Hard News: This Anzac Day
104 Responses
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Here's my artistic take on the Gallipoli centennary, "Ghosts of Gallipoli" (also viewable at Renderosity and DeviantArt)
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
strained fruit...
I couldn’t spot many of the 25,000-odd in Cranmer Square this morning who were there for the glorification or entertainment.
I don't believe anyone else had implied that those going to dawn parades were doing so for the motives you allude to - from what dark well did that odd conflation of concepts spring forth?
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
This household was woken on Anzac morning by a biohazard team stripping out the neighbouring house before demolition. I’m unsure whether to be peeved or pleased.
Heh.
I'd thought that Australia was a little tougher than NZ when it came to enforcing the sanctity of ANZAC proper, but it seems that Mammon must be appeased. From my experience of finding myself within earshot of the occasional Sydney Lower North Shore property auction, they sound like rabble-rousing political rallies on the verge of breaking into full-blown civil disturbances. -
izogi, in reply to
Apparently since the Holiday's Act, cafe's can now open on ANZAC Saturday if they close on the following Monday. Or something.
That seems rather weird. If it was merely about ensuring that all of your workers has one of the two days off, it's hard to see why large supermarkets and similar would have bothered to close at all. But instead, businesses can open on ANZAC Day Saturday as long as they keep their doors shut on a future day which has little significance except being the Monday after?
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Michael Homer, in reply to
Cafes have always been allowed to open, as has anywhere else "whose principal business is selling ... prepared or cooked food ready to be eaten immediately in the form in which it is sold".
They don't have to close on Monday either.
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I went to one of the smaller satellite events in the area of Dunedin, as my daughter was involved in posy laying with Girl Guides.
People might be familiar with the way the older generations (including my own) will tend to mumble through the Maori verse of the National Anthem (in the typical public ceremony verse 1 in Maori and English) as many people are not confident of the wording.
I would take it as a sign of the increasing secularization of New Zealand that that Maori verse was positively deafening when compared to the response to singing a hymn (for which the words were provided). Very few in the crowd had the slightest idea of how the words fitted the accompanying music, so I felt it verged on an instrumental piece.
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wendyf, in reply to
"Anyway, thanks all. I had actually been struggling with what to say about this, but I just stopped what I was doing this morning and wrote the post. It’s a relief to discover I’m far from the only one feeling this way."
Echoing Russell here. I've just finished reading all the responses and I feel battered. But grateful for the knowledge and wisdom in so much of the writing. I was angry because I had been lied to over so many years, because only in the last few of my 80 years did I start making any sense of what it was all about.
And now the Armenians to think about, and the deliberate turning away from their significance. How could they?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Leaving the Wellington dawn parade this morning, I noticed at least a couple of cafes open on Cuba Street, at least one of which had some ANZAC themed advertising out front taking advantage of the mass exodus, and Burger King on Lambton Quay appeared to be open. Are they allowed to trade on ANZAC morning these days?
Honestly, the only thing that was affronted by seeing people lined up at the Newmarket Coffee Club around 7am yesterday was my inner coffee snob. As Michael Homer pointed out, it’s been the case for twenty five years.
I’d thought that Australia was a little tougher than NZ when it came to enforcing the sanctity of ANZAC proper, but it seems that Mammon must be appeased.
Again, I really wish ministers that have merrily slashed support for veterans, servicemen and women and their families would take their moral high horses to the knacker’s yard. It’s long since crossed the line from tiresome to offensively two-faced. BTW, how many auctions do you think were being held in Sydney during hail storms, flash floods and freakishly torrential rain?
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I wrote another post ...
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There have been some truly strange responses to this Anzac Day. There's a French delicatessen in my neighbourhood oddly named after a resistance group from the Second World War (and grotesquely named in my opinion; kind of like calling a German-themed florist 'the White Rose'). This shop advertised an Anzac day barbeque and two-up competition. Is that opportunism or community-building?
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WW1 is as long ago for us as the Napoleonic invasion of Russia was for them. Despite my family having been in it, I'm losing interest. The military parades seemed like an appropriate memorial for those who had been in wars, although for most of my life that would have been WW2 vets. Now they're gone and there's only the grim memorials that I occasionally visit with my boys for educational purposes. I don't really want to make a song and dance about it for them.
The worst thing about WW1 is WW2. It was like we learned nothing and had to do it all again, but 5 times harder. I can't romanticize anything about that.
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Sacha, in reply to
The worst thing about WW1 is WW2. It was like we learned nothing and had to do it all again
Not into military history but it seems the first war wasn't finished properly (Germany not properly defeated) so after a couple of decades the second one started.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
(Germany not properly defeated)
Are you suggesting that the conditions imposed upon Germany after it's WW1 defeat were excessively punitive? That seemed to be the dismayed consensus of Robert Graves and his fellow junior officers in Goodbye to All That. As a participant in the "Christmas Truce" of 1914 he ended his military career predicting that the extortionate reparations demanded by the victors of WW1 would eventually provoke another conflict.
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Sacha, in reply to
The impression I got was that Germany were not forced to properly admit they had been beaten, so the conditions were resented as unfair. Like I say, not my area. The WW1 series on Maori TV has been illuminating but is based on only one author's perspective.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
The impression I got was that Germany were not forced to properly admit they had been beaten
I'd suggest that the problem might have been that they really had their collective nose rubbed in it.
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Sacha, in reply to
Said doco series painted that as the US and other financiers demanding a return on their loans, to the surprise of the Kaiser et al.
But there also seemed to be a culture angle. Troops never marched through Berlin. Suspect that's why Allies went the distance in WW2.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
to the surprise of the Kaiser et al.
The Kaiser wasn’t a player in the 1918 surrender, having been forced to abdicate some months earlier by the military dictatorship that had effectively ruled Germany since 1916. The WW1 focus on the dastardliness of the largely ineffectual “Kaiser Bill” was mostly British jingoism.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
Not into military history but it seems the first war wasn't finished properly (Germany not properly defeated) so after a couple of decades the second one started.
The period 1914-1945 is sometimes referred to (somewhat contentiously) as 'the second thirty years war'.
French/German antipathy, and the roots of the French mindset that saw the post-WW1 settlement as justifiable, go back far further - to the battles of Austerlitz (1805) and Jena/Auerstedt (1806), and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
I’m not arguing with the work the “Heroes” charities do. I’m arguing with their labelling. As far as I can see, the only pre-requisite for “Hero” status is to join the armed forces. Volunteering to kill people doesn’t seem particularly heroic to me. In order to benefit from the “Hero” charities, you need to have had someone you were trying to kill manage to kill or nearly kill you first. That doesn’t seem to me to justify “Hero” status either.
On the “Keep Calm and Carry On” bit, I think we differ on cause and effect. The timing was indeed no coincidence. But the “national yearning for a simpler time”, and the lack of social discord and breakdown is a result of the success of rhetoric and propaganda that has convinced the UK masses that the huge degradation in their public services and employment is something outside everyone’s control (like their experience of war), to be soldiered through. This lets The City off the hook, and lets the Government off the hook for not doing more to recoup national losses from The City. The people SHOULD be marching in the streets, but (unlike in the 70s and 80s) they’ve now been successfully convinced that that would be un-British or something.
I think we're both reaching the same conclusion, but ascribing different weight to different signs/evidence.
The word 'hero' has become incredibly over-used. However, I do have some sympathy for charities using it. Despite it's devaluation, I don't think any other word would have had the resonance that causes contributors to reach into their pockets.
Yes, the people should be marching in the streets. My own theory is that the last large protest of any coherence and significance (the 'not in my name' anti-war protests in 2001/2002) were so roundly ignored - the parliament of the day couldn't have said 'go fuck yourselves' more clearly without actually saying it - that it's taken the legs out from under people. They're still a lot of angry people out there, but they're also despairing: 'if that didn't work, what will?'
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I still don’t really understand how NZers came to be invading Turkey.
Really short version.
Churchill had this idea that opening up another front would relieve pressure in France and Belgium. His plan was to sail troops into the Sea of Marmara and attack Istanbul.
The problem was the narrow strait leading into the sea was flanked by guns that would destroy any fleet, so he decided landing troops on each side of the strait to capture those guns was a good idea.
It so happened that there were some Australian and New Zealand troops that nobody knew what to do with so he sent them along with the French and British troops he assigned to this errand.
That was about the level of planning involved and hence it was an unmitigated* disaster - so Churchill became a politician.
*this could almost be a perfect definition of the word
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Bart - Churchill was elected to parliament in 1900, and he was 1st lord of the admiralty (a political position) when the war started, so he was already a politician.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
1st lord of the admiralty
Yeah I did know that. Was being facetious.
His story is interesting - the debacle at Gallipoli somehow didn't quite destroy his career. To some degree he probably became a better war leader because he no longer actually planned campaigns and left that task to those with some competence, by contrast Hitler's (and yes I guess that Godwin's the thread) direct involvement as a general contributed significantly to the allied success.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
I'd just point out that had almost any other British politician been PM in 1941 (especially the crypto-quislings on the Conservative benches) Britain would probably have surrendered to the Nazis.
Also, unlike just about every other politician, Churchill (albeit briefly) left politics during WW1 and took command of front-line troops in France.
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It's interesting that Key is in Saudi creeping to the local despot.
Had the Dardanelles landings succeeded (or indeed had Turkey remained out of WW1) Britain wouldn't have needed the Saud family's support in overthrowing Turkish rule in Arabia and the current incumbent wouldn't be on the throne.
Maybe Key is calling in favours?
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
I’d just point out that had almost any other British politician been PM in 1941 (especially the crypto-quislings on the Conservative benches) Britain would probably have surrendered to the Nazis.
That’s true, but thereafter his grasp became increasingly tenuous, heading towards deluded. Invasions of the Greek Isles, the coast of Malaya, Sumatra, Norway, commando raids into France and so on were all either plans that wiser men (as in Brooke and Roosevelt) blocked, or were bloody disasters.
Brooke on Winnie:
…..And the wonderful thing is that 3/4 of the population of the world imagine that Churchill is one of the Strategists of History, a second Marlborough, and the other 1/4 have no idea what a public menace he is and has been throughout this war ! It is far better that the world should never know, and never suspect the feet of clay of this otherwise superhuman being. Without him England was lost for a certainty, with him England has been on the verge of disaster time and again…… Never have I admired and despised a man simultaneously to the same extent. Never have such opposite extremes been combined in the same human being
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