On Anzac Day you’ll hear stories of courage and mateship. It’s a way to rationalise war | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on Thu, 25/04/2024 - 1:00am

Our leaders weave grand, often poetic, narratives around death on the battlefield – and then tragically we let it happen again

Commemoration – and what has increasingly become an almost ecclesiastic celebration of Australia’s short martial history – on Anzac Day relies on a bedrock of numbers and dates. Dates on which began the wars that killed Australian men and women – horribly on the battlefield, behind the lines, of wounds and disease or, less visibly, behind closed doors or in lonely continental corners by their own hands.

And then there are the dates on which such wars – entered without heed to the lessons of the previous ones and on the coattails of one of two empires – came to an end.

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