Over the top with myths of Gallipoli
Gallipoli was a military fiasco, but our troops had reasons to be there.
Due to New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark's decree, which was supported by John Howard, the voice of John Farnham will not be heard at Anzac Cove next Monday.
This makes sense. After all, to some at least, the Anzac Day commemorations in Turkey have become too much a backpackers' beach party.
However, if the political leaders of Australia and New Zealand are into deciding musical themes to accompany the 90th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli, they should extend the ban to folk singer Eric Bogle.
Bogle's songs are frequently played to commemorate the fallen of World War I - at ceremonies and in news and documentary accounts. Yet the singer/songwriter is a member of the they-all-died-in-vain club.
Bogle's song No Man's Land ends with the refrain "the killing, the dying, it was all done in vain". His signature song, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, contains a final verse about an Anzac Day procession where a returned digger reflects: "And the young people ask 'What are they marching for'/And I ask myself the same question."
Yet, in spite of the popularity of No Man's Land and Matilda, the passing of the years has revealed a growing interest in the Anzac legend and the Anzac Day march.
Bogle failed to anticipate the revival of interest by Australians in their history and, in particular, the curiosity of young Australian men and women in their ancestors.
The 90th anniversary of the Dardanelles campaign is a convenient occasion for Australians to reassess some of the prevailing myths about World War I in general, and Gallipoli in particular, which were prevalent when the left-wing interpretation of Australia was dominant.
The Dardanelles campaign was a failure. But it was undertaken with the best of intentions.
In 1914-18 Australia did not fight another nation's war. Certainly, in 1914 Australia was allied to Britain. But Germany had possessions in the Pacific and a victory by the Kaiser would have had a deleterious effect on Australian security. The fact is overlooked by historian Bill Gammage in his influential work The Broken Years (1974).
Turkey was an ally of Germany and, consequently, an enemy of Australia. At a time of war, the Allies were entitled to invade Turkey as a means of putting military pressure on Germany and assisting Britain's ally Russia.
The Dardanelles campaign was a failure. But it was undertaken with the best of intentions - to relieve the carnage on the Western Front in France and Belgium and to shorten the war. The suffering on Gallipoli was terrible - among attackers and defenders alike.
Even so, as Jenny Macleod documents in her recent book Reconsidering Gallipoli, Allied forces sustained "two casualties for every nine men sent out to the Dardanelles theatre". The comparable figure on the Western Front was "five in every nine men". As the historian John Terraine always maintained, the war could only be won - or lost - where the main armies confronted each other.
Winston Churchill, as Britain's first lord of the Admiralty, copped most of the blame for the disastrous campaign - especially in Australia. Certainly, he deserved censure for his mistakes. However, as Martin Gilbert has documented in his book In Search of Churchill (1994), Churchill advocated a joint sea and land attack. Instead there was an unsuccessful sea attack (which was abruptly halted) followed by a doomed land assault (which could never succeed on its own).
Many Australians have learnt what they know about the Dardanelles campaign from Peter Weir's film Gallipoli.
It's great art but historically misleading - in that there is a clear implication that it was British officers who ordered AIF soldiers to engage in suicidal attacks on the Nek on August 7, 1915. In fact, the order was given by Australians - which is confirmed in John Hamilton's moving account of the battle, Goodbye Cobber, God Bless You, which was published last year.
Australians fought bravely at Gallipoli as well as on the Western Front and played a key role in the military victories in the northern autumn of 1918. But other members of the British Empire forces were also courageous and, for the most part, Australians were well led - by Brits and Aussies alike.
The fictions that British generals were all dolts and that British soldiers lacked courage on Gallipoli have been demolished in James Hayward's Myths and Legends of the First World War and in the essay "Exploding the myths of Gallipoli" by Australian War Memorial historian Ashley Ekins (The Bulletin, April 27, 2004).
The First World War was a truly shocking conflict in which, for the first occasion, two modern armies confronted each other at a time of total war.
All who served suffered - as did the parents, wives and girlfriends who remained at home.
Ross McMullin reminds us of the often forgotten grieving relatives in his book Pompey Elliott (Scribe, 2002). He quotes from a moving letter by Rose Taylor who wrote to General Elliott about the death of her brother, Fred Wright, at Lone Pine and the impact this had had on her mother and herself. Another brother had gone missing.
Nine decades ago, Rose Taylor did not believe that her siblings had died in vain. Nor should she have.
The 90th anniversary of Anzac Day would be an appropriate time to dispatch Eric Bogle's message to the musical graveyard.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.