In a few short weeks, it will be another ANZAC Day, only this time we'll be recognising precisely one hundred years since the allies ill-fated attempt at a successful landing on the Gallipoli peninsula, in Turkey, on 25th April 1915. I guess there are not too many Australian families who don't have at least one relative who's not seen active service during a period of war ?

It's for this reason, that I ask you all, what does this particular ANZAC day mean or symbolize for you personally, and your family ? Is it a time for celebration or commemoration ? Or a time for observance allowing for a period of quiet personal reflection ?

Or just another welcome day-off that will invariably pass all too quickly, without all that predictable 'brouhaha' generally associated with these kinds of occasions ?

Please...I'd very much like to hear all your opinions and your views, on this momentous period in our history.

Britain attacked Turkey for no other reason than to weaken resistance, so they could attack the 'Middle East' to get control of the oil. Lawrence was sent in to promise the original Arab and Palestinian owners that their lands would be returned to them in return for their assistance. But after the war, the British with their usual treachery, sliced the place up and shared the spoils with France. Lawrence suicided from shame.
That's what the sacrifice of all those poor deluded soldiers means to me. No war has ever been fought for reasons other than making the rich richer. Australians do not have a Defence Force, we have an Attack Force, to go out and support the U.S.A and previously the British, in expanding the economic interests of their wealthy defacto rulers. A decent country would wait until their country is attacked before defending. Racing all over the planet, attacking people who don't do as the USA wants, is vile, and the soldiers, as Churchill infamously once said, are disposable pawns.

ybgirp, Lawrence did not suicide from shame, or for any other reason. He campaigned for Britain to honour its promises, then after Iraq and Jordan were given independence, he changed his name, enlisted in the air force, and died in a motorcycle accident.

The day Australia was born as a nation was December 3 1854. See http://www.visitvictoria.com/Regions/Goldfields/Things-to-do/History-and-heritage/Gold-rush-history/Eureka-Stockade

On April 25 1915 Australians were losing their lives to serve the geopolitical ambitions of a foreign country.

Hi there Folks...

It would appear thus far, this particular ANZAC day means very little to some people. Quarrelling over why the British and her allies attacked Turkey ? Actually I was seeking responses more along the lines of the significance of this centenarian ANZAC Day, rather then deliberating as to why the British or her enemies, adopted such and such a strategy during the prosecution of their various campaigns ?

Is ANZAC Day, the 'assigned' founding day, of this great country, as many important people would have us believe ? The day we ultimately matured ? Or is it just a point in time where Australia's fledging military began to get it's backside assiduously slapped from beneath them ? Personally I don't know ?

What I do know, every single political leader we've had since the end of WW l, has placed the 25th of April high on their personal agenda, almost a preoccupation with observing it's singular importance ? I do wonder though, given our population has now become more 'multi-cultural' as it were, whether we all place the same importance and significance on the day, as we did in times past ? What do you all think ?

It is an interesting question, o sung wu, and one that, as you are already finding, gets very little considered response. It has become a habit on this forum to use any and every topic to air personal prejudices, rather than engage with the question at hand.

My own view is that there is very little "spirit" of any worthwhile kind in the continuing celebration of the Gallipoli experience; it is now just a habit.

I am certain that it once meant something very real.

My own parents were WWII survivors, mother in the WAAF, father at sea in frigates. My grandfather was in the Ypres trenches in 1917, during a period when the BEF lost 310,000 men in the three months between the last day of July and the beginning of November. That's over three thousand young men being killed, every day.

Their generations knew first hand the sheer courage involved in real people fighting each other, when they had to put their own bodies on the line for a cause which they believed to be to protect their families' future. Forget "king and country"; think "wife and kiddies".

In the last seventy years, our lucky generations have not had this experience to such a confronting degree. The numbers that have been actually involved in combat are relatively small, consequently the number of people who share their awareness is also diminishing. Nor are we likely to experience it again - any future war will be remote and surgical, rather than hand-to-hand and messy.

But people like symbols, and the military failure of Gallipoli has now been hijacked as a symbol of a whole load of stuff that has no bearing on the sacrifices made there, by real people, in real danger, with real courage.

It is just another excuse for political grandstanding and mindless jingoism.