ANZAC Day has always held an interest for me, ever since I arrived in Australia. As a child I would marvel as I watched on TV the long lines of old men – when you are seven, everyone who is older than your father is old – who would march down George Street. As I grew these lines diminished until Vietnam War veterans began to march with their comrades from previous wars. Then over the years, as the numbers of WW1 and WW2 marchers became less and less, people began marching not as returned service men and women but marching in memory of their parents and grandparents.
As a teenager, ANZAC Day and the events that led to its creation began to enter my life not just as a television program but as the subject of essays and homework. Both in History and English, ANZAC Day began to be examined, analysed and written about. Perhaps my teachers represented a generation that took a dimmer view of ANZAC Day.- a view represented by an article in the April 1958 edition of Honi Soit (a publication of the University of Sydney Student Representative Council) which was profoundly critical of ANZAC Day. I was unknowingly influenced by their views and began to question why we should celebrate ANZAC Day and whether it should celebrated at all.
Like many other High School students in the 1980s, I was required to study Alan Seymour’s play The One Day of the Year, reportedly inspired by the article mentioned above. Our teacher encouraged us to share are views and opinions about the play during class. She once posed the question: “Is The One Day of the Year a play only an Australian can fully understand?” As someone who was regarded as a ‘Pom’ by many of my classmates, it was a question that rankled me. As a consequence, when the question was given as an essay topic for homework, for the only time in an English class, I threw myself into a frenzy of scholastic activity in order to prove wrong the teacher, my classmates and any other Australian that got in my way.
Two things happened. First, I actually achieved a decent mark for a change. Second, it made me think about why we celebrate ANZAC Day. To an outsider, it may seem strange that as a nation we celebrate a day that began a military campaign which ended in defeat. Similarly, Australia’s and New Zealand’s contribution, in terms of numbers of soldiers, was smaller than that of other nations, yet they are largely unaware of the Gallipoli campaign. Fifty thousand Australians and 15,000 New Zealanders fought at Gallipoli, compared with around 80,000 French soldiers and over 340 000 soldiers from the United Kingdom, Ireland and other British dominions.
Some have argued that ANZAC Day marks the beginning of an Australian sense of identity, a national consciousness. This may be true. Others point to the fact that this is the first conflict in which Australians fought as one country rather than as citizens of various British colonies. The Department of Veterans Affairs states on their website that “The Gallipoli Campaign was a military defeat, but the battles fought on Gallipoli established the military reputation of the original Anzacs.”
But I think there is another, more personal reason why we celebrate ANZAC Day. If you go into any old church building in a country town, one built before 1918 and many those of a similar vintage in our cities and suburbs, you will find wooden boards with lists of names on them. Similar lists are to be found on memorials across our land in our cities, towns and villages. Lists that commemorate those who served and those who fell in World War One, World War Two and often in later wars. The honour rolls in the Church of the Good Shepherd list some those from our community who served. The memorial in the middle of the village lists those who fell.
Each of these names commemorates a life, a service. They are names now, but many of these names are familiar, the families of many of these men still reside in the Valley. When we celebrate ANZAC Day we are remembering those who lived among us who were willing to serve their country, their community. These memories can be intensely personal and deeply profound. Our memories may be of those listed, others who are listed elsewhere or remembered only by their families. Some of those who left to fight never came home but gave their lives, paying the supreme sacrifice.
There have been people who suggest that honour rolls have no place in churches. I disagree. The men who are listed on these Rolls of Honour were members of the community, our community. Their service is part of our corporate memory. Often, they were members of the church where their names are listed. We need to remember their sacrifice just as we remember the sacrifice of the one who gave his life for all humanity. If we remember their trials and travails, their suffering and sacrifice, then we may avoid the errors of the past repeating themselves.
Yours in Christ,
Andrew Heron
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On Anzac Day this year, after the memorial service in the main street, the Church of the Good Shepherd will remain open to anyone who wishes to find a quiet place to remember those who served and to contemplate why ANZAC Day remains a day that is worth commemorating today as much as a it was when it was first observed.
