On April 25th, 1915, a combined corps of Australian and New Zealand soldiers stepped on to what today is named Anzac Cove. The beaches of Gallipoli were a British military planning disaster. On that first lethal Anzac Day, their devotion to each other in that deadly environment created the legend that Australians term as “mateship”.
Mateship is gender neutral. At school assemblies, sporting clubs and community events, Australians are encouraged to remember the Anzac spirit of men and women who looked after their mates.
While those original Anzacs had never heard of fascism, Japanese military imperialism was responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent citizens in China and Korea in the late 1930s. Fascism existed in the Pacific and was not confined to Europe.
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As the second World War exploded, the riches of a virtually unguarded Australia were the target of Japan. Their war machine torpedoed ships in Sydney Harbour and repeatedly bombed both Darwin and the northwestern town of Broome.
A generation on from Gallipoli, ordinary men and women like my father, uncle and their cousins volunteered to defend their fledgling democracy. Born 40 years earlier from the illegitimacy of the British Empire’s convict settlements, Australia had blossomed into a rare egalitarian society.
My schoolteachers, rugby coaches and our family doctor had all volunteered to fight in the horrendous brutality of the Pacific War.
A dire example of the inhumane violence regularly carried out in this theatre can be traced back to February 14th, 1942, when the Vyner Brooke was sunk by Japanese aircraft. On Bangka Island in Indonesia, 22 Australian nurses and 60 injured soldiers who had survived were sheltering on Radji beach. They were discovered by Japanese soldiers who raped the nurses before machine-gunning them on the water’s edge. The injured soldiers were bayoneted to death. Miraculously, one nurse, Lieutenant Vivian Bullwinkel, survived to give witness to the atrocity.
My uncle fought in the barbarity of the Kokoda Trail, a narrow path that traverses the mountainous spine of Papua New Guinea’s Owen Stanley Range. The Japanese decision to trek their army over the rigours of the mountains, rather than attacking the capital Port Moresby by sea, was a tactical disaster. That flawed decision turned the Kokoda Trail into a slaughterhouse.
Men, who only months before were working in offices in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, were rushed through training and tasked with slowing the advance of the Japanese army.
Based on the same theory used by the Spartans at Thermopylae, a large army trying to cross through a narrow pass can be held up by a far smaller force. But that small group will pay a huge price.
An Anzac Day ceremony is held during Thursday’s Aussie rules match between Western Bulldogs and Sydney Swans at Marvel Stadium, Melbourne. Photograph: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
Each year, thousands of Australians make the pilgrimage to walk the Kokoda Trail. In peacetime, it remains treacherous and taxing. This year, the Sydney Roosters rugby league team walked it as a bonding exercise. In 1942, for the young, poorly-trained soldiers fighting a fanatical enemy, it was an unimaginable hell.
I have a photo of my father’s rugby team from when he was a teenager. A few years later, several of those smiling young faces, full of hope, were killed fighting in New Guinea. They did slow the advance of the Japanese as reinforcements arrived and the might of American military power began to turn the tide.
At dawn on every Anzac Day, millions of Australians gather at one of the thousands of war memorials dotted across the nation. How we should respond to the names of the dead listed on those memorials is something generations have struggled with.
As a schoolboy, one of my older teachers was a returned soldier. A Christian Brother, John Rewi Crichton had witnessed the horrors of war but turned them into a religious vocation. A gentle and kind man, his advice was simple. “Dive into the ocean and play your footy. Knowing that you can still do that would make them happy.”
Anzac Day is the best day of the year to play a game of rugby.
I remember standing on my club’s picturesque playing field. As the lament of the Last Post washed over us, for a few brief moments Anzac Day forced us to reflect. In that unique silence, I acknowledged to myself how fortunate I was to play a game I adored and that I never had to fight in a war.
During matches on Anzac Day, the competitiveness and physical contact was red-hot, but unusually for that era, there were no cheap shots. On any other week, after you were tackled your opponent would push your face into the dirt. On Anzac Day, he would help you to get back to your feet. Even more ridiculous was that you would respond with: “Thanks, mate.”
Those Anzac Day games were special because we played with the joy of being alive.
In the clubhouse on Anzac Day, the ageing former players who had served in the war would gather at the end of the bar.
One of them had been captured after the fall of Singapore, forced into slave labour and sent to construct the Thai-Burma Death Railway. He was a rare survivor of Hellfire Pass, which is a 75-metre long and 25-metre deep railway cutting through solid rock.
People gather at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, for Anzac Day commemorations on Monday. Photograph: Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images
Using only hand-held chisels and hammers, they were forced to cut the rock in 18-hour shifts. Over a period of six gruelling weeks, 69 prisoners were beaten to death by their captors.
When he spoke with us, it was not about war. It was about people. His schoolfriends, rugby mates and comrades now buried in a foreign land or entombed inside a crashed plane somewhere at the bottom of the Coral Sea.
Like so many who survived, he had the same unanswerable question. Was the enormity of their sacrifice worth it?
Today, that generation who saved our Australian way of life are all gone.
This Saturday on Anzac Day, I will attend my local dawn service and follow Brother Crichton’s advice. Later, I will go down to the Pacific Ocean and plunge into the freedom of its waters. Then I will watch my club play. Afterwards, in the clubhouse, I will position myself down the far end of the bar because now I am one of those old guys. An accidental keeper of the lore, trying to pass on the spirit of our shared heritage to another generation.
Look after each other. Look after your mates. That’s still a pretty good message.
The power of Anzac Day is not held in any story of violence or war. It is an occasion that forces us to pause and consider the things we value in the life of our nation that we should be truly grateful for.
We live in a democratic society because ordinary men and women did extraordinary things.
Even in the deep mess the world is in today, some things remain so precious that they are worth fighting for.
