#Anzac day

[theworldofwars]

Australian soldiers wearing respirator gas masks, Ypres, September 27, 1917

[soup-mother]

reblog to explode every Australian soldier

🔥🔥🔥🔥🇦🇺🔥🔥🔥🔥

also reblog to explode every kiwi soldier

🔥🔥🔥🔥🇳🇿🔥🔥🔥🔥

fuck em

[libraryfag]

i hate war more than anything but they popped off with ANZAC biscuts

[redrcs]

ANZAC day portrait

[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.

[d31taf0rc3]

This ANZAC Day I am asking you politely to read the play Black Diggers by Tom Wright. It's a play about Aboriginal WW1 soldiers before, during, and after the war, who lied about their heritage to fight for Australia. Black Diggers is written using accounts from family of these soldiers.

[richo1915]

Lest We Forget

[statelibraryqueensland]

In times of war, our furry companions often work side by side with armed forces. In World War One, dogs were used as part of the Red Cross to bring wounded soldiers away from the frontlines, smaller dogs would live amongst the trenches as "ratters" to keep vermin populations and disease lower, and messenger dogs would run communications from the trenches to deliver information up the chain of command.

In 1943, the Dickin medal was created to award displays of outstanding gallantry or service by animals in wartime. According to the Australian War Memorial (Source), 74 animals have been recipients of this honour, and of those 74, 37 were dogs.

Image credit: Page 21 of The Queenslander Pictorial, supplement to The Queenslander, 10 March 1917 (link to catalogue record)

[scrapironflotilla]

Heads up chief, state library of Queensland has just released an Anzac AI chatbot. I am waiting for the inevitable backlash for when it says something stupid.

thank you for letting me know about this. it's pretty horrific and insulting to both the memory of ww1 veterans and the public at large.

so of course i spent a few hours yesterday trying to fuck with it

god it sounded so bitchy. throwing in 'mate' all the time just makes it sound so mad. having it say cunt would have been much more accurate and probably friendlier too

the perfidious turk has taken control of the machine.

aw come on. i've read soldiers diaries and letters home, this is a cop out.

ok, so it wasn't that hard to get it to be an ethno-nationalist

[holliano]

I made a poppy!

It has a clip on the back (I always save them from new clothes tags) and I’ll give it to a coworker…assuming I see them before Thursday. If I don’t then I guess I made myself one?

[soup-mother]

also wow it's that time of year the country goes "hello indigenous australians we're going to briefly acknowledge you for when you join the military and die in wars for us but after that go fuck yourself." (if they even bother with that)

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Royal Australian Air Force participating in the ANZAC Day service outside the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

25th April 1947

[vox-anglosphere]

An Anzac Day tribute to the fallen soldiers of Australia & New Zealand

[vegan-nom-noms]

Vegan Anzac Biscuits

[thepastisalreadywritten]

April 25 is the national day of commemoration of Australia and New Zealand for victims of war and for recognition of the role of their armed forces.

It marks the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

The soldiers in those forces became known as ANZACs.

Anzac Day is a commemoration of the anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops on 25 April 1915 at Gallipoli, Turkey.

When Great Britain declared war against Germany for its invasion of Belgium in 1914, Australia and New Zealand, as Dominions within the British Empire, regarded themselves automatically also at war.

At dawn on 25 April 1915, the first of approximately 70,000 soldiers from the Allies landed at Gallipoli.

The objective was to drive through to Istanbul, take Turkey out of the war, and to provide supplies to Russia in its fight against Germany.

Out of these 70,000 soldiers, more than 20,000 were Australian and New Zealand soldiers.

What had been planned as a bold stroke became a stalemate after the invading troops failed to reach their objective on the first day.

For the next eight months, they clung to the land they had captured, before eventually withdrawing at the end of 1915.

After both sides had suffered heavy casualties, the Allied forces were evacuated.

It is estimated that 8,700 Australian and 2,700 New Zealanders were killed.

One year later, in 1916, the first anniversary of the landing was observed in Australia, New Zealand, England, and by troops in Egypt.

That year, April 25 was officially named ‘Anzac Day’ by Acting Australian Prime Minister George Pearce.

Today, we speak of an ‘Anzac tradition,’ meaning the ideals of courage, endurance and mateship that are still relevant to this day.

[brasideios]

Lest we Forget.

It's Anzac Day here, and in the grand tradition of such morose and weighted occasions, here's a sample of Anzac humour:

'At Tel-el-Kebir at one point [Egypt, in 1916], a battalion of Australian soldiers is put on parade to be informed that the General Officer Commanding, an Englishman, desires the use of bad language to be cut out, most specifically the words 'fuck' and 'c-nt', as in any case he understands that these two words are not used in Australia.

'At this point, a voice rings out from the back of the parade: 'The fucking c-nt's never been there!'

Or my fave:

'Perhaps the lack of deference [to the English officers] is just in the Australian blood? ... when a British officer told off an Australian for not saluting him, the friendly Australian reached out, gave him a pat on the shoulder, and said, 'Young man, when you go home, you tell your mother today you've seen a real bloody soldier.'

[Both quotes are taken from Peter Fitzsimons' book, Fromelles and Pozieres: In the Trenches of Hell which I re-read every April in memorium.]