Anzac Day should be quarantined from politicians – a solemn moment to reflect on the agony of war | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on Thu, 23/04/2015 - 11:41am

Politicians use the Gallipoli landings to justify wars, past and present. They also use them to conveniently define our national history. But this isn’t what the centenary should be about

Time eventually heals old battlefields. A gentle, grassy furrow might indicate where men once hacked a trench and the verdant expanse beyond where they eviscerated each other with bayonets.

But what happened a long time ago is rarely evident on the surface of old war grounds.

It is certainly not correct to say that Australia was born at Gallipoli

For those of us spared the terrors of war, to be worthy of our dead, is to remember them

For those of us spared the terrors of war, to be worthy of our dead, is to remember them. It is to remember that they died, the men and women of this community, in their thousands, in faraway lands, interred in the ground upon which they perished.

It is to remember those who loved them; their fathers and mothers, wives, children and friends. It is to remember that the pain in the hearts of those who loved them, who lived after them, never healed; the promise of their lives together, unfulfilled.