Brash disrespects Anzac

[Motu]

Brash is a Dork,I hate the man,he has nothing constructive to say,pull this govenment down to gain power - that's his job I suppose,but he needs to stand by what government is in power on ANZAC Day.

Getting rid of the Armed Forces is probably a smart idea in this day of the sue your arse off you did me wrong fucker mentality.The Goverment puts it's Armed Forces in harms way as a part of daily life...shit,what if the guys held them accountable for loss of enjoyment of life,injury...death - oh fuck,let's get rid of them!

[Oscar]

Brash is a Dork,I hate the man,he has nothing constructive to say,pull this govenment down to gain power - that's his job I suppose,but he needs to stand by what government is in power on ANZAC Day.

Getting rid of the Armed Forces is probably a smart idea in this day of the sue your arse off you did me wrong fucker mentality.The Goverment puts it's Armed Forces in harms way as a part of daily life...shit,what if the guys held them accountable for loss of enjoyment of life,injury...death - oh fuck,let's get rid of them!

On the 10th Sept. 2001, if you'd have asked me if we needed an Air Force with strike capability, I'd have said "no".

[James Deuce]

Couldn't make it to Dawn Parade....milking moo's....but spent many hours watching History channel on Sky re WW1 and ANZACs ....Almost had me in tears...sat there with son watching thinking poor bastards...all because of stupid politicians....Made me smile tho when they said that a Pommie commander...Hamilton I think...said, "The maori's are making a charge up the hill, not sure if we will tell them from the Turks"...idiot!

Certainly made me proud to be a Kiwi..We think we are real men these days but we have no idea ..Good on ya Diggers...

Ian Hamilton was no idiot. If he had any fault, it was that he was far too polite. He requested all the resources he required but was given a fraction of what he needed. He knew it too. He blamed himself 'til his dying day for the failure at Gallipolli, when he was as much a "victim" as any ANZAC commander of political decisions made 2000 miles from the scene of the action.

Churchill and the RN are almost solely to blame for not pushing advantages at sea, and for underestimating Turkish capability and ingenuity.

We also criticise military commanders with both 20/20 hindsight and a social paradigm that was completely foreign to the social structure of our time. It was only the second major Industrialised war fought to that time, and used principles of warfare little different from the Crimea, and the Napoleonic wars. The American Civil War taught lessons that were ignored by the European powers and ultimately by the US herself in WWI. It was a tragedy at the time, and a truly horrible one from our perspective. But it was a tragedy of its time, not ours, and we will always struggle to understand the international environment of the time, the international culture that powered the war machine, and the personal drivers that made men sign up despite the horrors of WWI.

[Oscar]

Ian Hamilton was no idiot. If he had any fault, it was that he was far too polite. He requested all the resources he required but was given a fraction of what he needed. He knew it too. He blamed himself 'til his dying day for the failure at Gallipolli, when he was as much a "victim" as any ANZAC commander of political decisions made 2000 miles from the scene of the action.

Churchill and the RN are almost solely to blame for not pushing advantages at sea, and for underestimating Turkish capability and ingenuity.

We also criticise military commanders with both 20/20 hindsight and a social paradigm that was completely foreign to the social structure of our time. It was only the second major Industrialised war fought to that time, and used principles of warfare little different from the Crimea, and the Napoleonic wars. The American Civil War taught lessons that were ignored by the European powers and ultimately by the US herself in WWI. It was a tragedy at the time, and a truly horrible one from our perspective. But it was a tragedy of its time, not ours, and we will always struggle to understand the international environment of the time, the international culture that powered the war machine, and the personal drivers that made men sign up despite the horrors of WWI.

It's interesting to see how the Australians are revising the history to suite their (Republican) agenda:

from: Gallipoli - the facts behind the Myths

Distorted propaganda is usually at its height during wars but corrected in later years. In the case of Gallipoli the opposite occurred. The official Australian war historian, Charles Bean, was reluctant to hint that Australians were ever less than heroic, and in the interests of maintaining good relationships with Australia, Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, the official British war historian, toned down even implied criticisms of any Australian action. As Rhodes James observed, the result of massaging the truth was an 'Australian mythology that Gallipoli was an Australian triumph thrown away by incompetent British commanders'. Far worse distortions disfigure the Peter Weir film Gallipoli, which seeks to contrast cowardly and idle British troops with ANZAC heroes. Some British troops did bathe and drink tea at Suvla Bay whilst horrific fighting was taking place a few miles to the south, but others were as fully engaged in that conflict as New Zealanders and Australians. Rhodes James noted that the 'suicidal assault' of the Australian Light Horse at The Nek on 7 August 1915 'had nothing to do with the British landing at Suvla, but was intended to help the New Zealanders, as the film's military advisers knew'. However, 'the principal Australian sponsor of the film wanted an anti-British ending, and got it', with 'the deliberately inaccurate final scenes' of the film, a potent source of Australian republican sentiments. Few Australians realise that 'the British, French and Indian causalities were far greater than those of the Anzacs, and that the British bore the brunt of the fighting - and the losses.'

[James Deuce]

Mustapha Kemal regarded the biggest mistake of the whole campaign as the failure of Australian troops to occupy Krithea when they had the opportunity early on in the campaign. This would have allowed the British to occupy the southern half of the peninsula, and provide a defensible logistics base for getting to the forts.

[mikey]

i went ot one down petone at mem gardens, no brash there, if he did turn up an wank on i would of smacked the cunt one. reckon u should of timber.

[Oscar]

Mustapha Kemal regarded the biggest mistake of the whole campaign as the failure of Australian troops to occupy Krithea when they had the opportunity early on in the campaign. This would have allowed the British to occupy the southern half of the peninsula, and provide a defensible logistics base for getting to the forts.

As far as I can see, the whole campaign was built on a faulty premise.
Even if the invaders had of gained the high ground, they were still in range of Turkish guns.

[Ixion]

As far as I can see, the whole campaign was built on a faulty premise.
Even if the invaders had of gained the high ground, they were still in range of Turkish guns.

The wheels fell off when teh Navy failed to carry the Straits. An invasion across land was never going to fly , but London couldn't admit to failure and go home.

[Indiana_Jones]

Millions have died, but the troops have advanced no further than an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping.



"Clearly, Field Marshal Haig is about to make yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin."



-Indy

[Big Dave]

It's interesting to see how the Australians are revising the history to suite their (Republican) agenda:
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Bull.
One film maker is not 'the Australians'. Nobody believed that romanticised twaddle - we were taught at school of the real horrors just like you blokes.
It was as realistic as a John Wayne movie.

The real story has not changed in the almost 40 years I have been listening to it, nor has the criticism of English been exagerated for republican gain - it has always been very harsh.

[Oscar]

Bull.
One film maker is not 'the Australians'. Nobody believed that romanticised twaddle - we were taught at school of the real horrors just like you blokes.

And the story has not changed in the almost 40 years I have been listening to it, nor has the criticism of English been exagerated for republican gain - it has always been very harsh.

Read the article, he makes some good points. Why would the original ANZAC's blame the British? They considered themselves to be British. When all is said and done, all the ANZAC's were volunteers, and they volunteered despite what was going on in Western Europe at the time and with the blessing of their respective Governments. If those guys hadn't gone to Turkey it would have been the Western Front where things would have been much the same. This was the nature of war at the time. Why don't the Germans or the Austrians get the blame? They started it.

The anti-English sentiment belies the fact that twice as many British were killed at Gallopli than ANZACs. Sure blame the Generals and the Politicians, but not the soliders.

Slightly different rant - Our Chief of Defence Staff, what a dork:

"..Air Marshal Ferguson described the Gallipoli campaign as the high-water
mark of subservience to Britain and the military strategy as "joint
leadership at its worst". He said this had forced Australia and New
Zealand to shake off their colonial shackles and become more assertive.
British incompetence had robbed them of their "youth and destroyed our
innocence".

This is complete revisionist crap.

[Big Dave]

Read the article, he makes some good points. Why would the original ANZAC's blame the British? They considered themselves to be British.

Never! not since the term 'POHM' was first coined around the time of the second fleet.
Sure 'Queen and country' and 'Empire' and all that, but I believe they went to war seeing an opportunity to make a name for themselves as Australians. Exactly the same drive that spurs our current day quest for ever more sporting success - national identity and pride and to prove they could rise above the convict heritage.

I will read the article later. chairs.

[Oscar]

. Exactly the same drive that spurs our current day quest for ever more sporting success - national identity and pride and to prove they could rise above the convict heritage.

So true.
It's the lack of that drive that has been lacking in this Country until recently. The Anglo-Scots settlers in this country were far too comfortable, too quickly...

[TwoSeven]

I would agree with the aussies changing history. I was watching some idiot on tv this afternoon. He was trying to claim that the british generals were using aussies to do the dangerous jobs and they suffered 77% casualties while the brits only suffered 55%.

What he failed to realise is that the aussies commanded their own forces (they were federated before the war) - so they took hits because they had inexperienced commanders. Only the senior command were british and they didnt take part in the actual execution of orders, that was left to local commanders.

Second of all lots of lessons were learned from that battle - remember it was one of the first major conflicts of the war. They learned about mobility, artil support, communications, beach landings (later improved for wwii). Also, dont forget that it destroyed so much of the turkish forces that they later lost the desert wars.

Finally, remember that all of the troops involved on all sides were not compat trained. Galipoli was everyones first go. Even the local section leaders didnt know how to scout the enemy and size objectives, or re-interpret orders as they did later. There was a classic move where one (kiwi) commander ordered frontal assults on a machine gun position, simply because thats how he interpreted the order (which said take the hill, but didnt say how). Anyone else would have called in artil. which was a technique often used by the british during the same battle.

I suspect that it is remembered by Aus and NZ because its the first major defeat their troops suffered during the war. Just about every country remembers one of their defeats - the poms have dunkirk from WWII.

[James Deuce]

Oscar and Ixion - that is the point I'm making - One of the reasons the British forces were defeated was that their defensive position, almost from day one, allowed for their defeat in detail. If they had made level ground and established a defensible infrastructure, they RN may well have been able to regroup and carry out their mission, allowing the scope for the ground forces to achieve their objectives. We'll never know though.

I have a unique view of this fight as my Great Grandfather (Paternal Grandmother's Father) deserted from HMS Lion in 1912 whilst it visited NZ. He was a boy sailor, aged 14. When war broke out he signed up with the NZ Expeditionary force, and landed at Z beach with the ANZACs. My Paternal Grandmother divorced and remarried in 1973, and her new husband's father served with the Plymouth Royal Marines. I believe they were slaughtered on Y beach. He survived and de-mobbed in the '20s. The multi-lateral aspects of this battle are often overlooked in our trans-Tasman zealotry to assign the battle "nation-building" status. Personally I would rather ANZAC day reminded us how NOT to run military operation, and how the single most important thing in anything is cross-discipline inter-communication.

We should also reflect how the "independent spirit" of ANZAC troops throughout WWI went some way toward inspiring concepts of personal freedom and individual rights. Those ideas were foreign to European cultures, apart from a number of philosophers ahead of their times. We take them for granted now, but it wasn't until the League of Nations formed in the '20s that the idea was raised, and then later formalised by the UN Charter of Human Rights. The 90th anniversary has been a bit blighted by focussing on negative aspects of the military campaign, by politicians maing a political point, and by the misunderstanding that we can apply our values to the attitudes of men who fought in the Gallipolli campaign, and are now all dead. The Turks forgave us at the time. Surely we can forgive ourselves?