Anzac Day (25 April) originally focused on sorrow for those who served and died in the First World War, and those who died at Gallipoli. It developed into a day to honour all those who fought in the Australian forces in other wars. All these causes were honourable. They run the risk, however, of turning the day towards honouring the wars and the causes in which people fought, and so of contributing to the glorification of war and of victory in battle. The original focus and the proper emphasis in the Day lies in grief for those who died and suffered in war, and in remembering the sadness of war, symbolised in the playing of the Last Post.
HERE AND NOW
The yearly celebration of Anzac Day is always coloured by its times. Sometimes remembering the sadness of war predominates, and people react against the militarisation of the day and the triumphal retelling of the past wars. At other times the desire to connect with ancestors and relatives who took part in wars can lead to fascination with the people who actually fought in wars and with their experience of it. The War Museum can be a place of emulation rather than of regret.
This year, the sorrow of war has come home to us in the lives of people killed in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza and Sudan and Myanmar, and in those civilians who died in Palestine and those driven from their nations. There is little taste for glorifying war. There is, however, a growing insistence on the importance of increasing military expenditure, on questions of high policy. This focus risks ignoring the costliness of war and the costs to society of preparing for it.
When seen against the events of our times, Anzac Day will call to mind things past, things present and things future.
PAIN, YET COURAGE
We remember and stay with the pain, loss and grief of those who died in war and those who returned from it wounded in body and spirit. We remember, too, the courage and generosity with which so many supported one another. We remember the pain of those who grieved their deaths and those whose lives were changed forever by the demons that beset soldiers on return.
This year the isolation and anxiety which many share as a result of world and local loss will echo some aspects of the experience of soldiers in war. Anzac Day is a time to remember and stay with the pain, loss and grief of those whose relatives have been killed in war, and also the pain of those living in straitened circumstances.
WITH GRATITUDE
As we hold together Anzac Day and the trials of this year, too, we remember and are grateful for the simple, humble and self-sacrificing lives hidden like pearls in the darkness of each event. It is a day, perhaps, to hold in special honour the unprotected nurses, doctors and stretcher bearers who have risked their lives in the face of bullets and disease.
This year the celebration of Anzac Day should also be modest in its rhetoric, forsaking any glorification of the day that would make the acts of generosity and bravery displayed in battle typical of the nation today or of its leaders. It should allow us to grieve the lives lost and forever shadowed in war and give thanks for the more domestic virtues displayed in the aftermath of war that followed it.
The celebration of Anzac Day also looks to the future. If we grieve loss and give thanks for self-sacrifice on Anzac Day, we should also commit ourselves to a future in which we turn from wars, share burdens, give priority to the most disadvantaged, and shape a more just society.