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.” This year is the centennial of the Gallipoli landing.
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 like Gallipoli, and don’t care who knows it. Scurry off, now…
http://www.dohiyimir.org/2013/11/how-fast-will-you-run.html
It was a great movie that didn’t disguise the fact that the operation was a screw up. They waited days after the naval bombardment before they began landing troops which allowed the Turks to mine the waters, fortify the beaches, and bring up reinforcements.
We’re watching the series on YouTube called the Great War. Really quick segments, week by week in real time matching the war a hundred years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar
Really recommend it. Besides WWI being a complete slaughterhouse and an idiotic waste of life, the political upheaval that came before, during, and after this war is profound. I’m getting better insight into the history, like finding missing pieces of a complex puzzle.
And I thought T. E. Lawrence won the war by blowing up trains… didn’t he?
World War I has to have been one of the most unnecessary wars in history. The start of the war reminds me of nothing so much as a drunken bar fight caused when the ‘friends’ of the two people involved in the original dispute keep pushing until it is an all-out brawl.
The great strides made in killing people were all on display in the Great War with the machine gun making trenches mandatory.
Lawrence fought in the sub-war in the Middle East against the Turks, rather than the main event in Europe against the Germans. His biggest victory was the taking of Aqaba which reduced the Turkish threat to the Suez Canal and provided a port for supplying Allied troops in the interior.
Blowing up trains was just done to provide visuals for future movies about Lawrence – OK, it also provided food and munitions for the Arab forces.
The desert made for some gorgeous cinematography. And blowing up trains is pretty fun.
It also sold a lot of drinks from the concession stand, more than the usual number from the over-salted popcorn 😉
[OK, so not of of the wrecks with our model trains were accidental.]
I attended the local remembrance as I do every year in memory of my maternal Grandfather who was a decorated veteran of WW1 & WW2. It is the Centenary of the Gallipoli disaster, and the turnout was amazing. 🙂 My Grandfather told me many of the real stories (he was a sniper in the Welsh Fusiliers) and lost a lung to a faulty gas mask (as did so many others) and mustard gas.
And yes, the movie was well done. 🙂 I watched it as I do every year. 🙂
IMNSHO as a veteran, most — if not all — wars are unnecessary.
About the only good that came out of Gallipoli is that it made the career of a previously unknown Ottoman officer named Mustafa Kemal who later went on to become basically the George Washington of the modern nation of Turkey. But that’s like finding a pearl at the bottom of a bucket of cow manure, said bucket being the results of WW1 in the end.
Remembrances are really about the individuals involved. Just people who ‘did their duty’ as they saw it, who found out what hell war really is. The people doing the fighting rarely benefit from the outcome, even though they are ones paying the biggest price.
Yes, Ataturk was about the only good thing to come out of the mess, that just led to the next mess, and is still a causing trouble today.
You keep hoping that people will figure out that wars don’t really solve anything.