Anzac Day again

We have been watching the Anzac Day march and commemoration on television. Compared with last year when there was no march and no commemoration services, it’s more like ‘normal’. Not in Perth however, where there is a snap lockdown, or on Gallipoli where the dawn service has been cancelled for the second year.

I listened to a fascinating 'Late Night Live' podcast suggesting that anti-war feeling among serving Australian soldiers has always been more extensive than we might think. For example, in World War 1 there were 23,000 Australian courts martial for desertion and going AWOL, surely an astonishing figure.

One of the dissidents was a Broken Hill miner called Ted Ryan who wrote an angry protest letter to Ramsay MacDonald, a prominent anti-war Labour politician. Ted argued that the War could and should have been ended by negotiation years before it actually ended. He also asserted that the Australian press was promoting a false picture of enthusiasm for the war among Australian soldiers. He was court martialled four times, spent time in a British military prison and received a death sentence which was commuted.

‘Lest we forget’ surely has to include Ted Ryan and the soldiers who dissented.