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The ANZAC Legend Essay

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The ANZAC Legend

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACS, and the pride they soon took in that name endures to this day.

The ANZAC legend began with the landing at Gallipoli on April 25 1915, signaling the start of the disastrous Dardanelles campaign on the Turk Peninsula. This campaign saw thousands of ANZAC fatalities before its conclusion in January 1916. Significantly, the ANZAC legend is the result of a devastating loss, rather than a great victory. The soldiers are remembered for maintaining courage and determination under hopeless conditions.

The ANZAC legend owes much to wartime correspondents who used the …show more content…

In wartime propaganda, the ANZAC forces were portrayed as the loyal sons of the British Empire, fighting as much for the 'mother country' as for their own. Beyond the military campaign, the ANZAC soldiers represented the ethos of their rural Australian background. The values of equality, good humor and mateship were transplanted to the situation in Turkey.

It is easy to understand why the ANZAC legend became so popular. The Gallipoli campaign was described as the baptism of the newly federated Australia, and a chance for Australian soldiers to prove themselves to the world. They were not ultimately victorious, but the soldiers came to represent the character traits of the new country: fit and healthy, duty bound and courageous, good humored and egalitarian. The ANZAC image allowed Australians to both demonstrate loyalty to Britain, and claim an identity of their own.

There is much to challenge the factual accuracy of the ANZAC image. The idea that Australians were loyal Britons was questionable even in 1915. At the time, over 80% of Australians were Australian born, not English. Archbishop Mannix expressed the discrepancies in the ANZAC image in a wartime statement that England 'is not my motherland ... indeed it is my stepsister'. Publications in existence from the nineteenth century, such as 'The Bulletin', rejected

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