#Anzac Campaign

[fionajames]

anzac day -> lest we forget

I would like you to do me a favor, and try to picture a scene in your head. Attempt to picture a land of mud and heat, blistering your skin as you merely stand. Head to toe in thick uniform, you and your troops stand in preparation for the landing. Imagine the moment you receive the order, sent to run over those muddy hills, bullets flying your way as they seek to kill.

This is what the landing of Gallipoli felt like for the 16,000 ANZACS on the 25th of April, 1915. The conditions of Gallipoli of course grew worse over the time of the campaign, with the heat or cold, disease, unsanitary conditions, terrible food and of course, the daily deaths of fellow soldiers taking its toll.

I figure I ought to explain what ANZAC means before anything else. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and was the title given to the armed forces who fought in the Gallipoli campaign during World War 1.

ANZAC Day is held on the 25th of April, the same day the ANZACS landed in Gallipoli that fateful morning. 2,000 soldiers were killed or wounded upon the first day, and those who weren’t killed were left weak. 

The Gallipoli campaign lasted until the eighth of January, 1916. A total of 8,159 ANZAC troops lost their lives. As sick as it sounds, the death toll isn’t very high. Gallipoli was important for many reasons, including that it was the first major amphibious assault in modern warfare. But it’s also so important because it was seen as a failure, and yet the troops kept going. The soldiers were seen as the bravest of them all.

ANZAC Day is held all over Australia and New Zealand, ceremonies and marching alike to remember the fallen and the serving. We do many things to commemorate the soldiers fallen and alive, some being the Dawn Service and the other numerous marching and ceremonies of course.

Another thing about ANZAC Day are the flowers. Most notable of these are poppies, famous among Australians and New Zealanders for ANZAC Day. Poppies were among the first flowers to grow back on the Gallipoli front, and ever since then they have been a symbol of hope and remembrance for the ANZACs. Another is rosemary, which means fidelity and remembrance. Many people will be wearing poppies and rosemary on ANZAC Day, a sign of their remembrance to the fallen and those who served. 

This is a poem by John McCrae called 'In Flanders Fields'.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

Something that happens here is we play a song called ‘The Last Post’, which is then followed by a minute of silence. During this minute of silence, we remember the fallen, dead, wounded and survived. 

It would be a great favor to me if you could reblog this, no matter if you're Australian or New Zealand. No matter where you're from. ANZAC Day is about remembering war, the fallen and the survived.

Lest we forget.

[ayeforscotland]

Seeing that Poppy Watch stuff as an Australian is very bizarre. Poppies are an important token of remembrance for us as well, particularly for the ANZAC soldiers who were killed during the Gallipoli Campaign, which had such a deep impact on Australian and Aotearoan culture entirely because of how it wasted hundreds of thousands of people's lives to achieve absolutely nothing. Seeing people make fun lawn ornaments about it is kinda... hmm. Ghoulish? I'm getting ready for work rn so I'm having trouble getting my thoughts across but it feels bad, man.

You’re right, the poppy particular symbolises sacrifices made in the First World War. Most of the conscripts who were sent to the frontlines were young and scared shitless.

They were ordered to go over the top into a hail of machine gun fire and artillery and mustard gas, by generals who were tens of miles away from where the fighting was taking place.

I felt like when I was growing up that wearing a poppy was the normal thing, but it has become a political symbol.

Irish football players getting hounded because they refuse to wear a poppy. The idea of an Irish person maybe having some doubts of wearing a poppy completely lost on the frothing idiots berating them.

The absolute pantomime every year of people battling over who respects the troops the most is just beyond parody now. Poppy underwear, poppy designs with pepperoni on pizza, ludicrous poppy, flag-shagging garden displays.

It’s not about remembering people who were senselessly sent to their deaths when a certain group of people are climbing over each other to display their fake patriotism.

[world-of-wales]

─ •✧ WILLIAM'S YEAR IN REVIEW : APRIL ✧• ─

1 APRIL - William and King Charles planted a tree marking the end of Queen's Green Canopy. 8 APRIL - William and George attended the Premier League Aston Villa V Nottingham Forest match at Villa Park. 9 APRIL - William, Catherine and their three kids attended the Easter Mattins Service at St. George's Chapel. 20 APRIL - William and Catherine were received by Sir David Thompson (Deputy Lieutenant of West Midlands).at the Indian Streatery in Birmingham. Afterwards, Mr. Lawrence Barton (Deputy Lieutenant of West Midlands) received them as they gave a Reception at the Rectory. William also appeared in a video supporting the #NoButts Campaign. 24 APRIL - William received Mr. Alastair Martin (Secretary of the Duchy of Cornwall). 25 APRIL - William was received by Colonel Jane Davis (Vice Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London) as he attended the Anzac Day Dawn Service and laid a wreath at Wellington Arch. 26 APRIL - He was represented by Lieutenant Commander James Benbow RN at the Funeral of Mr. Bryn Parry (Co-Founder, Help for Heroes). 27 APRIL - William and Catherine were received by Mr. Peter Vaughan (His Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Mid Glamorgan) as they attended a training session with Central Beacons Mountain Rescue Team to mark their Sixtieth Anniversary. They later, picked up dinner foreveryone from the Little Dragon Pizza Van as they visited Dowlais Rugby Club. 28 APRIL - William and Catherine were received by His Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Mid Glamorgan (Mr. Peter Vaughan) at the Aberfan Cemetery and afterwards. Later, they visited the Aberfan Disaster Memorial Garden and met local people who were involved in the disaster. 29 APRIL - Kensington Palace released a new portrait featuring Catherine and William to mark their 12th Wedding Anniversary.

[barbucomedie]

Thompson Model 1928A1 Sub-Machine Gun from Connecticut, United States of America dated to 1941 on display at the Imperial War Museums North in Manchester, England

The Thompson Auto Ordnance Company was struggling by 1940 but with the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe they started providing weapons to the Allies. The British Empire bought up many of these weapons for their armies all around the world. Compared to other sub-machine guns like the Sten, they were more expensive but were more powerful and sturdier.

This gun was used in the Eighth Army, a Field Army made up of British, ANZAC, Indian, Libyan and Polish soldiers. They fought in the campaigns of North Africa, Tunisia and then later the invasion of Italy.

Photographs taken by myself 2024

[damehelenlove]

Today is ANZAC Day, the 25th April

The anniversary of the Gallipoli Landings in 1915 when the Allies tried attacking the Turkish forces in a controversial attempt to force the Turks out of WW1 Axis coalition. Several nations including Britain and France lost tens of thousands of troops but the new young Dominions of Australia and New Zealand suffered disproportionately and the failed campaign proved a defining moment in their national identities;

Should foreign foe e'er sight our coast, Or dare a foot to land, We'll rouse to arms like sires of yore, To guard our native strand; Britannia then shall surely know, Though oceans roll between, Her sons in fair Australia's land Still keep their courage green.

(from the fifth verse of the Australian National Anthem)

[illegally-blind-and-deaf]

Today, in Australia and New Zealand, is ANZAC Day. It is on this day, the 25thof April,that we commemorate the brave young soldiers who risked their lives in World War One.

These soldiers, some only 16, had never fought under the name of their own country. Some had fought under the British, but this was the first time that Australia and New Zealand had fought internationally under their own names.

The ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) landed at Gallipoli on the Ottoman Empire over a hundred years ago today in a suicide attempt to take Gallipoli. The Gallipoli campaign was a fail; the British Generals made severe mistakes that cost our young men's lives. Yet they still fought with every bit of strength they had, fighting for their king and for their country.

Today we also commemorate all of the other brave men and women who have fought for our country since. We remember those who risked their lives in World War Two in the Kokoda Trail Campain, those who fought in Vietnam and those who are still out fighting today. Some of us remember ancestors who didn't fight with Australia, but fought for their own countries. My great-grandfather fought for Lithuania before it was invaded by the Nazis and then the Soviets.

(There is also a little Anzac service in one of the war memorials in Virginia I think for a Francis Debnham Milne, an Australian soldier who went down with US soldiers in a helicopter in WW2. He's my great-great-uncle.)

We remember and commemorate those today by wearing a sprig of rosemary and poppies. After the Great War of 1914-1918, all vegetation was utterly destroyed on the battlefields. The first thing to grow back were poppies. We also have many services throughout the day, a dawn service as well as a morning one with a march.

Today is ANZAC Day, a day to remember. A day that will continue on for generations as we remember the sacrifice those men, fathers and mothers made so that we could be on this soil today.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Lest we forget.

[scrapironflotilla]

“Without high explosive (and lots of it) the task of turning the Turk out of trenches (a perpetual succession of them) must lead to such appalling losses that there would very soon be no more troops to attack with! We have buried and otherwise got rid of hundreds of corpses (Turk) but there are still hundreds which lie too close to their lines to get at and the smell is pretty bad as are the also the flies.”

From the then Brigadier General William Marshall to his brother John in July 1915 on the Gallipoli campaign.

The burial of Ottoman dead during a truce at Anzac after the failed, Ottoman May offensive.

[ifreakingloveroyals]

25 April 2018 | Meghan Markle departs after attending an Anzac Day Service of Commemoration and Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey in London, England. Anzac Day commemorates Australian and New Zealand casualties and veterans of conflicts and marks the anniversary of the landings in the Dardanelles on April 25, 1915 that would signal the start of the Gallipoli Campaign during the First World War. (c) Chris Jackson/Getty Images

[calandrinon]

So today commemorates one of the defining moments of Australian and New Zealand national consciousness, that being the morning where the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (with help from the British and French) bungled the dawn landing at Anzac Cove as part of the entire clusterfuck that was the Gallipoli campaign. Areas for potential future improvement included better maps, better weather, better communication, and not being in WWI in the first place.

...or to put it another way, today is the solemn anniversary of my country getting pounded by the Ottomans

[nando161mando]

“It is remarkable and distressing that Australians are being told that the lesson of ANZAC Day, built on a calamitous campaign at Gallipoli, is… that war is noble”.

[captain-price-unofficially]

WWI. Gallipoli Campaign, Turkey. 25 April 1915. Australian troops of 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, landing at Anzac Cove. The cruiser HMS Bacchante can be seen in the distance

[e350tb]

Gallipoli: The End of the Myth by Robin Prior

Those interested in military history, in my experience, are prone to hyperbole. A while back, when I reviewed John Buckley’s Monty’s Men, I defended Field Marshal Montgomery’s reputation, for he is sometimes derided as a poor general. My defence was based on his strengths, but reading anything about Gallipoli reminds me of the other side of that coin - that there are many generals far, far worse.

It is worth clarifying what Prior means by ‘the myth’ in the title of this book, because one might initially think he’s speaking of ‘the Anzac myth.’ This isn’t the case. ‘The myth’ is that, had something gone differently, or had someone showed more gumption, or if the British troops had been less racially degenerate - yes, that’s a real suggestion that was made - the campaign might have been won. Prior responds very convincingly that it didn’t matter if the Dardanelles had been forced by the British Navy, or if the Sari Bair Ridge had been taken in the August Offensive - it would have made no difference, because the entire conception of the campaign was fundamentally flawed.

This book is a frustrating read, although this is not Prior’s fault. The constant failure of leaders - in the government, Navy and Army - to appreciate reality, the haphazard planning, the complete failure to regard the enemy, logistics, terrain, the capabilities of unsupported infantry and the complexities of amphibious landings is so prevalent - not just from Churchill but most his colleagues, Kitchener, Fisher, the Admiralty, Hamilton and his staff, Birdwood and dozens of others - that it reads almost like satire. One could imagine Blackadder’s General Melchett devising the Battles of Krithia. The few glimmers of competence, for example from Major Frankland at Helles and the inimitable Brudenell White during the evacuation, only make this circus of military ineptitude all the more infuriating.

In the process, Prior reevaluates some of the old scapegoats for the failure of the campaign. He notes Alymer Hunter-Weston - while he generally deserves his reputation as an incompetent butcher, Prior notes that Hamilton failed to show any control over him, and by the end of his time at Helles, he and his French counterpart were starting to change their tactics in response to the slaughters at Krithia. Suvla Bay, meanwhile, is evaluated in its proper context - not as any great strike across the Peninsula, but as an attempt to create a supply base in the north which, despite being conducted with little finesse, did ultimately succeed at its (ultimately pointless) task. Prior charges that General Stopford and his New Army men were in many ways a useful scapegoat for the failures of Birdwood down at Anzac.

Ultimately, though, Prior’s Gallipoli might be described as a Greek tragedy - not in the noble sense of Hector dying to Achilles at the gates of Troy, but in the squalid sense of the Greek army being slaughtered while Achilles has a sook in his tent. Ultimately, Gallipoli was a campaign that was an intensely pointless, intensely idiotic and intensely sad episode in the history of the First World War, and as Prior poignantly puts it, didn’t shorten the war by a single day. I would fully recommend this book as perhaps the archetypical example of how not to run a battle.

[phisworld14]

Spent some time today at our National War Memorial in honour of ANZAC Day yesterday. The boat in the photos is the same style as the ones both of my great grandfathers were in on the first day of the Gallipoli campaign for Australia - our first foray as a nation into the war.

#Lest we forget #ANZAC Day #ANZAC #world war one #family #Canberra #Australia #war memorial #unknown soldier #remembering our past

[confusedbyinterface]

A few months back I listened to the Empire podcast episode on Sykes-Picot and they talked about how a lot of British officials only knew about the Middle East from the Bible, Alexander the Great, and the Anabasis. The French also knew about Outremer and the Crusader States but that's about it.

I was reminded of this when I read the WWI official history of the Battle of Beersheba. To explain why the village was taken, Henry Gullett says that

As the Anzacs first saw it from the hills to the south-east at sunrise on the morning of the 31st, it had, except for its new mosque built by the Germans, the appearance of a struggling township on the pastoral country in Australia. To the dusty ring of mounted campaigners it promised no prize in comfortable quarters or in foodstuffs. But it contained that which was still more essential and coveted, for the village was rich in springs of good water. Perhaps never since the far-off days of Abraham had the water in the old wells of the patriarchs been so needed by parched men riding in from the southern desert.

And I get that he's being poetic here, but really? "Has anything happened here in the past few thousand years? We Just Don't Know."

Like from my brief research, at the very least the Arabs captured Beersheba from the Romans and the Turks captured it from the Mamluks for literally the exact same reason. Henry, mate, we didn't invent attacking Beersheba, we're not the first to discover there's water there.

[intheshadowofwar]

04 June 2023

Weak Specimens

Canberra 04 June 2023

I had everything figured out. I was going to finagle a way to get out to Duntroon, and I’d make a quick little post about two First World War generals commemorated in the Canberra area, and it was going to be a nice little update before I went to Sydney. And then I got a cold.

This was not conducive to excursions.

That having been said, it has got me thinking about the role of illness and disease in war. Prior to the twentieth century, sickness was by far the biggest killer of soldiers. A posting to the West Indies (the modern Caribbean) was a near death sentence, for yellow fever would rip through the ranks of any regiment dispatched there. The pestilence faced by the British Army in the Crimea caused a scandal in the press at home. You might dodge the cannonball, or the bullet may miss its mark, but typhoid and dysentery always loomed ahead, waiting to strike you down.

By the twentieth century, medical science had advanced just enough that you were more likely to die in the trenches than from sickness - at least until the 1918 Influenza reared its ugly head - but unpleasant afflictions could still strike a soldier at any time. Nowhere was this more true than on the peripheral fronts - Southern Africa, Salonika, Mesopotamia, Palestine and of course Gallipoli. The terrible sanitary conditions on the front line attracted vermin, and vermin carried disease - by the summer of 1915, anything from half to three quarters of the men on the peninsula had some kind of illness, and diarrhoea was omnipresent.

(I promise this blog will not be entirely about that, but the runs are important to my point here.)

Diarrhoea wasn’t just uncomfortable - it had an impact on the combat performance of troops. They grew weaker from dehydration, exacerbated by the limited water and the heat of Gallipoli in the late summer. The island staging bases of Lemnos and Imbros was no better - Robin Prior notes that upon the British 11th Division’s departure from Imbros to take part in the landings at Suvla Bay, nearly every man had contracted ‘a particularly weakening form of diarrhoea’ and were also suffering from the side effects of a cholera inoculation.

These illnesses were not the reason for the failure of the campaign - the plan was fatally flawed from conception, and the direction of the August Campaign had been bungled before the first troops left their start lines - but it does play a role in the mythology of the campaign.

Remember how I said we’d mention Charles Bean again? Bean is a great example of a historical ‘problematic fave.’ He had a clear empathy for Australian troops, and his vision for the Australian War Memorial was laudably democratic and egalitarian in nature. His official history of the Australian Imperial Force is a mammoth work of historical literature. Yet he was also very much a man of his time - apart from his casual antisemitism , he was, like many educated men, a believer in eugenics. Bean saw the ailing British soldiers of the August campaign and saw confirmation of what he probably already believed - that the urban poor of Great Britain had degenerated. ‘After 100 years of breeding in the slums, the British race is not the same’ as it had been at Waterloo, he wrote, and that Britain had bred ‘one fine class [the upper class] at the expense of the rest.’

It should be noted that this was a private diary entry, and there were a great many British men who would have agreed with him - there was an obsession with urban degeneracy in the first years of the twentieth century. Yet the converse of this - the idea of the big, strong, manly Anzac, which was already being stoked by Bean and the British journalist Ashmead-Bartlett - has stuck around in the Anzac legend, and echoes of Bean’s private sentiment remain. I remember being told in high school about how Australians were huge and bronzed, while British soldiers were all short, stunted coal miners. I don’t think my teacher knew they were parroting eugenist ideas from the 1910s; I don’t think most people really think about it.

I’m sure this came out more than a little incoherent, as I’m still on the mend, but I thought I ought to put pen to paper on this line of thinking before I forgot. I just think there’s a benefit to thinking historically about myths, even ones that seem harmless. They all come from somewhere.

And on that note, carrots aren’t actually good for your eyesight. The RAF made that one up to prevent people from finding out they had radar.

[jandjodyssey]

Gelibolu to Eceabat (Gallipoli)

A beautiful day of riding today. We weren’t sure what to expect here in Turkey and today exceeded everything we could have hoped for. The countryside is rolling and beautifully green.

We then arrived at Anzac Cove. What looks like absolute paradise as we know, was a living hell for all those involved in that campaign. It was good to spend the time reading the boards at the memorial. It was quite sobering and affected me more than I thought it would. I really just wanted to go off into a corner and cry for the absolute waste of young lives on both sides.

We had a picnic lunch a little way past Anzac Cove. I haven’t really mentioned the dogs here in Turkey yet. They are everywhere and most of them are tagged by the government and vaccinated against rabies, etc. For the most part they look pretty happy and healthy. Well we had a group of them hanging around our picnic obviously hopeful of the odd scrap or two.

After lunch we cycled up past Lone Pine, some of the trenches and monuments commemorating both sides. We’ll get a chance tomorrow afternoon to visit on foot with a local guide.

This afternoon we had a howling headwind and the climbing was quite steep. By the time we reached the hotel I was quite shattered. It’s been a beautiful day today. I had already decided against arm warmers before we started but did have a vest on. I discarded that before coffee and at coffee I put my sun protection arms on.

We have two nights at this hotel, which is very nice and has the best fluffy slippers. After taking our bags to the room we met up with Charlie for a post ride glass of wine before heading back to the room for showers and some much needed clothes washing.

Tonight we ate in the winery next door. We are given so much food at every meal and it’s all delicious. It really is a good thing we’ll be riding from here on 😳