sj oldfield

My 80 year old uncle has lived here in perth for about 10 years and I think he must be one of the original whinging poms.
Anzac Day is on his latest hit list.
He states..........In 1915, the population of Australia was approx 6 million.
At least half of those were either too old or too young to enlist in the army.
That would leave 3 million. He states that 2 million of them would have been immigrants, mostly British and Irish. The other million Australian woman and men.
That means the majority that would have been fighting would have been British and Irish.......so.......he says...........most of the men whom we remember on Anzac day would have been Allied Troops and not Australian.
Does this make any sense or is he just being a cantakarus old fool.

No offence meant to anyone..

wmoore

Probably a bit of each

mozzie

I certainly don't think that the proportion of immigrants in 1915 would have been anywhere near 67% - in fact it was probably well short of the 25% it is now. Brits didn't start emigrating to Oz in large numbers until after WW2, when it was decided that Australia had to "populate or perish", hence the Ten Pound Poms.

There was a big immigration boom in the 1850's and 60's with the goldrush, but it would have been the grandsons of those people who would have been shipped off to Gallipoli.

worzel

I was very surprised to learn at the war memorial in Canberra that there were many more British soldiers killed in Gallipoli than ANZAC soldiers. So I guess he does have a point. It must be because Gallipoli was just another battle where thousands of British soldiers died and thus not remembered especially in the UK. Whereas for the Aussies it was presumably one of the the worst in their history.

I seem to recall that the Australians (as part of the empire) were sent into battle in Europe in WW2 while the Japanese were on the verge of invading their homeland which allegedly started Australia distancing itself from Britain over the last 60 years.

I would imagine many of the diggers in WW1 had some similar feelings towards fighting a war in Europe which seemed to have little to do with them too. And they were often giving the worst battles to fight as it was less politically sensitive to Britain to have casualties from other nations.

Apologies if I got any facts wrong here, especially on this day, but I think I got the general drift of the story correct.

TheCrone

I've heard this before, that a large proportion of the Anzacs were either migrants or first generation Aussies, to whom the UK was very much still 'home'. There was, apparently, a severe depression in the UK in the 1890's and many people emigrated, a great-uncle of mine among them. My father remembered two 'huge, bronzed Australians' turning up on his family's doorstep in 1916, who were cousins he'd never previously met.
And while I have nothing but sympathy for those who died - and their families - I must confess that it always makes me smile , somewhat ironically, when I hear:

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We shall remember them."

I've heard this described as the oath, the pledge, the prayer - but it's actually from a poem that starts

"With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
ENGLAND mourns for her dead across the sea....."

gazzer

your uncle is just a miserable old git!

and i'm surprised he feels like that considering his age, no doubt he remembers WW2 and there after.

tell him to shut up or ignore him

TheCrone

Considering my age, I remember WW2 and its aftermath!
And perhaps Uncle, like me, sees that the catchwords of "Honour", Duty" and "Patriotism" were used by the old men to beguile younger ones into protecting vested interests. To many of my generation, such days as Anzac Day and Remembrance Day are not causes for celebration, but rather mourning for the useless, pointless waste of young lives.
And there is, of course, the point that the British, whether UK-born or from the Commonwealth, did sacrifice many more of their young men than any other nation. Despite American claims, they were as late in coming to the battlefields in WWI as they were in WW2.

njk435

As a serving soldier, I must take issue with you there TheCrone.
I still see Honour, Duty and Patriotism as Good things to fight for. I do agree that many lives have been wasted in battles, but they were fighting for good, honest reasons. If we didn't have men and women willing to lay down their lives for their friends, we would live in a very different world than today.

TheCrone

[QUOTE=njk435]As a serving soldier, I must take issue with you there TheCrone.
I still see Honour, Duty and Patriotism as Good things to fight for. I do agree that many lives have been wasted in battles, but they were fighting for good, honest reasons. If we didn't have men and women willing to lay down their lives for their friends, we would live in a very different world than today.
QUOTE]

I respect your point of view, and as long as the Australian Army is part of a Defense force, I have no problem with it. Like most, I would fight to the death to protect my own family.
Where I do have a problem is when war is an act of aggression.
Maybe I'm treading on dodgy ground here, but take Australia's involvement in Iraq as an example. For all GWB's pious mouthings about 'saving the world from evil', it is apparent that he wanted control of Iraqi oil - not to mention the billions of dollars finding their way into the coffers of American companies during this period of "reconstruction", necessary because the existing infrastructure was blown to bits by Allied bombing.
And in all honesty, don't you think that those whom the Western media categorise as "terrorists", "insurgents", "rebels" would also claim to be fighting for Honour, Duty and Patriotism? Just like the Maquis in France in WWII - yet we called them heroes of the Resistance. Meanwhile, the ones who suffer most are the children, the women, the old.

ABCDiamond

I am pretty sure that all the Australian troops were Volunteers, choosing to fight, although not necessarily in some of the area that they were placed.

Paul and Chloe

Although it was apparent from WW1 accounts that many of the soldiers did not see this....as per the quote below:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

ABCDiamond

Ah yes, but that was by a British Poet Wilfred Owen.
And most of the Brits were conscripts.

Although once the Australians arrived, i'm not sure whether they could leave or not !

Paul and Chloe

True, although he did volunteer, I guess the conditions were the same no matter if you chose to go or were sent...not much glory/honour found in their eyes...

njk435

I respect your views too The Crone, but I think it's a bit disingenious to even consider the insurgents in Iraq in this conversation - Soldiers bound by Honour, Duty and Patriotism do not hack the heads off of their captives. As for the reconstruction of Iraq itself, much of the reconstruction is being paid for by the international community and is building as opposed to rebuilding. For example, Japan has a civil engineering group (soldiers also) rebuilding the province of Al Muthana. There is money being made in Iraq, but I know the majority of people I spoke to out there were glad tat Saddam was gone.

Anyway, enough of Iraq, pretty much every man who fought for Australia in WW1 was a volunteer, as conscription was twice voted down by the aussie parliament.

I went to St Georges Sound in Albany WA last year and saw where the tropships left Australia bound for the middle east, very sobering indeed.

Ialibu

There are many and various views as to why young men volunteer to fight wars. The most widely accepted view in Australia for WWI was that it was an adventure and the government was paying 5 bob a day. Most young men were glad to get away from where they were as the reality of war was unknown.

They had two bitterly fought referenda for conscription as the PM had promised England so many replacements a month and the young men weren't volunteering fast enough. And that certainly slowed down after the hospital ships started returning home which gave the lie to what was being officially spouted.

WWII was a different issue as (again) the young men volunteered because we (along with the rest of the world) had just come through a fairly bad depression. In fact the populace were fairly pissed off at the fact that the government couldn't pay people who stayed in one place a dole because there was no work so they had to do a certain distance between picking up payments, yet a couple of years later the same government could blow a million pounds a day on a war. My mother still talks about that with bitterness. Again it was an adventure but not with the same celebrations that had occured in 1914.

Its the middle aged bastards that cause war and the young whose blood is shed. And it has ever been thus.

Yep, Albany is lovely but with a certain tug at the heart as that's where the fleet (Aust and Kiwis) gathered before departing for overseas. That's also where the Dawn Services started as the Fleet sailed on the tide as so was blessed with the usual libations etc.