ANZAC Day
It is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, which is similar to the American Veterans Day, in that it began as a remembrance of World War I, and has become more generalized over the years.
“Anzac Day commemorates the involvement of Australian and New Zealand troops in a World War I campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.”
The Gallipoli Campaign began as a Winston Churchill [then First Lord of the Admiralty] plan that spun out of control and got a lot of people killed on both sides with nothing much changing, but then, that was quite common in World War I.
Peter Weir made a movie, Gallipoli, which, if nothing else, proves that Sergeant Alvin York, and T.E. Lawrence weren’t the only people who fought in World War I.
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I went to the Dawn Services and was pleasantly surprised by the turnout, and many were kids and teens, and they were properly respectful too. 🙂 It was a good day, and a good service. One thing I do love a bout country towns here is that family traditions tend to run deep. Many local had a distant relative that died in WW1 & 2, and even at Gallipoli. Another thing I’ve noticed in recent years is that more people of Turkish descent who may have lost a relative at Gallipoly have respectfully attended the Services. Many people realise that the soldiers who died on both sides were mostly unwilling pawns and were all just as young and scared as each other. But, they all died doing what they were ordered to do. I saw Aussies and Turks hugging, and it made me smile and nod. It was right. 🙂
For awhile… it was a good day. 🙂
That whole war was a meat grinder caused by incompetence and arrogance. It was a family fight among first cousins that should have been settled by a game of skill at the family reunion at Gotha, not by armies all over the world.
Never have so many died for so little, and in many ways we are still paying a price for the truly terrible peace treaty that ended it.
It would be wonderful if humans evolved to the point that they learned to solve problems in ways that didn’t involved massive numbers people getting killed or maimed.