered from 5 feet 6 inches to enable the many thousands who had been rejected on that basis to come forward again and to to make eligible the many thousands who didn't bother because they knew they were too short under the old rules.

My grandfather was 5 feet 4 and within days of the height restriction being lowered to 5 feet 2 inches he and many more joined the Bantam Army (the British term - their height requirement was a mere 5 feet nothing).