ANZAC

Having a child is one thing that is guaranteed to connect an individualist personality like mine with the rest of society. With parenthood, there is school, and friends, and sports, and parties, and all the other things that come with children, dragging even the most reluctant parents along in order to facilitate their child’s emergence into the wider community. And this week it is ANZAC day, and my son’s school is having a special ceremony, which he begs me to attend. I decide to go and see what it’s all about. Being a fierce pacifist, I respect ANZAC day as a day to think about the senselessness of war and all the needless death and suffering, and how very sad and barbaric it all is. But what does ANZAC day mean to most Australians, and what is being taught to my son about war? I suppose I should find out.
The ceremony is very beautiful. The children read various texts, and I find myself bawling behind my sunglasses at a letter from the Turkish general to the mothers of the Australian soldiers who died at Gallipoli. “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." The whole story of Gallipoli seems especially senseless. I suddenly remember a movie from my childhood, Quincy’s Quest. Quincy is a reject doll on a mission to save the other rejects, and, on his way, he becomes mixed up with the soldier toys, and is commandeered into the war. He is told that the whole point of it is that he fulfil his duty to be “smithereened”.
“We are here because of them”, the guest speaker from the RSL is incanting, while the children place candles for the soldiers of the wars of the past two centuries, including the Vietnam war, and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, beautifully and purely sung by 200 primary-student voices, is my undoing. Yes, how many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.


I decide to really engage with my fellow Australians this ANZAC day, by attending the dawn service. I’ve been to the parade plenty of times, but I want to find out what it is that people get out of bed for -and even travel to Gallipoli for- year after year. So, at 5:00 AM on Sunday morning, My son, his father, and I are climbing the hill to King’s Park. It’s a strange sight- they could bring film-crews here and get great footage for a movie like War of the Worlds, or perhaps a zombie flick. Like refugees, thousands upon thousands of people -grandparents, middle-aged, young adults, and children, bundled up against the cold, are silently marching in the dark, through the bush, climbing the hill toward King’s Park. Nobody speaks. I had expected moving speeches and music to educate me -to spoon-feed me the ANZAC fervour- but there are none. We stand in silence, multitudes of us, much too far away to hear or see the service, for one hour as the sun rises over the city and the river. The view is exquisitely beautiful: the lightening sky holds copper and rose along with the receding violet, silhouetting the Eucalyptus trees in black, while below, the city lights are still twinkling; but the glorious vision is unacknowledged by the crowd. This is so strange. Later today, these reverent mannequins will be back to their laid-back, hedonistic, iconic Aussie personas: watching the ANZAC football match, drinking beer, and roaring in support of their teams. But now, in the eerie stillness, their devotion to ANZAC day astounds me; I have never seen anything like it. What does it mean for all these people- especially the young people, who are, incredibly, sacrificing their long-weekend’s partying to be here? Like the kiss lurking in the corner of her mother’s mouth that Wendy can never get, I am aware of something special that is just beyond my reach. The crowd stands to attention until the bugle call, and then disperses as respectfully and silently as it came. My co-parent notices, with a trace of self-consciousness, that his is the only non-white face at the gathering. “I could never come to this alone,” he whispers. Is that it then? Is the intense, almost religious respect on every face about nationalism? I suppose it is. But even so, there is no reason for this man, who gave up his original country and threw himself into being Australian with a passion, who built up businesses and contributed substantially to Perth’s economy, to feel like an outsider. He whispers, “thank you for taking me here. Today I really feel that I’ve become Australian.” I reply, “And today, I feel more like a stranger in my own country than I ever have.”