The Anzac name is crucial to our national identity, but nobody knows where it came from

IT is a word that resonates across Australia and is central to our national identity. But nobody knows for sure where it came from.

Mark Bohm dressed in period WWI infantry holds the Australian Flag in front of the Cenotaph as hundreds gathered for the dawn Anzac Service at Manly Dam, in Sydney's Northern Beaches on Saturday.

IT is a name that has become part of our national identity — but nobody knows for sure where “Anzac” came from.

Certainly the troops who left Albany in the first convoy a century ago, who would become the first Anzacs, did not then refer to themselves as such.

In October 1914 they were a rough and ready assembly of men and boys who came from town and country, city and the bush, fuelled by the best wishes of friends and families.

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Some were so much the worse for wear, they had to be carried on to their troopships. Church chaplains attached to the Australian Imperial Force blushed at the blue language that heralded the soldiers’ arrival on board.

“[My] first feelings were that I should shut myself up in my cabin,’’ one chaplain wrote of the raucous arrival of the troops. But in just a matter of months, none of that would matter.

Leaving for war ... some of the troops at Albany, in 1914. Picture: Supplied.

Once the Australian troops reached Albany, they were joined by more than 8000 New Zealanders that made up the first contingent of what would become the Anzacs.

It was simply two armies — the AIF and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force — spread across 38 troopships and four warships that left Albany at 6.45am on November 1.

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The convoy’s initial destination was England and the training depots in Salisbury, before supposedly heading to the Western Front. However, then came a diversion to Egypt — and the infamous beaches of Gallipoli.

Only a third of that first convoy of Australian troops would return home physically unscathed. Yet all of them, whether they came home or were left in those foreign fields, would carry the word “Anzac’’ alongside their name.

The origins of “Anzac’ remain unclear. But according to military historian Dr Peter Pedersen, a proposed title — Australasian Army Corps — was unpopular, especially with the New Zealanders.

Rallying point ... Anzac Day dawn service in Albany, Western Australia. Picture: Supplied.

The Australian War Memorial identifies several versions of the “Anzac” source, including a soldier on the convoy, artist and signaller Ellis Silas, who referred to “Anzac” as the place in the Dardanelles where his comrades fought in his 1916 book. British commander of the Gallipoli campaign Sir Ian Hamilton claimed some responsibility for “brazenly’’ coining the word Anzac to help with sending secure telegrams.

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But the Australian war correspondent and historian Charles Bean said that it was simply a response to the need for a code name for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. There were already rubber stamps carrying the acronym (A. & amp; N.Z.A.C.) to put on correspondence and from there it was a short step to ‘Anzac’ itself.

Past and present ... a re-enactment of Anzac riders. Picture: Supplied.

Although the word was used in Egypt from January, 1915 according to Bean, few of the troops were aware of it by April 25 and the Gallipoli landings.

So it was that the thousands of troops came to define the word by their actions in World War I.

More than three weeks out of Albany, and steaming up the Red Sea, the convoy was ordered to Egypt to undertake its training. The demands on Salisbury from the rapidly expanding British Army made it necessary for the Australians and New Zealanders to be trained elsewhere. By December 3, the men who would become Anzacs were disembarking at Alexandria.

Soon, Turkey’s pivotal role and potential threat to the Suez Canal would help shape a strategy in London that would become the Gallipoli landings. But for the moment, in the shadow of the pyramids, the Anzacs started preparing for war.

Some would never see combat; injured in training, hurt in skylarking around the pyramids, afflicted by ailments, including venereal disease, that would see them sent home to recover. But for the rest, that first step in to the unknown from Albany, would begin the most perilous adventure of their lives.

Originally published as The Anzac name is crucial to our national identity, but nobody knows where it came from