Since my late teens, I have almost always attended an Anzac service of one sort or another – not to sanction war or the military, nor to express gratitude for those who ‘died to defend my freedom’ – I don’t buy into that line. I attend to remember all those who have died or suffered in war, whether soldiers or civilians, particularly my grandfather Sydney Alvyn Williams, who survived Gallipoli and the Western Front. And in that remembrance, I pray ‘never again war’. The fallen will not have died in vain, if we learn, someday, how not to make war.
So, I write today with a mix of unease and anger. Unease that this year’s longer and larger Anzac Day commemorations has moved from a day of sombre, shared reflection (where individuals can have different views on war and the military) to a kind of sentimental ‘celebration’, sanitising all our soldiers in some way as ‘heroes’ who served and died for a noble and worthy cause.
My anger stems from learning, yet again, that so much of the truer, fuller history of the war and its origins, which would help our understanding and prevention of further conflict, is sidelined.
The truth is there is good and bad in each of us, and most of us participate in the ebb and flow of history through our own small lives with limited lenses, barely or only half-understanding the greater forces and powers at work in our world.
But others say it better.
Tasman Leader editor Alastair Paulin was on the brink of WW1 overload when he wrote, ‘The tidy symbolism and euphemisms of the way we pay homage to the soldiers of WWI risks glorifying and sanitising the reality of war, and our focus on the events of 100 years ago blinds us to the realities of war now. ... I wonder if in all our respect and honour, we have missed the lesson of WWI.’
But the most pertinent and telling comment, comes from 1933, from someone who lived through the War itself. Vera Brittain was a progressive young woman studying at Oxford University, UK, when World War I first disrupted her comfortable life, then took the lives of her fiancée, brother and two of her other closest friends. She herself became a VAD nurse, tending wounded from both sides, and shared how the war had affected her and her generation in Testament of Youth. Testament of Youth.
In the ‘dark, foggy confusion’ she experienced after War’s end, a ‘half-found inspiration’ led to her studying History rather than English when she returned to Oxford. In doing so she sought:
* Video version of ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ sung by its original singer and songwriter Pete Seeger. When Marlene Dietrich translated and sang this song in German, its impact in post-WWII Germany was shattering. Truth crosses boundaries.
*
So, I write today with a mix of unease and anger. Unease that this year’s longer and larger Anzac Day commemorations has moved from a day of sombre, shared reflection (where individuals can have different views on war and the military) to a kind of sentimental ‘celebration’, sanitising all our soldiers in some way as ‘heroes’ who served and died for a noble and worthy cause.
My anger stems from learning, yet again, that so much of the truer, fuller history of the war and its origins, which would help our understanding and prevention of further conflict, is sidelined.
The truth is there is good and bad in each of us, and most of us participate in the ebb and flow of history through our own small lives with limited lenses, barely or only half-understanding the greater forces and powers at work in our world.
But others say it better.
Tasman Leader editor Alastair Paulin was on the brink of WW1 overload when he wrote, ‘The tidy symbolism and euphemisms of the way we pay homage to the soldiers of WWI risks glorifying and sanitising the reality of war, and our focus on the events of 100 years ago blinds us to the realities of war now. ... I wonder if in all our respect and honour, we have missed the lesson of WWI.’
On Anzac Day eve, Bryce Edwards went over the top with an extensive summary of those expressing ‘Anzac fatigue and dissent’.
But the most pertinent and telling comment, comes from 1933, from someone who lived through the War itself. Vera Brittain was a progressive young woman studying at Oxford University, UK, when World War I first disrupted her comfortable life, then took the lives of her fiancée, brother and two of her other closest friends. She herself became a VAD nurse, tending wounded from both sides, and shared how the war had affected her and her generation in Testament of Youth. Testament of Youth.
In the ‘dark, foggy confusion’ she experienced after War’s end, a ‘half-found inspiration’ led to her studying History rather than English when she returned to Oxford. In doing so she sought:
to understand how the whole calamity had happened, to know why it had been possible for me and my contemporaries, through our own ignorance and others’ ingenuity, to be used, hypnotised and slaughtered. ... It’s my job, now, to find out all about it, and try to prevent it, in so far as one person can, from happening to other people in the days to come. Perhaps the careful study of man’s past will explain to me much that seems inexplicable in his disconcerting present. Perhaps the means of salvation are already there, implicit in history, unadvertised, carefully concealed by the war-mongers, only awaiting discovery ...Her subsequent words are perhaps even more applicable to us today than when she wrote them:
since man’s inventions have eliminated so much of distance and time; ... we are now each of us part of the surge and swell of great economic and political movements, and whatever we do, as individuals or as nations, deeply affects everyone else. ... if only the comfortable prosperity of the Victorian age [read ‘post-modern affluence’ for our times] hadn’t lulled us into a false sense of individual security and made us believe that what was going on outside our homes didn’t matter to us, the Great War might never have happened. ... the world as a whole will be worse; lacking first-rate ability and social order and economic equilibrium, it will go spinning down into chaos as fast as it can – unless some of us try to prevent it.I can’t help feeling that these words apply to evils other than War ...
* Video version of ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ sung by its original singer and songwriter Pete Seeger. When Marlene Dietrich translated and sang this song in German, its impact in post-WWII Germany was shattering. Truth crosses boundaries.
