Lest we forget the horror and stupidity of war

April 24, 2006

My grandfather, Charles Williams, served at Gallipoli, and later at the Western Front in France. He first met my grandmother after returning home, while fulfilling a personal pledge to find her family and tell of how her brother, a front-line mate, had died. They were married a year later.

A victim of mustard gas, he lived and worked the rest of his life with only one serviceable lung, a condition that, mysteriously, did not prevent him from serving in New Guinea during World War II. He died 60 years after his experience at Gallipoli, in 1975. Only in his final days, drugged with painkillers during the palliative stage of his hospitalisation, did he vividly recount the awfulness of his wartime years with family members, his rambling mind helplessly returning to the nightmarish horrors of his youth. Prior to this period, my grandfather was extremely reticent on the subject of wartime experiences, in spite of the irrepressible curiosity of his grandson. I learned, over time, that it was a subject he did not wish to speak of.

It is with him in mind that I appreciate, and fully endorse, the views of Alan Attwood (Opinion, 22/4) regarding the proper respect for Anzac Day services. Few of us now living, if any, can truly understand what it must have been like for those Australians who landed at Gallipoli in April 1915, or comprehend how sad and painful were the reminiscences of those who survived the senseless chaos of the long months that followed. Few of the multitude of flag-draped "mates" who annually descend upon Gallipoli, realistically, would understand the depth of fellowship engendered between young men constantly living with the threat of imminent death from shellfire or disease.

Attwood reminds us all that the original purpose of Anzac Day services was to set aside a time for veterans to gather and reflect upon their shared experiences, in sombre remembrance of their fallen comrades - not a recurring opportunity for "major event" organisers to entertain and awe members of the general public, or to perpetuate some jingoistic celebration of martial glory and national identity by mythologising a military campaign that was, in actuality, an unmitigated disaster for the invading forces, where more died from dysentery than battle wounds.

Many veterans, my grandfather included, did not appreciate the gradual process through which, over time, their fundamentally private stories were co-opted in the service of a blustering, bellicose patriotism, and, most of all, desired future generations to acknowledge the horror and essential stupidity of war. The great sacrifices their generation made would be wasted if current and future Australians do not share an abhorrence of war, and forever work more towards its reasonable avoidance rather than its glorification. They would want us to reflect upon the human tragedy that World War I was not, as hoped for at the time, the "war to end all wars" - that young people are still called up as cannon fodder whenever politicians tire of resolving differences through diplomacy or have grandiose visions of national destiny.

Lest we forget.
Peter Kartsounis, Footscray

I think we already have.