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April 25, 2007
Lest we forget
There is no greater story in western Australian culture than that of the ANZACS at Gallipoli celebrated throughout the country on 25th April.
Now let us make it known right away that The Spiral Path has no interest in glorifying war. However, this is a phenomemon I can't ignore. It was an inglorious and spectactular defeat, but we celebrate it each year with increased vigour. As children, we would wear our Dad's (or our grandad's or uncle's) medals to school on Anzac Day and our mums would have Anzac Biscuits waiting for us when we got home.
But what has made it such a unifying national day?
As Robert Manne puts it in today's Age,
Mystery surrounds Anzac Day. Why have Australians, despite the passage of the years, increasingly come to regard the beginning of one of the most terrible defeats the British Empire suffered in the First World War as their most solemn national day?
In his reasoned and patient manner, Manne goes on to examine some theories particularly focussing on John Hirst's that it is a response to our collective sense of colonial inferiority. Again, in Manne's words:
The Gallipoli landing was the first action of a solely Australian military unit.
And, quoting one of the first reports to reach Australian shores
"There has been no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and storming of the heights. ...(The Australians) were happy because they had been tested for the first time and not found wanting."
Manne concludes this section:
The Anzac myth was created
So much has been said about the Anzac tradition and so much further will be said. The thing that struck me this year was the power of myth.
So often when we think of myth we think only of one of its meanings "A widely held but false belief or idea" [Oxford American Dictionary], as in Urban Myth. But there is also a more foundational meaning.
a traditional story, esp one concering the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenom... [Oxford American again.]
As it happens, I am currently reading Tim Costello's book Tips from a travelling soul searcher. This book is largely about the power of and the need for us to keep telling one another stories. Stories are just that. They have many meanings and people present at the same event each tell a different version. Stories are not complete explanations. We know that they contain truths that are valuable to us but we don't always know exactly what the truth is. It just resonates somewhere within us. Sometimes the story contains a warning. Sometimes they warm us. Sometimes we tell them because they say something about ourselves. Often we tell the same story over and over again. When people join our family or our organisation, we tell them our stories and the learn more about us that if we tried to describe ourselves.
So like other stories, we don't have to understand the Anzac myth. It is worth our while to talk to one another about what it means. Each time perhaps we learn more about ourselves and about a different side to ourselves. Perhaps, most importantly, we become more confident about ourselves.
Posted by chriscurnow at 6:37 PM | Comments (0)