ANZAC Day

What it was or what it has come to mean will
persist to trouble our Nation’s conscience still
but only once a year. We named it ANZAC Day –
in memory of the boys who died at Gallipoli.

Yes, it was someone else’s War, another one
we didn’t ignore or stay away from; one of
too many for sure but the particular one where
we earned our right to claim Nationhood.

Until the landings we stood an ingenuous
bunch of lads, handy in a fight with anyone –
especially amongst our disparate selves,
itching to prove something.

Then we died in droves fighting the Turks. In the
space of a few, barbarous weeks we learned how
to live and die as one – made friends from across
our nation, learned how to stand together.

And when it was done and dusted we withdrew,
beaten out of hand by an incompetent Military
Command (as a few British Officers would truly
know), left our dead to rot where they lay.

Today we remember all our boys, all our brave
young men slaughtered for ideals we didn’t
comprehend, for treaties and compromises
penned in irreplaceably pure colonial blood.

When the last gasp of the old guard gurgles and
dies of old age in its sleep mask, when the last
coffin is interred and the reticence is at rest, it is
then, and only then, we’ll understand its worth.
© 25 April 2007, I.D. Carswell

(ANZAC – Australian and New Zealand Army Corps)