Anzac's Long Shadow

Author: James Brown
Publisher: Black Inc.
ISBN: 1922231355
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
‘A century ago we got it wrong. We sent thousands of young Australians on a military operation that was barely more than a disaster. It’s right that a hundred years later we should feel strongly about that. But have we got our remembrance right? What lessons haven’t we learned about war, and what might be the cost of our Anzac obsession?’ Defence analyst and former army officer James Brown believes that Australia is expending too much time, money and emotion on the Anzac legend, and that today’s soldiers are suffering for it. Vividly evoking the war in Afghanistan, Brown reveals the experience of the modern soldier. He looks closely at the companies and clubs that trade on the Anzac story. He shows that Australians spend a lot more time looking after dead warriors than those who are alive. We focus on a cult of remembrance, instead of understanding a new world of soldiering and strategy. And we make it impossible to criticise the Australian Defence Force, even when it makes the same mistakes over and over. None of this is good for our soldiers or our ability to deal with a changing world. With respect and passion, Brown shines a new light on Anzac’s long shadow and calls for change. "Bold, original, challenging - James Brown tackles the burgenoning Anzac industry and asks Australians to re-examine how we think about the military and modern-day service." - Leigh Sales "The best book yet written, not just on Australia's Afghan war, but on war itself and the creator/destroyer myth of Anzac." - John Birmingham James Brown is a former Australian Army officer, who commanded a cavalry troop in Southern Iraq, served on the Australian taskforce headquarters in Baghdad, and was attached to Special Forces in Afghanistan. Today he is the Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy where he works on strategic military issues and defence policy. He also chairs the NSW Government’s Contemporary Veterans Forum. He lives in Sydney.

Our Corner of the Somme

Author: Romain Fathi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108650597
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
By the time of the Armistice, Villers-Bretonneux - once a lively and flourishing French town - had been largely destroyed, and half its population had fled or died. From March to August 1918, Villers-Bretonneux formed part of an active front line, at which Australian troops were heavily involved. As a result, it holds a significant place in Australian history. Villers-Bretonneux has since become an open-air memorial to Australia's participation in the First World War. Successive Australian governments have valourised the Australian engagement, contributing to an evolving Anzac narrative that has become entrenched in Australia's national identity. Our Corner of the Somme provides an eye-opening analysis of the memorialisation of Australia's role on the Western Front and the Anzac mythology that so heavily contributes to Australians' understanding of themselves. In this rigorous and richly detailed study, Romain Fathi challenges accepted historiography by examining the assembly, projection and performance of Australia's national identity in northern France.

The New Australian Military Sociology

Author: Brad West
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1805396315
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Book Description
Civil-military relations have changed over time with respect to changing demographics, new domestic and international responsibilities, Industry-Defence cooperation, women in the armed forces and contemporary veteran wellbeing.The New Australian Military Sociology aims to provide an antipodean view to theorising civil-military entanglements and uses Australia’s unique geographic, political and cultural context to serve as a case study for other countries.

T. E. Ruth (1875–1956)

Author: Ken R. Manley
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725299623
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
T. E. Ruth (1875-1956) was one of the most controversial Baptist ministers ever to serve in Australia. After a successful career in England as preacher, pastor, and writer, Ruth came to the significant Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne in 1914. During the tumultuous years of the World War, Ruth cared for the bereaved and bewildered people in his congregation and in the city. He also led public debates about conscription, engaging in intense platform clashes with his Catholic opponent, Archbishop Daniel Mannix. He later moved to the Pitt Street Congregational Church in Sydney where he was soon involved in public opposition to the Labor premier J. T. Lang as well as becoming a popular columnist in the secular press. To his critics he was a "sectarian bigot" and was mocked as "Ruthless Ruth"; to others, he was an ardent Empire loyalist, an admired and successful Protestant defender. Some critics accused him of being a Christian spiritualist and others have suggested that he formulated a theology for fascism. Ruth denounced millennial Adventism and hellfire eschatology as he affirmed universalism and a continuing spiritual development after death. This fascinating study of a progressive thinker, public theologian, and controversialist illuminates one of the more divisive and formative periods in Australian religious and political life.

Lest

Author: Mark Dapin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1761108077
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
From Simpson’s donkey and the Emu War to Vietnam and Ben Roberts-Smith, Australian military history is full of events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did. In his inimitable style, award-winning author Mark Dapin sets the record straight. Australia has many stories and statues ‘lest we forget’ our military past. But from Simpson’s donkey to Ben Roberts-Smith, our history is full of events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did. The first Anzac Day, for example, was far from being a solemn march – it was a celebration where people dressed as cavemen and dinosaurs, among other things. And is it true that British officers callously dispatched Australian soldiers to their deaths in the Dardanelles, as we’ve been told? Did we really hate the soldiers returning from Vietnam? Were the white-feather women of the First World War fact or fiction? In his inimitable style, award-winning author and historian Mark Dapin sets the record straight, showing that the reality was often completely different from the myth – and that in celebrating the wrong people we often overlook the real heroes. ‘With Lest, Mark Dapin transforms his trademark humour into serious history … It forces us to look again at stories we think we all know – or should know – and reframe them with intellectual rectitude and rigour … Lest offers new perspectives on the past from one of Australia’s most interesting and provocative thinkers.’ Clare Wright

Expressions of War in Australia and the Pacific

Author: Amanda Laugesen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030238903
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
This edited book includes chapters that explore the impact of war and its aftermath in language and official discourse. It covers a broad chronological range from the First World War to very recent experiences of war, with a focus on Australia and the Pacific region. It examines three main themes in relation to language: the impact of war and trauma on language, the language of war remembrance, and the language of official communications of war and the military. An innovative work that takes an interdisciplinary approach to the themes of war and language, the collection will be of interest to students and scholars across linguistics, literary studies, history and conflict studies.

Finding Gallipoli

Author: Brad West
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030988791
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
This book is about how Australian and Turkish historical understanding of the First World War Gallipoli Campaign has been shaped by travel to the battlefield for the purposes of commemoration. Utilizing a cultural historical method, the study begins with examining how cultural conceptions of travel influenced the experience of those fighting in the 1915 Battle, and ends with the way that new global insecurities and the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan in 2021 is reflecting and influencing Australia and Turkey’s social memory of their military past. This wide historical lens and the author’s original fieldwork and analysis of documents allows for an in-depth exploration of the ways in which cultural patterns of social memory develop over time and mapping of how specific cultural representations in the past are reclaimed. The book argues that travel is a key factor influencing social change by providing distinctive ritual experiences that afford unique, discursive opportunities and empowering particular carriers and custodians of social memory.

Reflections on the Commemoration of the First World War

Author: David Monger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100028140X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Book Description
The First World War’s centenary generated a mass of commemorative activity worldwide. Officially and unofficially; individually, collectively and commercially; locally, nationally and internationally, efforts were made to respond to the legacies of this vast conflict. This book explores some of these responses from areas previously tied to the British Empire, including Australia, Britain, Canada, India and New Zealand. Showcasing insights from historians of commemoration and heritage professionals it provides revealing insider and outsider perspectives of the centenary. How far did commemoration become celebration, and how merited were such responses? To what extent did the centenary serve wider social and political functions? Was it a time for new knowledge and understanding of the events of a century ago, for recovery of lost or marginalised voices, or for confirming existing clichés? And what can be learned from the experience of this centenary that might inform the approach to future commemorative activities? The contributors to this book grapple with these questions, coming to different answers and demonstrating the connections and disconnections between those involved in building public knowledge of the ‘war to end all wars’.

Gallipoli

Author: Jenny Macleod
Publisher: Great Battles
ISBN: 019964487X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
The British-led Mediterranean Expeditionary Force that attacked the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli in 1915 was a multi-national affair, including Australian, New Zealand, Irish, French, and Indian soldiers. Ultimately a failure, the campaign ended with the withdrawal of the Allied forces after less than nine months and the unexpected victory of the Ottoman armies and their German allies. In Britain, the campaign led to the removal of Churchill from his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and the abandonment of the plan to attack Germany via its 'soft underbelly' in the East. Thereafter, it was largely forgotten on a national level, commemorated only in specific localities linked to the campaign. In post-war Turkey, by contrast, the memory of Gallipoli played an important role in the formation of a Turkish national identity, celebrating both the ordinary soldier and the genius of the republic's first president, Mustafa Kemal. The campaign served a similarly important formative role in both Australia and New Zealand, where it is commemorated annually on Anzac Day. For the southern Irish, meanwhile, the bitter memory of service for the King in a botched campaign was forgotten for decades. Shaped initially by the imperatives of war-time, and the needs of the grief-stricken and the bereft, the memory of Gallipoli has been re-made time and again over the last century. For the Turks an inspirational victory, for many on the Allied side a glorious and romantic defeat, for others still an episode best forgotten, 'Gallipoli' has meant different things to different people, serving by turns as an occasion of sincere and heartfelt sorrow, an opportunity for separatist and feminist protest, and a formative influence in the forging of national identities.

The Home Front

Author: Patrick Lindsay
Publisher: Affirm Press
ISBN: 1922930660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Book Description
Forty-one Australian soldiers died in action over 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan; in that time more than 1400 veterans have taken their own lives. Veterans today are chronically over-represented when it comes to PTSD, depression, homelessness and suicide. Australians rightfully pause on Anzac Day each year to solemnly remember fallen soldiers, but are we forgetting our returned veterans whose personal battles continue every single day, and how did we get to this point? In this authoritative, compelling and urgent book, bestselling author Patrick Lindsay (The Spirit of the Digger and Fromelles among many) looks at the wide-ranging damage caused by training Australians to be fighting machines and then inadequately supporting them as they re-enter their communities. Featuring moving interviews with veterans and their families as well as a broader analysis of Australian military culture and government responses, Lindsay illustrates both the personal and societal costs of this dereliction of duty. The Home Front is a fascinating and rousing indictment of the culture of war, the thinking of those who wage it, and the cost to those who experience it.