Anzac spirit: Difference between revisions

The Anzac spirit or Anzac legend is a concept which suggests that Australian and New Zealand soldiers possess shared national characteristics, specifically the qualities those soldiers are believed to have shown in World War I. These qualities cluster around several ideas, including endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour, and mateship.^[1] According to this concept, the soldiers are perceived to have been innocent and fit, stoical and laconic, irreverent in the face of authority, naturally egalitarian and disdainful of British class differences.^[2]

The Anzac spirit also tends to capture the idea of an Australian "national character", with the landing at

The concept was first derived in the reporting of the landing at Anzac Cove by Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett; as well as later on and much more extensively by Charles Bean. It is regarded as an Australasian legend, although its critics refer to it as the Anzac myth.^[2]

Historical development of the concept

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The British war correspondent

There has been no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and the storming of the heights... General Birdwood told the writer that he couldn't sufficiently praise the courage, endurance and the soldierly qualities of the Colonials (The Australians) were happy because they had been tried for the first time and not found wanting.[2]

Also in 1915, in response to the reporting of the efforts of the Australian troops, the Australia poet Banjo Paterson wrote "We're All Australians Now", including the verse:

The mettle that a race can show

Is proved with shot and steel,
And now we know what nations know

And feel what nations feel. ^[4]

The Anzac spirit was particularly popularised by Charles Bean, Australia's official war historian. Bean encapsulated the meaning of Anzac in his publication Anzac to Amiens:

Anzac stood, and still stands, for reckless valor in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat.^[5]

For the soldiers at

During the 1960s and 1970s, due to lack of observance of Anzac Day in general society, the idea of a unique Anzac spirit began to fade. Especially among among baby boomers, interest in Anzac Day reached its nadir in the aftermath of the anti-war demonstrations over Australian involvement in the Vietnam War.^[7] As the Australian anti-war movement developed into a popular movement opposed to Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war, and there were attempts by women's groups to disrupt the commemoration of Anzac Day during the 1970s and early 1980s.^{[citation needed]} Vietnam veterans, especially those taken in the forced draft, were represented by some in the 1970s as lacking the Anzac spirit.^{[citation needed]} While less dominant views of Anzac mythology remain current in some quarters, they are not the orthodox conception of the Anzac spirit.^{[citation needed]}

A resurgence in popular commemoration of Anzac Day in the 1980s (possibly linked to the release of the film Gallipoli) brought the idea of an Anzac spirit back into prominence in Australian political discourse.^{[citation needed]} There has been an increase in people, especially youth, attending Anzac Day Dawn Services in Australia and New Zealand.^[8]

The Anzac spirit and Australian national identity

Coming just fourteen years after the Federation of Australia, the Gallipoli campaign was one of the first international events that saw Australians taking part as Australians. As such, it has been seen as a key event in forging a sense of national identity.^[9] According to Dr Frank Bongiorno, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New England:

The Gallipoli campaign was the beginning of true Australian nationhood. When Australia went to war in 1914, many white Australians believed that their Commonwealth had no history, that it was not yet a true nation, that its most glorious days still lay ahead of it. In this sense the Gallipoli campaign was a defining moment for Australia as a new nation.^[10]

The popular belief that the Anzacs, through their spirit, forged Australia's national character, is frequently expressed.

We are summoned to recall the battle sacrifices of Australian farmers and tally clerks, teachers and labourers and to commemorate outstanding courage and strength of character in the face of sustained adversity... [The campaign] won for us an enduring sense of national identity based on those iconic traits of mateship, courage, compassion and nous.[11]

An extension of this belief is the idea that the Anzacs set an example for future generations of Australians to follow, laying the bedrock of Australian values. In 2007 the Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson articulated this view, stating that the Anzacs "forged values that are ours and make us who we are, reminding us that there are some truths by which we live."^[12]

The Anzac spirit is also said to come through in Australian civilian crises. For example, the Returned and Services League of Australia states:

The Spirit of the ANZAC continues today in times of hardship such as cyclones, floods and bush fires. At those times Australians come together to rescue one another, to ease suffering, to provide food and shelter, to look after one another, and to let the victims of these disasters know they are not alone.^[1]

Alternative views and criticisms

Professor

Other historians have also questioned the veracity or the Anzac legend, arguing that it is more accurate to describe the notion as a myth.[2] Dr. Dale Blair of Deakin University suggests that:

While traits such as egalitarianism, resourcefulness and initiative are assumed and maintained in the nation's popular memory as a truthful representation, not only of Australia's First World War soldiers, but also, of the national character, they were not sufficiently evident in the experience of the 1st Battalion [at Gallipoli] to justify their advancement as characteristics general to Australian soldiers or the nation.^[16]

According to Blair, the official war historian Charles Bean "advanced an idealised view of sacrifice to provide the nation with higher meaning and comfort as compensation for the death of its soldiers".^[17]

Others have questioned the idea that Australia's "national character" was forged on the beaches of Gallipoli. In 2008 an editorial in the

But why should Australians now, 90 years later, be still so eager for some stereotypical reaffirmation of their character? Why the self-doubt? The danger in the transformation - as remembrance replaces memory, and nationalism replaces remembrance - is that the solemnity and the serious purpose of Anzac Day will be lost in an irrelevant search for some kind of essence of Australianness.^[18]

Some have also critiqued the masculine underpinnings of the Anzac legend, pointing out that it is fundamentally exclusionary. According to popular notions of the Anzac spirit, the male bonding or mateship becomes the main characteristic in the description of Australianess, yet these characteristics are seen to imply that the true Australian is inevitably and only male. Some feminists have described this notion as being discriminatory, and assert that, as a result, it cannot possibly refer to all Australians.^[19]

See also

• Anzac Day
• Battle of Gallipoli
• John Simpson Kirkpatrick
• Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association

References