What’s ANZAC Day? Holiday or holy day? Interesting debate on twitter on the day itself. Opinions varied. Properly respectful? Warmongering? Nationalistic or jingoistic? A day to examine why we go to war or to protest against us going to war?
Jeff Sparrow wrote a nice piece in Overland describing the evolution of the day over the years to what is now a fundamentally anti-political occasion. It wasn’t always so. I tweeted I preferred it when there were demonstrations on the day. Not strictly accurate, but my thoughts are too complicated to be expressed in 140 characters. (Much and all as I love twitter).
Early on, fifties and sixties, my father marched in the big Melbourne parades. It was quite a journey; over three hundred miles from our home in the mallee, four young kids. We watched it on the telly. Black and white vision of row after row of men who all looked like Dad: besuited, short back and sides, marching abreast, tall and proud. Some had placards carrying messages for their kids. He (and we) never went to the dawn service. During those decades there were no demonstrations. They came later, during the Vietnam war, when nearly everything about ANZAC Day was contested by young people.
As students, knowing everything, confident of our opinions, and the justness of our cause, we believed the day merely served to glorify war. The march, and the pontificating by old men in suits and uniforms promoted an unhealthy nationalism that prepared the populace to sacrifice the lives of young men to appease powerful allies. There would be no all the way with LBJ for us and ANZAC Day was a good day to make that point.
That the RSL, at least in Victoria, was allied to conservative political forces (betraying those members like my father who supported Labor) inflamed our protests. That politicization, which was never as strong nationally, has changed over time as Vietnam Vets came to dominate the organization. Over time numbers dwindled as the marchers died, first those veterans from the First World War, and increasingly those from the Second.
My father stopped coming to Melbourne in the seventies. His friends no longer came. He was President of his local RSL Branch and marched locally. He also started going to the local dawn services, but (in what would perhaps be frowned on as reflecting a lack of proper dignity today) did so by pulling trousers on over pajamas and then rushing back to bed for more sleep before attending the rest of the day’s ceremonies.
We thought the significance of the day would decline, but as we now know, and as Jeff points out, that was not to be. The march was opened up to more people (not without opposition from the traditionalists); to women, those who had not technically served overseas, to current serving personnel and to young people walking alongside their grandfathers. And of course we have been involved in more wars. And now the day has taken hold in the public imagination, but is somehow being stripped of real significance. Dawn service, march and then the footy. Strange.
I remain ambivalent. To the extent it serves to show respect to those who have fought in our name, even when we opposed them doing so – as was the case with WWI and Vietnam in particular – I don’t object. To the extent it causes people who have studied these things, to reflect and debate the causes and the conduct of those wars, and by doing so, educate the rest of us then that may benefit us all. The best example of that this year was Ross McMullin on Lateline talking about the effect of WWI on real people. But as Jeff also points out, these sorts of interviews are now commonplace.
What I oppose is the groupthink that enfolds the day. The solemnity and earnestness, the need for people to be sombre and serious and supportive of everything to do with the day. And the view that any questioning of any aspect is disrespectful to our war dead. Bugger that!
Conforming to a single view of the world is more disrespectful, and against the spirit of those who fought. Democracy is all about being able to debate fully and frankly about our different points of view. About the contestability of ideas and values. And quite frankly about contesting those in authority. As Jeff says we need more civic courage. What is celebrated (and that, strangely, does seem the appropriate word) is a partial view only, the sanitized version of war and it’s aftermath.
There is a hierarchy of wars worth talking about. Pre-eminent is the war to end all wars – WWI. And even then we don’t hear all of it. Nothing about Daniel Mannix’s crusade against it. Nor anything, as Jeff points out, about one of the best things those Diggers did, which was to vote against conscripting others to join their cause. People could pop into the beautiful Victorian Trades Hall Council building on their way to the Shrine and check out the vote that is recorded in the atrium there.
What we need is more anger about the waste of lives, more questioning of the whys and wherefores and reflections about whether we are still making the same mistakes – fighting other peoples wars for all the wrong reasons. It is anodyne to say that the only thing we can do for those soldiers killed in action is to respectfully remember them. We should be angry about the waste of life, the incompetence of those who made the decisions that caused these deaths.
We should be questioning our leaders – both political and military – are they doing everything possible to ensure we only fight in the right wars, for the right reasons – supporting a role for Parliament in that decision, not just leaving it to government. If we are serious about respecting soldiers we should be questioning whether everything is being done to protect those fighting now, and those civilians caught up in the fighting.
We need voices to stand up and be heard – questioning, angry, demanding. Not all this breathless reverence. The best political statement on ANZAC Day for me, and I’m not sure whether he actually did it on ANZAC Day was a gesture, not a speech. It was Paul Keating spontaneously dropping to his knees and kissing the ground at Kokoda. There is not much that has not been said is a speech – a hundred times over. And, of course we don’t get much reflection on the Vietnam War and little beyond the support for our troops regarding the current conflicts.
I hope the students who win ANZAC scholarships, the backpackers interrupting their travels around the world to attend dawn services, the people young and old who turn up at services and marches here in Australia, take the opportunity to learn and get angry, not just reverential. And certainly not sentimental.
I hope it prompts them to watch a film or read a book that looks critically at war and it’s aftermath. One of the best films is Joseph Losey’s King and Country. Set in the trenches of World War One, it stars Dirk Bogarde as the supercilious upper class officer, Captain Hargreaves, dragooned reluctantly into defending Tom Courtenay’s pathetic Private Arthur Hamp at his court-martial for desertion. I’ve never forgotten Arthur’s whispered I just wanted to go home Sir, so I started walking. And later, Is it over yet Sir? as the Captain finishes the firing squad’s job. I tried to upload an excerpt from this film from YouTube but the only one I could find is such a terrible scene I could not bear to.
Another is Bertrand Tavernier’s sombre, beautiful Life and Nothing But (La Vie et Rien d’Autre). This stars the wonderful Philippe Noiret as the army officer, Major Dellaplane, who is meticulously working to locate and identify the bodies of French soldiers after the First World War. He is searching for 350,000 bodies. An unimaginable number. At one stage he is asked about the merit of a march honouring the dead. He is against it on the grounds that if done properly, having all of the missing represented by a living body, it would take a year for them all to march though the Arc de Triomphe. The public would not be able to bear it, he says, to concentrate for long enough, to bear proper witness. His view is that war is a disaster for everyone and that nothing should hide this fundamental truth. I couldn’t find an extract with sub-titles, so this is for all the French speakers out there.
The wonderful book by Shirley Walker, The Ghost at the Wedding describes the impact of war service on families. In her case two men, two world wars. A deep impact, extending across generations, affecting mothers, wives, siblings, children. It is a beautifully written memoir, closely observed but respectful of the people she is talking about. Nothing made up, no glossing over of facts. People are damaged by war, deeply damaged.
Another book, a novel, about the impact of war on families that affected me deeply was Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country. It is a long time since I read it and there is a film, made in 1989 and starring Joan Allen and Bruce Willis that I vaguely recall; not one of Bruce’s action movies. Set in America, Kentucky, it’s about a girl whose father was killed in Vietnam before she was born and whose uncle (Bruce’s role) is a traumatised Viet veteran. The girl reads letters and a journal written by her father and interrogates her uncle. They travel to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington and find some sort of peace through that pilgrimage. Beautiful. Here’s the trailer (a long one) for the movie.
Which brings me to my final reflection about ANZAC Day which is about war memorials. InBomber County by Daniel Swift (another good war book reflecting on the bombing campaign in WWII) there is some discussion of the importance war memorial design for both those who have participated in wars and the general public. There is a big emotional investment and plenty of politics in the selection of these designs. Which is why there is plenty of controversy about the finished product. This was the case with the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington which is a thing of beauty and simplicity. As are the war graves throughout Europe and Africa. In Australia we have our own poignant memorials dotted in little country hamlets, towns and cities all over the nation. These are permanent reminders of the true cost of war. And they are there every day of the year – not just that one day.
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