Today is ANZAC day - the 25th of April. The day the "colonies", Australia and New Zealand, got into the Great War. The Gallipoli campaign, not Churchill's finest hour, blooded the young men who left their farms, their jobs, their wives and families, their girlfriends, and went off on a "great adventure".

But the campaign was poorly planned, poorly executed, and ultimately doomed. Thousands were "sacrificed", to the whims of leaders, admirals and generals half a world away, who hadn't the slightest idea how badly things were going - at least for a week or so.

Winston Churchill was forced to accede to his military advisors and call a retreat, but he criticised the withdrawal even so. Churchill was a "great thinker", who could dream up military tactics while getting slowly pissed during the course of most of his "working days", and would come up with 5 or 6 ideas a day.

Most of them were quickly shot down by pragmatic generals and advisors, but the Turkish adventure was given the green light - the Allies were desperate to knock Turkey out of the war, but they seem to have been inspired by some ideal notion of the brave, loyal and fierce Allied soldier, overcoming the dastardly Hun and his Turkish sidekick - who they believed would be ill-prepared for the massive invasion.
They got it wrong, it took 9 months to own up, and tens of thousands of dead soldiers.

My maternal grandfather fought in the Great War - he wasn't sent to Gallipoli because he had joined up in England earlier, so was in the first battles, and in one battle in particular - at the Somme valley - that figures large in my own existence.
This is because 'Poppa" as he liked to be called, was wounded at the Somme, and in a way that meant he wouldn't be in the trenches anymore (a leg injury - he had pieces of shrapnel from a German shell in his leg until it finally "went" and was amputated when he was 72). So, if he hadn't got the wound in his leg, he would probably have gone on to an even bloodier battle -Passchendaele, which he quite probably would not have lived through - I understand whole battalions were wiped out, on both sides, at this one. So probably my mother wouldn't have been born, either. He spent the remainder of the war training new batches of cannon-fodder ...sorry, "brave young men", at Salisbury.

Funny how, today we remember the ANZAC forces - the "brave lads" who made the ultimate sacrifice, etc, etc ("yoick's, and tally-ho chaps!").
But we're also remembering a military blunder of the first rank, made by an aristocratic sonofabitch who still wanted the retreating Allied forces to about-face and "get back into the bloody Hun!"

Churchill faced a parliamentary investigation, considering the bloodied nose the Allies got from the Turks, and that the campaign was clearly a woeful, and somewhat desperate example of military planning or preparedness. But they let him off - he was a war-hero after all (of the Boer campaign).

Isn't history er, "interesting"?

Firstly actually the australians DO regongnise the blunder made by idiotic english generals (because the australians wernt in charge of there own troops). They landed on the wrong beach, there was a nice gentle beach around the courner that they were SURPOSED to land on

We also know that the english liked to use OUR troops as cannon foder rather than send there OWN solders in

Never realised churchill was PM so long that he lead the country in BOTH wars though

he wasnt. he was the home secretary during ww1

Well, he was a First Lord, of the Admiralty, I believe, that's what the toffee-noses usually did, enter politics, after "going up".
He got to fight in another colonial stoush first though, and got gonged for it.

For a small percentage of Australians, It's to hope and "pray" that war never happens again. For a much larger percentage, It's a day off and a long weekend.
It's tokenistic in some aspect,particularly in the media. It's resurgence is limited.

Challanger you know what i loved about ANZAC day.

Why is it that supermarkets must close all day, where as funiture, car part and hardware stores could open after lunch

People need to eat but i have never herd of anyone dying because they dont have a new couch

It's tokenistic in some aspect,particularly in the media. It's resurgence is limited.That's a bit general, there are record numbers of visitors this year (and they're starting to restrict the numbers), like last year, to ANZAC Cove, and the memorial at Gallipoli.

Lots of young people too, who weren't even born when "it" happened, go to dawn ceremonies and they aren't just following a crowd, they understand what the day is (supposed to be) about.

I just think it's a bit ironic that, although we're celebrating ANZAC and essentially a time that was a big part of NZ and Aussie history (we're both still "young nations", NZ didn't "secede" until fairly recently, after the experience of the Great War came the experience of "the great Common Market freeze-out", oh yeah, there was another one of those war things too).

The celebration of "dirty deeds", done "dirt cheap" to the colonial peasantry, by a "homeland" that really didn't give a stuff - or they had bigger problems of their own, maybe. WWI banged a few nails into the coffin of the British Empire, but WWII absolutely buried the sucker.

However, how long do you think this will last ?.
Curiously, given Australia's multicultural environment, I found myself outnumbered by skips, and fair haired Aussies.

Must be a cultural thing.

challanger, unfortuantly wars keep happerning and so i think the reverence will go on. However your right, if there were no wars as of today, then with the rate of imigration you could say that those who have relitives who were in the wars would be slowly out numbered by those who dont

I went to an anzac dawn service as part of the cenetaph guard. while the hyperbole distorts history, a few veterans recognize the futility of war, and are against it in all forms.

I learned to play "The Last Post", on my Roland for ANZAC (it has a pretty good Bach trumpet).

you know what really does my head in?

When the head of the RSL starts bleting that we cant change the flag because our solders died under that flag or we cant become a republic because our solders died for the queen.

My grandfather used to complaine that he was never able to serve under the australian flag, (they served under the british flag) and he was a strong republican. He also used to say he fought to alow us to decide our OWN fate not to keep the country stagnant because "we cant change anything because people died for the way it currently is"

That's a bit general, there are record numbers of visitors this year (and they're starting to restrict the numbers), like last year, to ANZAC Cove, and the memorial at Gallipoli.

Lots of young people too, who weren't even born when "it" happened, go to dawn ceremonies and they aren't just following a crowd, they understand what the day is (supposed to be) about.

I just think it's a bit ironic that, although we're celebrating ANZAC and essentially a time that was a big part of NZ and Aussie history (we're both still "young nations", NZ didn't "secede" until fairly recently, after the experience of the Great War came the experience of "the great Common Market freeze-out", oh yeah, there was another one of those war things too).

The celebration of "dirty deeds", done "dirt cheap" to the colonial peasantry, by a "homeland" that really didn't give a stuff - or they had bigger problems of their own, maybe. WWI banged a few nails into the coffin of the British Empire, but WWII absolutely buried the sucker.

It really depends. Are young people there for the beer or the holiday ?
I think some of them do understand. But we'll see in a few years where that leads