by Jonathan Carp
http://c4ss.org/content/26612
ANZAC Day
In 1915, my country said, “Son-
“It’s time to stop rambling, there’s work to be done.”
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun.
And they sent me away to the war.
Today is ANZAC Day, the 99th anniversary of the start of the Gallipoli campaign. ANZAC was originally the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, raised to help the British Empire during the Great War. ANZAC Day has become a general day to honor the military and broadly reinforce nationalism and militarism, but like its parallels in other countries, originally it was a popular commemoration of a tragedy.
The tragedy was the death of over 100,000 men on both sides in a particularly futile campaign during the Great War. As conceived by Winston Churchill and others, the invasion of Gallipoli was intended to open another front in the war, take pressure off the Russians and perhaps draw some of the Ottoman Empire’s traditional enemies into the war on the Allied side.
Nothing of the sort happened. Like so many of Churchill’s idiotic and monstrous plans, all the invasion of Gallipoli created was horror. All the hideous ferocity of early 20th century warfare was concentrated on one narrow, rocky peninsula. Heavy artillery and disease ravaged the Allied and Turkish forces, leaving well over a quarter of a million dead and wounded.
Like Veteran’s Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in Canada and the United Kingdom, ANZAC Day began as a solemn occasion dedicated to remembering a great tragedy born of folly, but as elsewhere, the forces of militarism and nationalism continue to try to subvert these occasions into glorifications of the nation and of the military.
And now every April, I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march-
Reliving the dreams of past glory
As a veteran it is tempting to fall into this trap. We long to believe that our suffering was not in vain, that our dead friends did not die senseless deaths. All humans want to rationalize their suffering, and for military veterans our militaristic culture offers a readymade rationalization broadly supported- we fought for freedom, we suffered honorably, we are brave heroes.
The truth, though, is bitter. We were deceived. We fought for the interests of our rulers, and now that we are no longer fighting they have no use for us. We kill ourselves at astronomical rates, we struggle to find work, our families disintegrate. Many of us end up homeless or in prison. And the people we fought, they were never our enemies. They were worse off than we are now, they were invaded and occupied by angry young men from an alien country. And while we came home, they are still there.
I see the old men, all twisted and torn:
The forgotten heroes of a forgotten war.
And the young people ask me, “What are they marching for?”
And I ask myself the same question.
As veterans, we must not be props. We have done more than enough for the ruling class. We do not need to allow them to use our experiences as recruiting tools. We must see clearly and face the reality of what we were, what we did, and how we were treated, even if that means denying ourselves the comforting self-deceptions the warmongers proffer. They won’t give us adequate health care, they won’t give us jobs or places to live, because giving us these things does not serve their purposes the way telling us we are heroes who fought for good does. Every child wants to be a hero. We did. We mustn’t let them use us to fool our sons and daughters the way we were fooled.
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda,
And the old men still answer to call.
But year after year, their numbers get fewer-
Someday no one will march there at all.
When Harry Patch, the last veteran of the trenches of the Western Front, died in 2009, for the first time it occurred to me that one day no one alive would remember the Battle of Haifa Street, or Route Tampa and Route Irish, or any of the other little incidents that made up my war. I felt a strange peace at that thought. One day, all those horrors would pass out of living memory. As veterans, we can play a key role in ensuring that no fresh horrors replace them.
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As someone who believes that the futile first world war resulted in the death of the old ‘Liberal Europe’ (as well as of large numbers of soldiers) this song shows that the damage it did went far deeper. The Dardanelles campaign was not one of Churchill’s prouder moments by a long way.
BTW, June Tabor sings an excellent version of “The band played Waltzing Matilda” on an album from some considerable time ago, of which I can’t at the minute remember the name.
Whoever “Jonathan Carp” is (and if he really is a veteran my thanks for his service) he is not telling the truth about Winston Churchill.
The idea was not “monstrous” or “idiotic” – it was a sensible idea destroyed by terrible generals.
To take Constantinople (and thus knock the Ottomans out of the war and link up with Russia) one needed to be able to get there – and to get there the Royal Navy insisted that a small area of land be taken.
This could have done – but the generals sent to do it were not up to the job (and Winston Churchill was NOT one of those generals).
To give just one example, General Stopford landed at Suvla Bay with twenty two (22) thousand soldiers – he faced only one thousand, five hundred Turks under a German officer (Major Willmar).
There were no great prepared defences, so 22 thousand men faced less than 2 thousand men.
Any competent commander could have won – but Stopford was not such a man. He did not even go ashore the first day (he stayed aboard ship nursing his old bad leg)
Hammersley and Sitwell (the commanders who actually did go ashore) were utterly useless – seeming unaware that their role was to take the hills before the Turks could rush in reinforcements.
Faced with commanders like this no plan (thought up Winston Churchill or anyone else) could succeed.
And please remember what was at stake…..
Had Turkey been knocked out of the war in 1915 and Western forces linked up with the Russians it would have been over for Germany.
There would have been no Somme of 1916. no Passchendaele in 1917 – no Russian Revolution (no more than a hundred and fifty million people murdered by the followers of “Social Justice” in Russia and China and so on).
And a CRUSHED Germany (not a Germany that was defeated by left basically intact by the worn out Allies in 1918) would not have had the size to produce a threating Hitler regime.
It would have been as if the Empress Elizabeth had lived just a few months longer in the 18th century – and removed the menace of Prussia (the “army that became a state”) and its ruler Frederick “the Great” from history.
Such things as a independent Bavaria could have been restored.
The Dardanelles campaign was a brilliant idea, f***ed about with for so long by London bureaucrats that by the time it got under way the Turks knew exactly what to expect.
It wasn’t Churchill’s fault that it was a balls-up. Nor was it his fault that the navy (and France) only contributed half a dozen old antiquated battleships that could neither fight nor run away quickly enough and of which three got sunk in short order.
If we’d gone in earlier and more silently with better naval support and fewer soldiers, without pissing about too long and creating all that telegraph traffic that gave the thing away, we’d have cleared the buggers and Turkey would have been out of the war before you could say “Constantinople”. There’d have been no German-built (Skoda probably actually) artillery in the Narrows. The Sultan was even packing his bags in February.
If I felt more irate than I do now, I’d say that the cockup of a good idea was deliberately manufactured to get rid of Churchill and Fisher, who annoyed and irritated the other politicos.
We could have got Sumbarines through to the Bosphorus in January. These should have been immediately followed less than a day later by a reasonable Naval task force with plenty of Marines. Even the old slow asthmatic battleships would have done well in that.
As for the First World War being “futile”. There are two errors to be avoided.
The first error is to assume that bad Generalship is inevitable – that clowns like Stopford had to be in charge. One should also mention General Haig and such horror shows as the second day of the Battle of Loos where Haig LIED to gain control of two reserve divisions – and then sent ten thousand men into an attack that had no hope of success what-so-ever, Haig was not an infantry commander, he had no idea (none) of how infantry should fight. His conception of straight lines of men advancing at walking pace (without even skirmishers) perhaps owned more to 17th century pike block tactics than anything suitable for the situation of the Western Front.
A blackboard soldier (in fact he had spent most of his army life as a cavalry inspector – going about criticising other people, not leading charges himself) – with little personal experience of hand to hand combat.
But it is simply is not true that such commanders were inevitable.
There were competent British Generals in the First World War (Plumer and Allenby to name two).
Also (as this is ANZAC day) think what someone like General Monash could have done at Sulva Bay – 22 thousand men facing less than 2 thousand (with no great prepared defences).
The other error is the idea that the war could have been honourably (or sensibly) avoided.
Contrary to the false view of history that Sean Gabb pushes the British Conservatives were actually more in favour of war in 1914 than the Liberals were – and rightly so.
Imperial Germany could not be allowed to control the coast of northern Europe – no (sane) British government could have tolerated this (it has rightly been against the policy of British and English governments for many centuries than no one power may be allowed to control the whole coast facing this island).
Germany had repeatedly turned down offers of friendship from Britain – it was not just the Keiser being at least half mad, it was the intellectual and political elite of Imperial Germany in general who were in favour of unlimited conquest and unlimited power – for what they were like see the comments of Ludwig Von Mises (who knew many of these people – and the intellectual atmosphere they worked in).
As for what treatment British people could expect from Imperial Germany (had Germany not been opposed in 1914 – and allowed to control the full resources of Europe and deploy them against this island) that can be seen from the treatment of the people of Belgium.
Widespread murders of civilians (as a deliberate ACT OF POLICY), looting, and the use of the population as slaves.
That is the treatment the British population would have received had the “futile” First World War not be fought.
The National Socialist movement did not come from nowhere it had roots deep in German intellectual, cultural and political life.
When (for example) the President of France in 1914 – after the unjust German invasion (the German Declaration of War in 1914 was a TISSUE OF LIES – even claiming France was bombing German cities) said that France would not only stand for itself – but would stand for the “universal principles of reason and justice” he was faced by a German academic (and political – the two were closer in Germany than in any other country) elite that did not even believe there were “universal principles of reason and justice”.
German “historicism” (the “Socialists of the Chair” as Ludwig Von Mises called them) denied the very existence of “universal principles of reason and justice” – and this was long before the Nazis.
But then Dr Sean Gabb also opposes Winston Churchill’s resistance to the Germans in the SECOND World War.
As far as I can make out Dr Gabb (like Pat Buchanan in the United States) supports handing Europe to the Nazis on a plate in 1939.
David Davis – quite so.
Very good.
I have done a search of “Jonathan Carp” s – one I have found may be this gentleman.
Former Iraq War veteran.
Sadly this “Jonathan Carp” (if they are the same person) also believes there is something called “state capitalism” and (like Rousseau), believes that private employment is somehow wrong, and also believes that people (“workers” ) did not have to work hard in the American Founding era (actually farm work and so was back breaking), till the rise of evil “capitalism”.
Sounds like another Oliver Stone – also a war veteran.
In theory there may be a difference between Red Flag Marxists and Black Flag Anarchists – in practice there is no difference. They cooperate together in the same organisations (everything from the “Occupy” movement to the Chicago Teachers Union) both are enemies of large scale private property in the means of production, distribution and exchange.
Whether it is “anarchists” (who renamed the state “the people”) sending letter bombs to blow people’s faces off after the First World War, or Marxists with their “Critical Theory” in the universities, in practice (if not in theory) the Black Flag people and the Red Flag people are on the same side.
And libertarians are on the other side.