Ponderings about ANZAC Day and the Right claiming ownership of all things military

[ForrestGump]

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lose their lives.....You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours..... You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well"

- M. Kemal Ataturk

I read this thread with interest, not that it's any great surprise to me that a great many DUers have military backgrounds or are currently serving. It made me think, though, about the ubiquity of military connections and the inherent pointlessness in any political ideology claiming a monopoly on such. A good number of people (especially Americans) grew up 'military brats,' or served directly, but a many more have familial relationships that make all things military more relevant to them than might otherwise seem apparent. In my case, it's ANZAC Day that most directly connects me to a heritage of military service that runs back many centuries, despite my own civilian background.

ANZAC, in case you don't know, stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and was a bi-national military entity that formed in the wake of both nations' participation in the Boer War and quickly established a reputation for some pretty fearsome soldiering that held through the two World Wars. Those big colonials, a great many very much rugged men of the land, were generally considered truly tough men who you'd want on your side in a conflict. In places like Monte Cassino and Crete, in WWII, élite German paratroopers (some of the most phenomenal soldiers ever fielded by anyone) came up against ANZAC soldiers and, along with a lot of blood and destruction, a definite mutual respect ensued. I'm not sure they really make people like that any more. Today the main continuing tangible reminder of ANZAC is perhaps annual observance of the anniversary of the ill-fated landings at Gallipoli that started on April 25, 1915, basically the Down Under version of Memorial Day. To a great extent, the Gallipoli diversion (and, to an extent, the rest of the course of the War) played an important part in establishing national identities for both Australia and New Zealand. For Australia it was the first real act of national cohesion, the first real taste of battle, and the first real test of the Empire's relationship with the new Federation. New Zealand remained more loyal to the crown, opting out after WWII in the wake of the British abandoning Singapore and basically telling everyone in the neighborhood "sorry, chaps, but you're on your own," at which point the Yanks became the cavalry to the rescue.

In most countries, scratch anybody's surface and eventually you'll find a lot of family connections to the military. Conflict, and (ideally) the prevention thereof, is such a universal human condition. Sad, but true. Inevitable, I think. Regardless, it's insane to characterize military service in terms of some extreme on the political continuum. It's doubly insane to do so across cultures and ages; for example, what might tend to apply in the United States of America may be totally irrelevant to the People's Republic of China, or Fiji.

I was an Air Force cadet in another country for a brief time but neither my brother nor I, despite keen interest in military history (especially him) ever served in the military. When I was in grad school I seriously thought about entering the US Navy Reserve with a specialty in Intelligence -- would have made use of my skills and I would've entered as an officer -- but I just got way too busy with my dissertation research for that and then, soon enough, the magic cutoff age came and went. I may have never been in any war, but my genes have been through hell and back on battlefields the world around.

My father wasn't quite old enough for WWII and is from a country that has had no major military involvement since (though he was a civilian emergency dude during WWII, kind of a 'home guard' thing for older men and underage kids...he slept through the sirens only one time, that time being when the first and only Japanese bomber flyover happened in his area). You have to go back to my grandfather before you hit military, but from there I've got a long tradition of the officer-and-a-gentleman thing (on my mother's side, 'cos they were British gentry whereas my father's were wild Scotsmen who didn't figure prominently in written records, so I have almost no idea about that side of my family).

My maternal grandfather served with the ANZACs in WWI, starting his war with the initial landings at Gallipoli (morning of April 25, 1915) and continuing through most of the major battles of the Western Front (Cambrai, the Somme, Ypres, Paaschendale, Flanders, etc). He was pretty well decorated and field promoted (and gassed at the Somme in 1918...the doctors told him he'd be dead by 21, which proved about 74 years short of his actual lifespan) and tried to get back into the field in WWII but had to be content with a training role.

My maternal grandmother's father was the Head Librarian of the War Office in WWI (I remember her telling me about him being handed a white feather by some woman on the street, someone who obviously believed he was shirking his duty to King and Country) and I think right before that he was a Colonel in the Indian Army (British Indian Army), though maybe that was some other dude in her lineage...can't recall right now. Her father broke the 'Black Cipher' the Boers were using to communicate with Holland in the Boer War and he eventually ended up with all the cool medals: OBE, MBE, French Legion of Honor and, of course, one white feather that he took particular delight in.

Anyway, that side of the family was high-profile in the British upper-crust for intellectual achievement, primarily, in contrast to her husband's side where old status persists for centuries no matter how deserving the current batch of gentry is of it. I believe there were fewer in the way of high-profile military types on her side of the family, though if you take it far enough back you get to one of the favorite family stories I've been told, the one about the knight whose life was saved by the love of a Saracen princess. I've seen hard proof of more recent family tall-tales that I'd always previously assumed were at best only based in fact, so I'm fully prepared to accept that the wild tale from the Crusades might actually be essentially true...stranger things have happened, even within my own family tree.

Back on my maternal grandfather's side, there's pretty much a long line of military officers and knights and all of that. I know that two of his father's brothers died in action in India and his father was a lieutenant in The King's Own and fought in the Peninsula War against the forces of that Short Dead French Dude. One story that sticks in my mind is how, when he was designated Officer of the Guard, he followed the Duke of Wellington's order of the day that no officer was to leave camp unless in full uniform to such an extent that he had the sentry deny Wellington exit even though he knew full well who he was. Wellington saw him on a stretcher some time later, after he'd had part of his jaw shot away, and wasn't exactly filled with sympathy toward the man. I kinda like the man's sense of humor. Or duty. Or irony.

My grandfather's oldest brother, something like 40 years older than he was (and the tallest of many brothers, at 6'8"...pretty tall for the mid-19th Century!), wasn't in the military but was a war correspondent and artist during the Franco-German campaign of 1870. He was not a nice man, by all accounts (sumbitch lost all the family estates, too, ending over 900 years of continual ownership) and was so disliked by one prominent British novelist, who was in the same London club as he, that he gave his name to one of the classic literary villains. He also let John Singer Sargent share his art studio for a while -- in all, this very talented but fairly reprehensible man kinda reminds me of Forrest Gump in terms of the people he met along the way, if Forrest had been a pompous upper-crust Victorian British asshole who everyone seems to have hated. But I digress. Again. His son was another WWI hero who was always said to have died in battle but who, my grandfather found out 70 years later (just a year before he died), was actually disowned by his father after he married an Irish woman -- hence the fabricated glorious military death, because marrying an Irish person was just too shameful, I guess -- and he later worked as an Intelligence operative during WWII before dying in the late '60s in South Africa (actually on the same day my brother was born).

My grandfather's and my grandmother's mothers were warriors of a different sort: they were both Suffragettes. My grandmother's mother went to jail with Emily Parkhurst after throwing a brick through a window, and she had to be forcefed in jail 'cos she went on a hunger strike. You go, girl.

I can't necessarily speak for all of my ancestors -- that's a lot of people, in very different times and in a very different set of cultures -- but my grandmother was sure a liberal (she was university educated, not too common in England early last century, and an artist) and my grandfather was politically one even though he retained some of that Victorian crap he grew up with, being basically raised by nannies and the like ("children should be seen and not heard," for example -- he was a pretty bad grandfather, a terrible father, and only really cut out for one thing: war). He was perhaps an atheist, at least an agnostic, but I distinctly recall him having respect for one system of belief: Ba'hai. He apparently knew some dude who was high up in the faith back when he was a young man, and he respected him very much. Both my grandparents also did a fair bit of local theater and one of his sisters was a well-known stage actress back in the UK (much to her mother's chagrin...she ran away to the theater, literally, after escaping their house on a rope made of bedsheets) and back around 1930 my grandfather was hanging out with a lot of actors, making good friends with John Gielgud (in his memoirs he spells the name "Gielgood"...not sure he ever connected him with the great actor we know, 'cos Gielgud was just getting local attention for his first stage role around this time). They were both also massive pet fans, very much into animal rights and the like, and in the years I knew them it was primarily pussycats that lived with them.

My grandfather was a classic warrior, really only at his best when commanding men in battle, but he'd probably be to the left of many DUers in most meaningful respects. He hated the whole British antipathy and condescension toward colonials, too, which is a very common theme you'll find in reading about the Gallipoli campaign, especially, that basically saw Australia come of age and begin to reject the Empire. I mean he WAS British (he ran away to Australia at age 14), and of the upper class at that, but after his experiences in the trenches with his Aussie mates he considered himself British merely by accident of birth (this attitude started when he saw the way British officers treated the colonial troops and scorned their slouchy demeanor...this is, like pretty much everything he's written of his experiences, echoed faithfully in Peter Weir's excellent Gallipoli) and harbored a deep resentment of the British High Command who so willingly and stupidly sacrificed so many men, including his friends, in meatgrinder hellholes like Gallipoli and the Somme. To hear him indignantly say "I'm an Australian" in his perfectly cultured upper-class English accent was quite something, though he was serious about it and, much as he at the time reveled in the killing he needed to do in the War, he hated what battle did and even more so when the battle was conducted so painfully wrongly.

Oh, yeah: one of my other military ancestors, albeit by marriage, was Jesus. No, really! He married one of my grandfather's sisters (she was tall, too, at 6'). He played Jesus in an early epic (I've heard it was quite an accomplishment, but I've never seen the film) shot on location in Jerusalem, Syria, and Egypt in 1912 by a Canadian director. He was primarily a stage actor (even toured with Lily Langtry!) but the film sure stuck with him. He fought with distinction in WWI and then went back on the road, philandering and acting around the US while his wife stayed back in the UK and had success with producing corsets and other underthings, including some for royal bottoms. I can't for the life of me think where I saw it, but I distinctly remember reading that he began to think he was Jesus, during the fighting in Western Europe, and that (convinced that his divinity protected him from sure death, and it DID seem like he was bulletproof, which is one reason he racked up so many medals...no fear of death!) he basically went off the deep end with a major-league, terminal Messiah complex thereafter. Talk about Method acting...

Anyway, lots of military types thereabouts on that side of the family. Almost every man since at least King Canute's time in my mother's direct family lineage, and on the branches, had a military commission. Of my father's side I know little. I do know that one of my Scottish ancestors was supposedly at Culloden (1746), which is kinda scary because one of my Brit cavalry-officer forebears was also there...if they'd met, I might not exist.

I also know that my father's stepfather was a Royal Navy man who later served with another Commonwealth navy and his career spanned both WWI and WWII. He was on a ship that was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and somehow stayed afloat despite a gaping hole in its bow. I didn't know much of his service record until after he died -- same with my grandfather, who wouldn't talk about the war (and, as is common, maintained that many who do talk about the war a lot were never really at the front end of it) -- but seeing all the pictures he took of far-flung places like Egypt and China in the first part of the century, among many others, as well as photos of naval battles, was pretty amazing. To me he was just this kind old man who puttered around in his workshop all the time. Kind of like a childhood friend's father, who was a very jovial and really tiny little dude who'd been a British commando during WWII and taken part in missions that would have had Rambo wetting his pants. You never know what people's stories are. You sure as hell can't tell by looking.

And that's what these knuckledraggers on the Right seem to consistently fail to recognize, among many other things. In general, the louder and more macho the meathead, especially one wrapping himself in militarism and tales of exploits with the Special Forces or whatever, the less likely it is that they've ever seen combat or even served in peacetime or in rear-echelon positions. I've seen plenty of examples of these types, especially in the US. They don't amuse me. I may not have served in any military, but I'm offended by these poseurs to an inordinate degree...they're like grave robbers. Same with the fake Vietnam vets and their like -- they're scum, pure and simple.

There's plenty of evidence, here and in many other threads, of DUers and others on the leftish side of the American spectrum who have put themselves in harm's way in service of their country or some other cause. And those of us who haven't done so invariably have truckloads of relatives and ancestors, including those who might be labeled progressive by their times or by ours, who also served. This doesn't take away from right-wingers who have served...it just seems like they're the ones who make the most noise about militarism but put their bodies where their mouths are a little less often, at least in this country as it's been the past two or three decades.

I know what I'm talking about. My grandfather was a Sergeant York type and my great-uncle was none other than Jesus.



P.S.: Happy ANZAC Day. Watch Gallipoli if you have not seen it.


My grandfather in 1914:




"Gallipoli affected us all for life. We left 7594 of our men, and 2431 New Zealanders, buried on those bloody barren hills!" (Gallipoli, 1915)

"At last the Canadians were sent to relieve us and the first terrible bloodbath was over for us. We lost a total of 22,826 men in this battle. The Somme wasn’t a fight but outright bloody murder. I cannot bring myself to blame the Germans -- they were our foe -- but I do blame the inept commanders of our Allied Army Divisions, who were supposed to protect our flank and didn’t!" (The Somme, July 1916)

[sarge43]

1. Beautiful tribute, Forrest. Thank you.

For the troops.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5JkHBC5lDs

[Howardx]

2. excellent post

thanks much.