Contemplating the future on the one day of the year

As always, Anzac Day touches the hearts of Australians, wherever they are in the world, like no other national commemoration. And rarely, over the past 80 years, has it been held amid such elevated strategic tensions. The dangers are not lost on the fading ranks of the great generation of Diggers who put on the uniform to defend the nation, and the freedoms for our European cousins, in World War II. Only 1300 of the 900,000 survivors are left. Those able to venture out will have star billing, deservedly, at Anzac Day events, however much they play down their contributions.

“There’s nothing to recommend war,’’ veteran Jim Grebert, 102, told associate editor Jamie Walker in the lead-up to the day. “It’s all bad news, death and destruction. My advice to young people is don’t go. Let’s hope it never happens again.” The vast majority of Australians concur; which is why those familiar with the lessons of history understand the Roman empire adage “If you want peace, prepare for war”. As a nation we have no alternative, amid China’s escalating armed forces, Russia’s determination to forge military ties with Indonesia, and Donald Trump taking the US into an unpredictable period of isolationism and disregard for the post-World War II Western alliance that has done much to keep the peace for eight decades.

From jam-packed Dawn Services and marches to solemn ceremonies at local and international war memorials – Gallipoli, Villers-Bretonneux, Hellfire Pass, London, and in embassies around the world – Anzac Day is part of Australians’ collective DNA. It also belongs, in an individual way, to veterans and their families, whose stories are as numerous and varied as the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, which records more than 100,000 members of our armed forces who have died serving the nation from pre-1914 conflicts onwards through the World Wars to the Korean conflict, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Anzac Day events ensure their sacrifices are not forgotten among subsequent generations. Survivors, and their families, also paid heavy prices.

Mr Grebert’s experiences in combat on the frontlines in New Guinea and Bougainville, Walker writes, were so harrowing that he couldn’t bring himself to speak of them for decades, not even to his family. At the Sandgate RSL on Brisbane’s northern bayside on Friday he will think about “all the mates I lost”. In Melbourne, Victorian editor Damon Johnston writes on Friday of his grand-uncle Reginald, officially known as Trooper Reid, who was killed in action at Gallipoli in 1915. “His trench was only a few metres from the Turks,” Johnston’s grandfather told him. “They’d throw grenades over and he would catch them and throw them back. One blew up in his hand and that was it.” Like many Australians, Johnston pieced together his relative’s service history via digital war service records. It records Reginald, a young bank clerk in his 20s, signing on to the Perth-based 10th Light Horse Regiment in December 1914, signing an oath to “well and truly serve our Sovereign Lord the King in the Australian Imperial Force” and to “resist His Majesty’s enemies”. With his regiment, he left Australia in February 1915 for training in Egypt, where the horses were left behind. From there the Light Horsemen sailed to Gallipoli as infantrymen in May, weeks after the initial invasion force. By June, Reginald was dead.

In that era, historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote on Saturday, Australia was better prepared for the outbreak of World War I than it is now prepared for almost any kind of international war. “At that time most citizens and the major political parties emphasised the need for a strong army and navy,” Blainey wrote. “They were willing to pay for the most expensive item in the list of the world’s major weapons – the massive dreadnought battleship … We were more adventurous than France, Russia, Italy and Austria-Hungary. What excitement when HMAS Australia – the most powerful ship in the southern hemisphere – steamed into Sydney Harbour on October 6, 1913. A year later it led a force that captured the German harbour and wireless station at Rabaul in the present Papua New Guinea.”

The stark contrast in military preparedness between now and 110 years ago is worth contemplating as Australians reflect on our Anzac legacy. That includes being ready for the unexpected, such as the chaotic events that unfolded 50 years ago on Anzac Day, five days before the fall of Saigon. As Walker writes, the last flight out took off, barely a third full, leaving behind loyal local staff who had served the Australian military and embassy well. Their fate is unknown. It was a low point in our long Anzac Story, an example of how much tends to go wrong in war, causing the innocent untold suffering.

Despite too many woke teachers’ efforts to instil a loathing of our history and culture in students, participation of young people in Anzac Day in recent years has been an encouraging sign for the nation’s future. But research detecting a fall-off in interest and affinity among Generation Z (13-25-year-olds) is disturbing. It needs to be nipped in the bud, in the interests of appreciating our rich history and the sacrifices of those who gave their all for the nation. Lest we forget.