ANZAC Day, April 25, this year 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the World War 1 landings at Gallipoli…
…and a campaign that ultimately ended in defeat for the Western Allies.
In Australia and New Zealand, this day is perhaps the most sacred day on the calendar. For both countries, the events of the Gallipoli Campaign have a prominent place in the national history and story. Gallipoli is widely regarded as the time and place where both nations “came of age”.
Before I went to Australia in 1985, I confess I didn’t appreciate the full significance of ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, even though I was aware of the historical events. For a while, some people did think its importance in the national consciousness would diminish. In fact, it has probably assumed greater prominence across all generations in recent years.
More at the Australian War Memorial ANZAC Day page.
Back in 2011 I posted a poem written by one of the Digger’s at Gallipoli, that had recently come to light.
The soldier’s name was Martin Toms and he wrote the poem “New Year in the firing line” on December 5, 1915…
I cannot hear the New Year bells
Ringing of hope renewed
I can but hear the shriek of shells
With their tale of deadly feud
I cannot sing of Auld Lange Syne
My rifle sings for me
No gentle hand is pressing mine
Except in memory.
I cannot see my loved ones near
I can but watch the foe
War ends the old the passing year
Blood red the New Year’s glow.
Yet for nowhere else in the world wide
Should I leave the fighting line
The flying bullets give me pride
That a place in the trench is mine.
The men who stay at home and shirk
Earn but their country’s scorn
Here is the place mid war’s grim work
To hail the New Year born.
Tom survived Gallipoli but was later wounded in action and died a few years later as a result.
(Thanks to The Mosman Daily for publishing the details of Toms’ story and the poem.)
From those grim events in 1915 emerged the “ANZAC Legend” that provided inspiration down the years and in equally testing times, no more so than on ANZAC Day in 1951 at an almost forgotten ANZAC battle…
“Kapyong was Australia’s most vicious battle of the Korean War. Servos and other veterans conjure horrific images to describe a battle that pitted 10,000 Chinese against 700 Australians on one hill and a similar number of Canadians on another. Major Ben O’Dowd, the commander of the Australians on Hill 504, recalls: ‘Some of them did not carry weapons, just buckets of grenades. They had the job of keeping my Diggers’ heads down so their rifleman and machinegunners could rush in and get among us.'”
“Rush in, they did. The Battle of Kapyong was a close-in encounter and often at the end of a bayonet. It lasted from April 23, 1951 until Anzac Day and marked the last major Chinese offensive of the Korean War.”
The Aussie Diggers and the Canadians of the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry held the line and stopped the Chinese drive. It’s reckoned that 2 battalions fought off a full division.
To conclude, with thanks to those who serve and in memory of all the ANZACs…
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.”