Josefine Ganko (12R)
Attending the ANZAC Day centenary at Gallipoli is an occasion few Australians can say they have experienced. As a fortunate recipient of the 2015 Premier’s ANZAC prize, I spent two and a half weeks travelling Europe with seventy-nine fellow Queenslanders. Our pilgrimage across the battlefields of the First World War took an extreme emotional toll on every one of us. While we all reacted differently, there was not one person on the tour who didn’t have a moment of realisation. This clarity occurred when the gravity of the conflict we were confronting hit head on. My moment was when I stood in the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, looking at the massive walls of the gate, up to twenty metres high and absolutely covered in the names of the dead. As I stood there, I contemplated all the people — the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives —who suffered so greatly because of the human race’s inability to maintain peace, because of our inability to step away from our animalistic reflexes of violence and destruction. Of course I don’t think anyone wanted this war, or any war for that matter, but unfortunately, violence and conflict are so ingrained in our culture, in our very being. So many lives have been lost, an outcome that can never truly be called a victory. In the case of World War One, no tensions or conflicts were truly resolved; in fact many new ones were spawned. With so much loss and destruction, can war ever really be won?
ANZAC Day at Gallipoli was undoubtedly a rare privilege and honour, but surprisingly, it was not the highlight of my trip. When you stand on the shore at Gallipoli you can see why Australians find this beach so significant. It is a truly breathtaking sight. But as the thousands of Australians piled into the stands, I couldn’t help but feel slightly uneasy at how commercialised it all seemed. There were tickets and merchandise and tour buses, and the thought crossed my mind that many of the visitors were there to cross an item off their bucket list. Not that Gallipoli is a poor choice of location as the heart and centre of our war commemorations, but the memorial service that struck a chord with me was at Menin Gate, a ceremony that takes place every single night, with a simple bugle call and occasionally a brief address. This, to me, was true remembrance. Not concentrated around the 25th April, and not a tourist destination, just purely people remembering what had happened there. For this reason I was so grateful to be part of a tour that spent an equal amount of time on the arguably more significant western front as at Gallipoli.
While I don’t protest the importance Australians place on ANZAC Day at Gallipoli, it is vital we recognise that it was a small part of the war, and that Australian sacrifice on the Western Front was overall much greater — not to mention that other nations endured far greater loss. With this in mind, I decided my personal mission for the tour was to mourn war: to mourn every single unnecessary death in the name of peace.
The notion that many soldiers, especially those at Gallipoli, died in vain, is difficult for many to swallow. I personally believe this to be true, and in many ways it makes what happened far more tragic and relevant in the scheme of Australia’s involvement. These young Australians were sent into a battlefield with little chance of success, on a mission that was poorly planned, lacking leadership, and not truly necessary to the war effort, for Turkey had not even officially taken any side in this war until imperial forces pushed them in to it. I felt various conflicting emotions as I stood on the beach at ANZAC Cove as the sun rose on the 100th anniversary of their landing, and all I could think was how these boys didn’t have to die. While others consider their bravery and mateship, I think of the lives wasted. The fact that I mourn lives unnecessarily lost, rather than celebrate heroics of naïve young men, who knew no better than to follow ill-conceived orders, certainly does not detract from the value of my commemoration; it is simply a different perspective.
I’ve always thought there should be a strong emphasis on remembrance. The ideal of remembrance however has been tainted by the glorification of war, a facet of war commemoration that prevents any true attempt at honouring those who died. While on the tour, I was faced with various moral dilemmas, regarding the glorification of war. I considered that my very presence on the trip may be contributing to this glorification. I have always favoured the broader picture, remembering war and tragedy, rather than focusing on Australia’s limited participation. As we spoke about the bravery of the Australian soldiers, I couldn’t help but think of the soldiers from various other nations who faced the same harsh conditions and also put their lives on the line in protection of their countries. The site of the Langemark German Cemetery in Belgium, on the other side of ‘no man’s land’, is truly devastating. In one ten square metre mass grave, 25 000 German soldiers are buried. In the same vein, far more Turkish soldiers were killed at Gallipoli than Australian soldiers, despite the fact that the Turks had not taken any side in the war, and were simply defending their country. This is why I mourn every single death, not just Australian. The words attributed to legendary Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s words regarding the ANZACs of Gallipoli perfectly sum up my beliefs.
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
We are all united in this tragedy. We are all losers at war, for where human life has been senselessly wasted, humanity has lost. But no matter what we think of war, it is vital that we remember it. Not just the personal acts of bravery, but the event itself. The over-used quote ‘those who do not know history are destined to repeat it’, still rings incredibly true.
I was so proud to have been a part of this tour, to get this chance to reflect and consolidate my thoughts and to hear the perspectives of an incredibly diverse range of Australians. Whatever way we interpret the First World War, the only word that is synonymous in every opinion is tragedy, on all sides of the conflict.
And that is why the so often repeated phrase can never be overused …
Lest we forget.
Reference
Australian War Memorial. Atatürk (Mustafa Kemal). n.d. Retrieved from https://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/ataturk/