Halfway between the park and the Town Hall in the Sydney
suburb of Balmain there is a rough stone monument bearing the word
‘Gallipoli’. On each of its faces there
are names, not in the most formal of lettering, but obviously heartfelt. This is probably the oldest ANZAC memorial in
Australia - erected as a result of public subscription and private philanthropy
and unveiled on 23 April 2016, two days before what would have been the first
anniversary of the invasion at the Dardanelles in Turkey. ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps)
Day is celebrated on 25th April, commemorating the intial landing of
100 years ago this year. ANZAC Day and
the Dardanelles invasion is to Australia and New Zealand what the first day of
the Somme battle (1st July 1916) is in Britain.
Balmain in 1916 was a working class suburb of Sydney, with
many of its men employed in port industries.
Yet the numbers who volunteered to sign up were considerable, probably
several hundred out of an eligible male population of no more than 5000, and
the number who never returned must have tragically changed the atmosphere of
community life. Today’s Balmain is
gentrified, with rows of cafés, with boutique shops and wine merchants, and
with the houses on the way up from the Balmain East ferry terminal providing a
substantial cross-section of historic housing from the late Victorian
period. It is hard today to connect the
district with the Turkish campaign of the First World War.
But that is true throughout Australia and New Zealand, where
I have spent the last month. Memorials
seem more plentiful and more visible here than they are in many parts of the
UK. They are in very public places where
they will be seen by everyone, and they are well maintained. In Akiroa on the Banks Peninsula near
Christchurch in New Zealand one of the most substantial restoration tasks
undertaken after the 2011 earthquake was of the cenotaph – itself a mini
version of the Scott Memorial in Edinburgh’s Princes Street. And in Queenstown, New Zealand, the Dardanelles
memorial is a gateway on the lake shore that everyone taking a walk would
normally pass through – and this is unusual in bearing the names of those who
went off to fight and came back as well as those who did not.
Serving in a war has been a defining moment in the lives of
many people – men and women – who were called up. It certainly was for my father who spent
three years on the Japanese front in India and Burma. And it was for my next door neighbour as a
child – an Englishman who had served at the Dardanelles and who still bore the
mental scars. But historians tell us
that the First World War was a defining moment in wider national consciousness
in Australia and New Zealand – perhaps particularly in Australia which had only
become a single united country within the lifetimes of those who made the long
sea journey to Europe to fight.
What did those men think they were fighting for? Gallipoli and the Dardanelles campaign were
always a sideshow to the main western and eastern fronts, and a sideshow that
resulted in the evacuation of those fighting the Turks who themselves were in
the process of national reaffirmation leading to the ending of the Ottoman
Empire and who were victorious against the Australian, New Zealand, British and
other forces. Why travel half way round
the world from the shipyards of Balmain, the sheep farms of Akiroa, the
small-town trades of Queenstown to fight in a campaign that few could explain
and that was essentially futile in hindsight?
But the memory is not of why the men went, but of the fact
that they went at all – and that many never returned from an invasion that had
one of the highest casualty rates of the war.
There is surely much greater clarity about what Australian and New Zealand
men and women were fighting for in the Second World War – both in the Pacific
and in Europe – but it is the First War that counts more in public
consciousness.
On Armistice Day – 11 November – last year I also happened
to be in Australia, travelling the ‘Great Ocean Road’ between Adelaide and
Melbourne. As 11 o’clock approached I
was at the ‘Twelve Apostles’ lookout over the series of rock stacks that are
one of the most photographed features of the route. A big group of teenagers with their teachers
was also visiting. And at 11, under the
uncomprehending and un-noticing gaze of a wealth of tourists of all
nationalities, they stood absolutely still and observed the two minutes
silence. It was an emotional moment,
watching them. I wasn’t there, but I
guess there was a similar ceremony going on in Balmain, in Akiroa, in
Queenstown, in Woodville, in Russell and in all the other places where I have
seen memorials on my recent trip.
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