Re: and the band played
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sun, 13 Jun 1999 16:46:57 +1000
Scottie Bowman, cruising for a bruising as usual, wrote:
> It is, of course, a part of antipodean folk lore that
> the great majority of the dead in that unfortunate
> expedition were Australians & New Zealanders
> sent there by the perfidious Brits to do their dirty
> work for them.
>
> Just another long-tailed yarn from Down Under, folks.
> In fact, the British contingent (a lot of them Irish
> volunteers) outnumbered the ANZACs by many thousands.
> For once the whingers are revealed to be not Poms
> but Ozzies.
Scottie - you knew I was going to take the bait at this one but I will do
it gracefully. The reason the ANZAC casualties at Gallipoli are seen as
such a defining part of Australian culture (to the point where we have a
public holiday called Anzac Day) is not because most of the fighters were
antipodean, which is an absurd thing to suggest. The difference was the
horrific percentages of dead. If, and these are theoretical numbers,
Australia sent over 2,000 troupes to England's 20,000 and less than three
percent came back, surely this would have a far greater impact on a country
which at the time had a population of less than 10 million? This was the
battle in which Australia lost its innocence, and numbers have little to do
with that. And surely you could never have the temerity to call complaints
about war `whinging'.
(However I'd like to formally register a complaint over the overtly `Thank
God America saved the world yet again' message of `Saving Private Ryan'. My
grandfather told me that being in the war was the great equaliser for him -
he met people of race and social status he never would have otherwise. And,
as an incident in a segregated movie theatre that he was in taught him,
when the lights go out and the air raid siren sounds, you don't care too
much about the colour of the guy who you're cowering in the darkness with).
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST http://www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest