Since 1916 Anzac Day has evolved to the observance we commemorate today. The day of observance begins before dawn with a march by returned and service personnel to the local war memorial, where they are joined by other members of the community for the Dawn Service. This is a solemn and grave ceremony which brings to mind the lives lost and the terrible futility of warfare, whether it happened in Gallipoli, in the Middle East, in America, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, the Gulf or in Korea… You can read more about Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance and look at my photos in this linked blog post.
The assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula began on the 25th April 1915, as an attempt by Allied Command to weaken the strategic position of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey who were allied in the first world war. It was the Australasian Expeditionary Force’s first major engagement of the First World War after their training in Egypt. By the end of the first day of warfare on the Gallipoli peninsula, about 2,000 allied troops lay dead. The bloody fighting continued, and by the end of the first week more than 6500 ANZACs had been killed or wounded. Many thousands of Turks also died there.
Not all brave acts at Gallipoli met with success, however. The film “Gallipoli” tells the story of the 10th Light Horse Regiment from Western Australia and the brave but pointless attack at a place called The Nek. After several mistakes that gave the Turks time to prepare for an attack, the Australians fixed bayonets, leapt out of their trenches and charged the Turkish lines. In just 30 seconds, the first wave of men had all been killed or wounded. The Turks eventually stopped shooting and the battlefield fell silent.
After only two minutes, the second wave stormed from the trenches, into the wall of hot lead and steel. The final wave of ANZACs remained in the trench. They knew the attack was now pointless, and waited for the Generals down on the beach to order them to stop. But the only order they received was to attack. Brothers said goodbye to each other, and friends stood side by side. As they leapt out of the trench they jumped over the bodies of their friends who had been alive only minutes earlier, and knew they would soon join them. No ANZACs ever reached the Turkish trenches. In 1919, after the war was over, several ANZACs went back to Gallipoli to bury their dead properly. At the Nek, they found the bodies of more than 300 Australians in an area smaller than a tennis court.
After eight long months of bitter fighting, the British High Command decided that the war at Gallipoli was too costly when they were also fighting other battles in Europe. The ANZACs alone had lost 10,000 men, and so the order came for a withdrawal. Since the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landing in 1916, Anzac Day has evolved to acknowledge the sacrifice and service of subsequent wars and to encompass new understandings of the full impact of armed conflict on those who have served their country.
Gallipoli has marked indelibly the Australian psyche and there is nobody in Australia who does not know of the events in the first world war that led to such a terrible loss of young lives. All towns and cities in Australia have some sort of memorial to the Anzacs, and I give you here some photos from Whittlesea, a town in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 40 kilometres north-east from Melbourne's central business district. At the 2006 Census, Whittlesea had a population of 4,563.
The Anzac memorial in Whittlesea is one that is similar to many others in small towns in Australia, the statue of the digger surmounting a column on which names of the fallen are engraved. Furthermore, in this town plane trees have been planted in the main street, each one of them dedicated to a fallen digger, with a plaque commemorating the young life lost. I find this a particularly poignant memorial to these fallen heroes.
This post is part of Julie's Taphophile Tragics meme.
