War! (Huh!) What is it good for?

Absolutely nuthin'
War! (Huh!) what is it good for?
Absolutely nuthin' - say it again y'all

Which is a pretty stupid way to start an ANZAC Day post, but I figured 'Lest We Forget' would have been booked out. I don't know why Gallipoli assumed such significance in the national psyche, nor do I really understand why most nations identify themselves to some extent to particular military campaigns; the US national anthem is about the defiance of Fort McHenry after eighteen hours of shelling from the poms in 1814 (And a very stirring poem it is, too. I wonder how many Sepps could recite the final three stanzas from memory?). If you think Roseanne Barr didn't do credit to the anthem, then go here. Wear earplugs. The original title of La Marseillaise is Marching Song of the Rhine Army and comes from revolutionary days. The poms still invoke the spirit of the blitz. The Germans have been quiet on the subject in recent years.
Apart from Texans and the Alamo, Aussies and Merino molesters are the only people I can think of who identify so strongly with a defeat. It isn't like we were short of victories to crow over - Beersheba, for instance. I guess it's because Gallipoli was our first major engagement; the Boer war was a relatively small scale affair for a purely financial cause. I don't see how Gallipoli marks a coming of age for the nation, either. To my mind that didn't come until Curtin cut the apron strings. I find it difficult to understand why people think that sacrificing a generation of young men to a foreign cause is a sign of maturity.
It does illustrate a point, though. Australian people and Australian governments of both parties have always been willing to involve themselves in the problems of others, our shamefully late entry in East Timor notwithstanding. Sometimes, as in the Great War, we've involved ourselves to our own detriment for little or no potential benefit to ourselves - we were still paying the poms back on the loans we took out to save their arses well into the thirties.
There is one other thing that I take from the Gallipoli story and also from the story of other campaigns; every person involved was just an ordinary person and almost all of them acquitted themselves well, which gives me hope that if I am ever in a desperate situation then I too would acquit myself well.

I will leave you with a 1934 quote from Kemal Ataturk*, a Divisional Commander at Gallipoli and whose name literally means 'father of the Turks':

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying
in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no
difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway 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.

*Incidentally, Ataturk was also a member of the CUP, or Young Turks, which is the group which carried out the Armenian Genocide. This is the progenitor of Hitler's 'Final Solution'. Indeed, when questioned on the wisdom of the Final Solution and whether the public would stand for it, Hitler is said to have asked "Who remembers the Armenians?"

The Armenian genocide is commemorated on April 24.

Added bit: It took me so long to write this that I forgot the most important thing. To all those who have served and all those who are still serving; Thank you.