Anzac Day

I like Anzac Day. Except for the inevitable insomnia which comes pretty much every day now and prevents me from going to the dawn service. There is something reassuring in knowing that once upon a time a tragically high number of blokes my age stood up and got shot for what they believed in. It doesn't matter that I don't necessarily agree with why they fought (patriotic songs will forever make me blanche) - that is a luxury space and time has afforded me. I like they way it afforded men who could not express their emotion's to their wives and children (how do you tell your girl you killed a man or heard a mate cry for his mother as he died several feet away?) to sit and remember with a beer or few with others who had gone through the same experience - unspoken communication and understanding.

There are, naturally, a number of valid arguments why Anzac Day is irrelevant or demeaning. The role of women is overlooked - and I challenge anyone to suggest that the women back home waiting for their fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, friends and lovers did not go through an incredible emotional trauma. The service normally looks at the role of the men - using masculine military tradition, usually outside a phallic symbol of mourning. The date is largely invented. Australians rushed ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April - it was their big day. We got ashore nearly 12 hours later at 4pm. Our big day was August 18, when we rushed, attacked and captured the strategic highpoint of Chunuk Bair before being killed, once again, by the British. 760 men went up, 70 came down. The date of 25 April was picked up on by the press and immortalised by the public back home in New Zealand. We had our first Anzac day service in 1916. And perhaps it is fitting that the public in New Zealand latched on to 25 April 1915 - it gives agency to the men and women and children back home who were fighting their own individual battles. In remembering the fallen (and the returned - never forget them) on April 25 we also remember those that remained behind.