The Tribune

As the world marked the centenary of ANZAC Day, Peter Young addressed a private event in The Bahamas on its enduring significance.

By PETER YOUNG

Today, we are gathered to commemorate the centenary of ANZAC Day. It is a national day of remembrance for Australia and New Zealand, when each year these two proud nations commemorate and honour the service and sacrifice of members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

This commemoration is a sombre occasion, which is as important to those nations as our own Remembrance Day on November 11 is to us here in the Bahamas or, for example, in my own country, Britain. And because of this, it is particularly appropriate that our own veterans of World War Two, now members of the Bahamas Branch of the Royal British Legion, have been able to attend today’s ceremony. I know that they have just come from a funeral service for Stanley Beneby, who was the oldest registered World War Two veteran and who passed away last week.

ANZAC Day is observed always on April 25 – the day in 1915 that ANZAC and other forces landed at the Gallipoli peninsular (at a place which became known as Anzac Cove) as part of a military (including naval) assault in the Dardanelles against the then Ottoman empire. It was originally conceived as a commemoration of those two countries’ war dead of the First World War which itself was a conflict of unprecedented slaughter, carnage and destruction.

It was later extended to the Second World War as well and, in 1980, it was widened to include all who suffered and died in overseas conflicts and peacekeeping operations in service of these two countries and to all those who mourned them.

This extension is significant because both Australia and New Zealand have been involved in many overseas conflicts over the years – as well as the two World Wars these were, to name some, Korea in the early 1950s, the Malaya emergency at the same period, Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, Borneo during the Indonesian confrontation in the 1960s, the first Gulf War at the beginning of the 1990s and Iraq and Afghanistan, and, most recently, this month’s joint deployment of Australian and New Zealand troops to Iraq, purportedly for training purposes.

This latest involvement comes as no surprise for, as the attempted ISIS-related terror incident in Melbourne in the last few weeks shows, even though these two countries are geographically far from the turmoil in the Middle East the threat extends equally to them both.

This year being the centenary of the Gallipoli landings makes it, of course, all the more important. Australians and New Zealanders all round the world are holding ceremonies like this one here today – as well as, of course, services and parades in Australia and New Zealand themselves.

The Australian and New Zealand prime ministers, Tony Abbott and John Key, amongst an array of dignitaries including Prince Charles and Prince Harry, have been in Gallipoli today for memorial ceremonies there. And a special commemorative ceremony is being held at the Cenotaph in London, which will be attended by The Queen.

My father was a New Zealander and his father, my grandfather, became a General in the New Zealand army and was General Officer Commanding of New Zealand forces after the First World War – from 1925 to 1931. He served as a Colonel in the Gallipoli campaign.

My family was inevitably brought up on stories of his military exploits and prowess. So, even though I was partially versed in ANZAC folklore, I have researched ANZAC Day and its significance to Australians and New Zealanders.

I was shocked to learn of the enormous numbers of servicemen involved and the high casualty rate. The figures are simply staggering.

Overall, a total of 100,000 Australians remain where they died in foreign lands. 330,000 of them served abroad during World War One and two-thirds became casualties including 60,000 dead while New Zealand suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, including 17,000 dead.

50,000 Australians served in the Gallipoli campaign – 8,700 lost their lives and nearly 19,500 were wounded. The comparable figures for New Zealand, (with, of course, a much smaller population) were 2,700 and 4,700. For Australia, which at that time had a population of about one million I think, these were large numbers.

One needs also to remember the numbers killed of other nationalities – 80,000 Turks, 34,000 British, 9,800 French as well as troops from India and Newfoundland.

As an example of the severity of the fighting, Britain awarded six Victoria Crosses (one posthumously) to men of the Lancashire Fusiliers landing at Gallipoli shortly after dawn in what was described as the ill-fated campaign in the Dardanelles and these became known as “the six VCs before breakfast”.

So, the casualties were extremely heavy before the Allied withdrawal from Gallipoli – a territory described dismissively by cynical critics as an obscure finger of the former Ottoman empire.

Why did all this happen?

The answer is that, by 1915, there was a stalemate of trench warfare in France. Britain was looking to open another front through Turkey to take Constantinople (now Istanbul), knock the Turks out of the war,and then attack the Austro-Hungarian empire – and eventually Germany – from the south east with the help of Greek and Bulgarian troops.

After nine months of heavy fighting, the land campaign was abandoned in December of the same year and the invasion force evacuated to Egypt. Bulgaria, meanwhile, had entered the war on the side of what became known as the Central Powers and Britain and France opened a second Mediterranean front at Salonika in northern Greece.

In his address at the service to commemorate ANZAC Day in 2005 the then Australian prime minister, John Howard, described the ANZAC spirit as giving the country a lasting sense of national identity forged during World War One.

He said that the exploits, valour and sacrifice of Australians, initially at Gallipoli and during subsequent years, changed the way the nation viewed the world and itself. As he put it, at Gallipoli they came to do their bit in a maelstrom not of their own making – and they came willingly because they were essentially volunteers. The emphasis was on selfless service in defence of the nation’s freedoms and democracy: to think, to speak, to worship and to move freely without hindrance.

Tony Abbott echoed these thoughts last month when he said “the Gallipoli landing was in an important sense the birth of our nation. Certainly, it was the coming of age”.

According to my research, it has also been recognised that, amidst all the commemorations, controversy arose in the 1960s and 70s over Anzac Day partly because of opposition to the Vietnam war and questions about the reasons for, and conduct of, World War One. There have also been those who questioned the label of “nation-defining“, since Australia had already developed as a newly-federated nation in 1901, as had New Zealand which had earlier become self-governing. But Gallipoli was the first time the two countries had joined to fight under the same banner.

Since the 1980s, however, commemoration ceremonies have drawn large crowds and there is no doubt that the younger generation recognises the importance of honouring the sacrifices of previous generations.

Now, a few words about my grandfather, Major General Robert Young.

From the family archives, his letter/diary dated December 28, 1915 gives a detailed account of a successful night time evacuation of New Zealand forces from Gallipoli under the noses of the Turks and with no casualties. As a Colonel he was in charge. It is a fascinating document. The family are unsure whether it was a letter to his wife or a diary entry. But it brings the whole operation to life, a significant achievement requiring courage, commitment, organisation and leadership.

With the New Zealand forces, he was evacuated to Egypt and then served in trenches in France. He was at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, took a bullet in the neck and repatriated to England for treatment. He later returned to France and led the New Zealand forces in the Victory Parade in London in 1919. He quelled a major riot by disgruntled New Zealand soldiers waiting in England to be shipped home after the war, diffusing the problem by sending married men home first. He was a man’s man who could relate to troops.

Finally, I should say that military historians tell us that the Dardanelles campaign, including the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula, was ultimately a strategically pointless operation. The sad reality is that it failed to achieve its military objective of capturing Constantinople and neutralising Turkey.

In Britain, Winston Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty and one of the main proponents of this intervention, became the scapegoat for what was to be known as the disaster of the doomed Dardanelles expedition. He resigned and went on to serve as a senior army officer in the trenches in France – a wholly creditable action on his part, you might say.

But this failure at the strategic level took nothing away from the courage and sacrifice of the troops who did the fighting. The actions of the Australian and New Zealand armed forces, both at Gallipoli and in subsequent conflicts around the world, have left a powerful legacy which has become an important part of the national identity of both countries.

Together with others around the world, they remember those who fought and died and will surely go on doing so. By common consent, the spirit of ANZAC Day remains as strong as ever. Long may this continue.

• Peter Young is a retired British diplomat living in Nassau. From 1996 to 2000 he was British High Commissioner to The Bahamas.