The Anzac Legend: Myths and Realities

Activity

• Pair Work
• Time Limit: 30 seconds
• Task: to write down as many possible adjective or connected words used to describe the ANZAC soldiers and their efforts within the article.
• Some examples include: “this race of athletes” (‘athletes’ being an acceptable word to write down), and “proved worthy”. These examples cannot be used now but whichever pair finds the most words will receive a prize/reward

(Note: keep the list you have written and add to it from what other groups find as they will be useful in observing similarities and differences throughout the sources in language and description)

'Tradition, Myth and Legend' - Graham Seal

'Australians at the Dardanelles: Thrilling Deeds of Heroism' - Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett

Summary

Quotes

The Digger Tradition

• Anzac Legend: Myths over realities
• “Since the fateful April 25 1915, Australians have been continually enmeshed in discourses that have included participation, celebration, commemoration, condemnation and study of Anzac and the digger”
• “This book is an argument about the two traditions of digger and Anzac, a study of the cultural and social means by which these respective images and their imperatives have been transmitted, and an interpretation of their social meaning.”
• Minister of Defence, Senator Pearce, 1916
• In what ways can we frame Senator Pearce’s comments in 1916 as an example of a cultural and social construction of the Anzac legend? Is this constriction of history appealing and/or convincing?
• “These words indicate the fusion that had already been made between the discourses of imperialism, pioneering and war..."
• Seal argues this myth was formed through the intersection of two disparate cultural traditions-the folkloric tradition of the digger and the official tradition of Anzac.

• How would we describe the Australian Digger? Who are they? What do they do? What do they value?

• "The Australians rose to the occasion. Not waiting for orders, or for the boats to reach the beach, they sprang into the sea, and, forming a sort of rough line, rushed at the enemy's trenches."
• "Then this race of athletes proceeded to scale the cliffs without responding to the enemy's fire."
• "... the Australasians, whose blood was up, instead of entrenching, rushed northwards and eastwards, searching for fresh enemies to bayonet."
• "I have never seen anything like these wounded Australians in war before. Though many were shot to bits, without the hope of recovery, their cheers resounded throughout the night."

The Anzac Tradition

• This article published in The Argus on 8 May 1915, provided much of the imagery and descriptions of the war efforts from the Australian troops that became imbedded into the Anzac legend
• This is quite an interesting source given its perspective, that being of a British author and not Australian, so the language used and the description provide great insight into an external view of the Anzac forces - there are two particularly interesting quotes where he refers to the Australians as “those colonials” and “these raw colonial troops”, however this view is not necessarily true just because it is external and we will see this when studying the following sources

• What are the main elements of the Anzac tradition?
• How much do we agree with Seal’s assessment of the Anzac legend?
• How much do we agree with Seal’s assessment of Anzac’s historiography?

Discussion: Final Chance to Win!

From the four sources we have looked at today and your own views:

• How do you define the Anzac Legend?
• What did and does it mean for Australians and our national society and culture?
• And, is the Anzac legend more myth or reality?

The Anzac Legend

Secondary Sources

• 'Tradition, Myth and Legend' - Graham Seal
• 'Anzac' - Bill Gammage

• Keep in mind our list of words from the activity at the start of the class when we are looking at these sources to develop your own perspective of the Anzac Legend and Tradition and what aspects are myths and realities

• The Great War of 1914 was the most costly war in Australian history, and was also, coincidentally, one of the most significant historical moments that defined the nation’s culture and society since 1788 through the creation of the Anzac legend
• The Anzac legend and tradition was greatly influenced by C.E.W. Bean, who was a war correspondent at Gallipoli and later in France, and had returned to Australia to write the official history of Australia’s Great War and establish the Australian War Memorial. However journalists assisted immensely in the establishment of these notions, and the man responsible for mostly initiating such within the media was an Englishman, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, who authored the first article to detail Australian troops’ involvement in the war

'Anzac' - Bill Gammage

Quotes

Summary

• “They fought a kind of war not possible anywhere else during the Great War”; “despite the terrible effectiveness of the machine guns, Gallipoli was in many ways the last campaign fought without twentieth-century technology, the last battlefield on which the courage and determination of individual soldiers might alone have been decisive.”
• “Many were in doubt, many were leaderless, but most remembered what they had learnt in training”; “They went forward; when the scrub divided them, they went forward still; when most had been shot, the rest went on...”; “They were ardent, eager, brave men, naive about military strategy, but proud of their heritage and confident of their supremacy. Despite their mistakes, they did what few could have done.”

• “So they continued, grim, mocking, defiant, brave and careless, free from common toils and woes, into a perpetual present, until they should meet the fate of so many who had marched before them down the great road of peace and sorrow into eternity.”
• “In the twentieth century, no Australian, for or against Anzac, has ever discerned or proposed a stronger national tradition.”; “Why did the landing at Anzac shape and epitomize a tradition?”...”It happened at the right time.”, when news came on 29 April 1915 “Australians were not told what happened. They learnt only that their men were ashore in Turkey…”, “That was enough.”; they had “made Australia a nation, and a partner to Empire - “This floodburst of emotion was the high water mark of ideas and attitudes which had built up steadily in Australia during the thirty years or so before 1914.”

• Difficulty of the landing
• A nation-building symbol
• Maturation of Navy
• Strong link to British heritage and the Empire
• The significance of the Empire
• Idealistic qualities of a soldier
• Australian nationalism
• The return of soldiers
• Anzac Day

First Chance to Win!

What does ANZAC stand for?

'The Return of a Soldier' - Alistair thomson

• Thomson gets a firsthand account of what the war was really like from a First World War digger, Fred Farrall
• “The search for national character is one of the obsessive dead ends of Australian history.”
• “I’m more interested in the interactions between Anzac Legend stereotypes and individual soldiers’ identity, in the experience of difference as well as conformity, and in the ways that ideas of what is ‘typical’ can be oppressive.” (62)
• “Most of the recent Australian war films neglect the personal and political tensions of coming home.” (63)
• Rather the movies show heroism not crippling physical and emotional struggles
• To be weak or fearful was unmanly and un-Australian
• “The legend of the Australian soldier as the best fighter in the war caused many men to repress their feelings and memories, and worsened the psychological trauma of the war.” (63)

The Anzac Legend: Myths and Realities

Background Info - Fred Farrall

• Fred’s radical thoughts and new friends further allowed him to suppress his feelings
• By the 1970s, Fred began to open up to learning and talking about the First World War, as he had a “…renewed interest in his youth”
• He became more open to his identity as a First World War digger as he received respect; the public view of the diggers had changed
• Australian War Memorial
• He could finally speak of his experience
• However, “…Fred was so pleased with the new respect that he did not see how other aspects of his experience were still neglected
• Fred still holds onto his radical thinking but he doesn’t direct his critique to those who spread and ingrain the myth: Anzac writers and film-makers
• “The effectiveness of the 1980s Anzac legend is that it convinces even radical diggers like Fred that their story is being told, while subtly reworking the conservative sense of the war, national character and Australian history.” (71)

• From Melbourne
• Working class
• First World War digger
• Shell-shock victim: had neurosis and admitted to Randwick Hospital upon return
• “I had neurosis, that was not recognised in those days, and so we just had it. You put up with it. And that developed an inferiority complex.” (62)
• Eventually overcame his neurosis

• Popular Memory Group at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
• “…wanted to explain the rise and popularity of conservative forms of nationalism that rely upon a particular version of the British past…” (63)
• “…the social experience of repatriation was especially traumatic…”
• For many years, Fred refused to wear his war service badge because it had no value to him
• Disillusionment
• “What we’d been told that the war was all about, didn’t work out that way. What we’d been told that the government would do when the war was over, for what we’d done, didn’t work out either.” (65)
• Publicly Fred would not acknowledge the war
• He initially disliked Anzac Day
• 1930s:
• “Fred’s radical rethinking of the war and his opposition to the RSSILA was not typical of ex-servicemen, but it was a significant aspect of postwar politics that has been forgotten and needs to be recalled.” (68)