Gallipoli: Genesis of Australian Identity - Coursework Example

Gallipoli: Genesis of Australian Identity Name: Date: Gallipoli: Genesis of Australian Identity. Australia and New Zealand joined the Allied forces, or the Entente (Britain, France and Russia), against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire) on August 4, 1914. The Allies attempted to wrest control of the Dardanelle Straits from Turkey through a naval assault in order to lay siege to Constantinople, eliminate Turkey from the war, incite the Balkan States to join the Entente and to open a supply line to, and ease pressure on, Russia on the Eastern Front. When this assault failed, the Allies decided on a land invasion of Turkey on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April, 1915. The Allies suffered heavy casualties, as they were met by firmly entrenched Turkish defenders, who commanded the high vantage points. The opposing armies dug in and, over the next eight months, engaged in a trench warfare characterized by a stalemate, broken by periodic assault attempts which resulted in horrendous casualties for both sides. Finally, in December 1915, the Allies withdrew from Gallipoli1. Anzac Day, which is celebrated on April 25 (the day of the Gallipoli landing), commemorates ANZAC (an acronym for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) participation in the Gallipoli campaign. Beginning in 1916, with a march of serving soldiers and an overtone of publicity as a recruitment drive to drum up patriotic fervor, Anzac Day has evolved to become Australia’s red-letter day in the national calendar. On this public holiday, the nation honors not only the veterans of Gallipoli, but encompasses all Australians who have served in the armed forces. The commemoration begins with the Dawn Service and goes on to include prayers and hymns, the laying of wreaths and the observance of a minutes’ silence and concludes with the playing of ‘The Last Post’ by a single piper. The Anzac Day parade of servicemen and women is held in all the important cities of Australia and New Zealand and is a major media event.2 As the commemoration has moved on from being Gallipoli-centric, the issues pertaining to the original battle, which gave birth to the commemoration, tend to become obscured. On the eve of World War 1, Australia was but a nascent nation, which had attained federation only in 1901. However, powered by the wool industry and a high rate of immigration, Australians could boast of the worlds’ highest wages, a sterling public school system of education and several ambitious public works projects. Despite this prosperity and growth, the majority of Australians considered themselves to be “Australian Britons,”3 willingly acknowledging and taking pride in their link to their ‘Mother Country,’ Great Britain. The Australian volunteer force which was organized in September 1914, reflected this dual loyalty even in its’ name: the Australian Imperial Force. For a newly emergent democracy, lacking the unifying tradition of history (European settlers had reached Australia only a century earlier), which had not yet forged a sense of its’ own identity as a nation apart from Great Britain, Gallipoli was an awakening just waiting to happen. 4 Although it was a military failure, Australian contribution to the campaign was over-rated and a highly selective account of what happened is remembered, Gallipoli was definitely the genesis of a unique sense of Australian identity. The Gallipoli campaign was indisputably a military failure. The objective of moving overland, attacking the forts overlooking the Dardanelle Straits and capturing Constantinople was not reached. The Allies remained bogged down by trench warfare, suffered heavy casualties and finally withdrew. A few hundred meters of beachhead was all that was gained in over seven months of warfare, consisting of sniper fire, bomb throwing and trench raids. The periodic offenses at Krithia (May 6 – 8), Lone Pine, the Nek, Chunuk Bair and Hill 60 (August) all met with limited success or outright failure, at the cost of high casualties. The total Allied casualties numbered 43,870 out of a total of about 75,000 men. It was only in 1919 that the Imperial War Graves Commission returned to Gallipoli to establish cemeteries and identify and inter the dead, “some of whose bones has laid bleaching in the open since 1915.”5 The general understanding of the Gallipoli campaign is “a defeat caused by confusion and indecision at the highest level, hasty preparation and inept leadership; a campaign marked by foul living conditions, widespread sickness that ended in an ignominious withdrawal.”6 In Britain, the commemoration of Gallipoli is confined to a few memorial lectures and wreath-laying ceremonies, attended mainly by people specifically linked to Gallipoli, or to Australia and New Zealand. Gallipoli is but one interesting campaign among a myriad others in World War 1. Likewise, from the French perspective, Gallipoli was a useless diversion and pointless suffering and is considered an unmitigated disaster. French writing on Gallipoli describes it as but one of the “side shows of the Great War, --- characterized by a lack of preparation and a whole series of errors.”7 The lack of perceived significance is seen in the fact that there is but one memorial commemorating Gallipoli (in Marseilles). Gallipoli remains a colossal, though heroic, failure in the annals of history, except in Australia and New Zealand, where Anzac Day remains the most important day in the national calendar, tens of thousands participate in the ceremonies and millions more view it on TV. Australia’s contribution to the Gallipoli campaign was exaggerated. Great Britain and France lost more men at Gallipoli than Australia and New Zealand. The French contributed four battleships with fourteen 12-inch guns to the naval attack on the Dardanelles in February 1915. Of these, one ship, the Bouvet, was sunk by a shell with 600 casualties. French troops were at the vanguard of the landing force in April, at Kum Kale, and their casualties at Gallipoli approached 14,000. The bravery of the French at the battle on Kereves Spur was impressive and “Only one poilu out of three came back unscathed from the Dardanelles.”8 However, for the French, Gallipoli remains just another name from a long list of tragic World War 1 battles. It was the British who bore the brunt of the fighting and the losses. The British landing force at Gallipoli, the 29th Division, comprised of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, was decimated by murderous fire at the Cape Helles area: six Victoria Crosses were awarded for bravery on the landing day. Indian and British losses at Gully Spur on 28 June were higher than at Anzac Cove. British Marines scaled and recaptured Dead Man’s Ridge on May 2-3, after the Anzacs retreated. The British were also the last to withdraw from Gallipoli. When British casualties of 21,255 are considered, the unfairness of the image from the 1981 film, Gallipoli, which depicts the British as “drinking tea on the beach while the Anzacs were being slaughtered on the Nek” 9 is manifest. At the onset, Australians had not exhibited independent judgment in their own best interests,” 10 in joining the war. The Australian government simply went along with Great Britain’s declaration of war and was excluded at all levels from the decision making process in the conduct of the war. Australian troops at Gallipoli numbered 21,000 while New Zealand contributed 10,000 men. The Anzacs fought heroically, particularly at Anzac Cove, Lone Pine and the Nek and suffered a casualty of 10,000 killed and 33,000 injured. While the Anzac contribution cannot be belittled, it must be kept in perspective in the overall context of the Gallipoli campaign, in which all the participants, including Algeria, Morocco and Senegal (French Empire), Russian and Syrian Jewish refugees (Palestine) and India, Ceylon and Nepal (British Empire), as also the Turks, did their part to make the campaign assume its’ connotations of exemplary valor. The building up of “an Australian mythology that Gallipoli was an Australian triumph thrown away through incompetent British commanders” 11 is very far from the truth. This distortion of Australia’s contribution does the Anzacs little credit. In addition to the exaggeration of Australia’s contribution, the events at Gallipoli were selectively reported and consigned to memory. Charles Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent, was the primary architect of the Anzac legend. Acceding to the public demand for a ‘sanitized’ version of the war, Bean deliberately underplayed the fact that “There was little that was glamorous (about war) and the Anzac forces showed that despite their individual potential they were still amateurs at war and paid a high price for their inexperience (and that) the true spectrum of their reaction ranged from acts of bravery to abject fear and flight.” 12 Bean’s solution was to write true narratives about the heroism of select individuals. Bean ignored faulty decisions made by Australian divisional commanders, played down the significant contribution of British Generals Walker and Birdwood to the Anzac success and exaggerated the role of the Australian, Monash. He glossed over the Australian’s lack of discipline. Several contretemps, such as the accidental shooting of Colonel Braund by an Anzac sentry and the killing of Australians by Australians in the melee or war, went unreported. 13 This trend continues with the commemoration of “a sanitized Anzac history.” 14 The strongest evidence of this contention is the fact that Albert Jacka, the first Australian to win the Victoria Cross at Gallipoli for killing seven Turks in a single engagement, has been consigned to relative obscurity, while John Simpson Kirkpatrick of the Third Field Ambulance, who did not kill a single Turk, has been immortalized as ‘The Man with a Donkey.’ Simpson’s personification of ‘the noble Anzac soldier,’ makes light of the other fearless soldiers who rushed to engage with the enemy. Likewise, the larrikin element in the Anzac character, exemplified by their behavior in Egypt, has been exorcised from the Anzac legend. “They burned the belongings of the local people, brawled, got drunk, rioted, and spent sufficient time in the local brothels for many of them to suffer from venereal disease.” 15 It is this selective remembrance that has given rise to criticism of Gallipolis’s reputation as the moving force behind the creation of an Australian identity based on the idealized Anzac of Gallipoli. Despite Gallipoli being a military disaster, Australia’s contribution being exaggerated and the actual events being distorted or selectively retained in the national consciousness, the fact remains that Gallipoli gave birth to the enduring Anzac legend which has become an integral part of Australian identity. In 1914, most Australians “saw themselves and where they lived as an extension of Great Britain.” 16 About 35% of the volunteers who joined the Australian Imperial Force had been born in England or Ireland and about 98% of the remaining volunteers were of British origin. The Anzac troops considered themselves to be British and the war to be in defense of their Mother Country: ‘Blighty.’ 17 The Gallipoli campaign was an eye-opener, as it brought into stark contrast the differences between the British soldiers and the Australians, which included physical stature and linguistics. The rigid military discipline adhered to by the British was glaringly contrary to the Australian’s casual attitude. As the campaign progressed, the very definition of the Anzac came to be based on their perceived differences from the British, mainly “independence, casual proficiency and a disregard of rank for its’ own sake.” 18 Many wounded Australian soldiers who went to Britain were disillusioned with the ‘home country’ and realized that only Australia was truly home to them: the AIF doggerel went “Blighty is a failure, take me to Australia.” 19 As the Australians measured themselves against the British soldiers and found themselves matching or outshining them, a new sense of pride and a distinct sense of identity were born. Gallipoli was undoubtedly the beginning of independent Australian nationhood: “Before Gallipoli we (Australians) were fighting for Britain, after Gallipoli we were fighting for Australia.” 20 A nation without a defining history to emphasize the distinct characteristics of its’ citizens, discovered in Gallipoli the meaning of being Australian. The enduring legacy of Gallipoli is evident in contemporary times by the large number of young Australian backpackers who continue to make the ‘pilgrimage’ to Turkey. The image of ‘the bronzed and noble Anzac,’ independent, ferocious in battle, with a wry sense of humor, resourceful, intensely loyal to his mates and filled with the intuitive resourcefulness of the Australian bushman, despite its’ exaggeration and distortion, has come to define the Australian ideal. In contrast to older nations, jaded by centuries of warfare, Gallipoli was Australia’s first war as an independent nation. The military outcome was overshadowed by the Australian perception that they had faced wars’ trial by fire and emerged, not just unscathed, but with flying colors. Whatever be the criticism leveled against the Australian commemoration of the Anzac legend, the incontrovertible fact remains that Gallipoli was the genesis of a unique sense of Australian identity. “References.” Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal. 2007. “Anzac Day.” Available http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/anzac Accessed on 22 October 2007 Australian Government Department of Veterans Affairs web site. “The Gallipoli Campaign.” Available from http://www.dva.gov.au/commem/commac/studies/anzacsk/aday4.htm Bantick, Christopher. April 25, 2005. The Age online. “The Hero with a gun or the one with a donkey?!” Available from http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/The-hero-with-a-gun-or-the-one-with-a- donkey/2005/04/24/1114281448780.html. Accessed on 22 October 2007. Essay from “Australia’s Foreign Wars: Origins, Costs, Future?!” World War 1 and the Gallipoli Campaign. Available from http://users.cyberone.com.au/ibuckley/ww1_gallipoli.pdf. Accessed 22 October 2007 Gallipoli. Making History. Edited by Jenny Macleod. (England and U.S.A. Frank Cass) Available online from http://books.google.com/books?id=tbwTTfEINLIC&pg=PA85&dq=gallipoli+australia&source Accessed on 22 October 2007. Patterson, Banjo. “A Nations’ Pride.” Web page. Available from http://www.geocities.com/mrschippy/nations.html Accessed on 22 October 2007 Partington, Geoffrey. “Gallipoli – the facts behind the myths.” Australian Commonwealth Military Forces web site. Available from http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-battles/ww1/anzac/gallipoli-facts.htm Accessed on 22 October 2007. Skwirk Interactive Schooling web site. “The Commemoration.” Available from http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-14_u-42_t-46_c-138/the-commemoration/nsw/history Accessed on 22 October 2007. Stanley, Peter. “Australia in World War 1.” BBC web site. Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/australia_01.shtml Accessed on 22 October 2007. Read More