Caelli Greenbank's 2008 ANZAC Day Speech
There is a painting that hangs in the Gallipoli gallery at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Its name is ANZAC, The Landing, and it was painted by George Lambert in March of 1919. I’ve had a poster of it hanging on my bedroom wall for the past two years. It shows ANZACs scrambling up the hills above ANZAC Cove in the dim light of April 25th, while Turkish soldiers fill the background.
I stood on that hill, 92 years on, and I don’t envy those ANZACs one bit. Gallipoli was a total disaster for us – after 9 months we pulled out, having gained no ground, no strategic advantage, and having lost nearly 11, 500 men – and for any of them to still be alive was a miracle; or maybe a testament to the hardiness of the Australian and New Zealand characters. If you stand at the top of any one of the hills at Gallipoli, you can see right to the next hill, and everything in between. The snipers just had to pull the trigger. And then when you stop and think; you remember who was here before you, and it’s almost too much. My great-great-uncle, James Nowlan, fought at Gallipoli. Now I’m following in his footsteps.
He wrote of ANZAC Cove in his diary just a few months before he died, aged only 18. Now I’ve been there as well. It is more humbling than any cathedral, more peaceful than any shrine, and more beautiful than any place in the world. Or maybe I just scored a lucky day. On the day that I went to ANZAC Cove, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the grass was green, the poppies were blood-red, and the water was lapping softly at the edge of the sand. Standing there, in the bright sunlight, so far removed in time from all that happened, I can’t even imagine this peaceful, beautiful place being the centre of a war; I can’t imagine that ‘the water ran red with blood’ as the soldiers ran for cover from the fire of the Turks. The place that was once the centre of a brutal war is now a living reminder of international peace and friendship.
If you’ve ever actually looked closely at the cenotaph behind me, you’ll notice there’s a handful of names of Creswick boys who left for the First World War and never came home. The graves and memorials of seven of them were scattered along my path through Europe, so I stopped for a moment at each one and left a poppy at each name. At Lone Pine Cemetery, Turkey, listed on the memorial: Robert Anderson, Francis Arnold Canning, Frederick Charles Clifton, William Knight Dean, William Joseph Lambert; in Lijssenthoek Cemetery, Belgium: John Constantine Caddy; and on the Menin Gate, Belgium: Absalom Peters. There are around 20 other Creswick diggers from World War One buried or memorialised overseas, scattered from Egypt right across Europe into England, and if you imagine every town the size of ours across Australia losing 25 young men, then you have some idea of the effect of the war.
I was in France as well, on April 21st; the day the French remember what happened. My nine friends and I spent the day attending ANZAC services across the Somme valley with our tour party. But often it’s not the official ceremonies, beautiful though they are, that show you what it means to be an ANZAC, and what it means to be Australian. Often it’s the little things that happen in the forgotten places, things that only last a few seconds but leave a lasting impression on you.
There’s a place near the border of Belgium and France called Hill 62. It was busy during the war, and they’ve preserved all the trenches, so it’s absolutely wonderful if you enjoy ducking through pitch black, muddy tunnels only a metre high. But the place has atmosphere – it reminds you that it saw blood and guts all those years ago; it reminds you that’s it a memorial, of sorts, to those who fought there; it reminds you, in short, that we mustn’t let it happen again. It’s one of those places that you occasionally find that talks to you, and you kind of have to go there and listen for yourself. The places I went really have to be seen to be understood.
Another day, which I found rather remarkable, was when we went to Tyne Cot Cemetery, in Belgium. It’s huge – literally thousands upon thousands of white headstones, standing upright in their straight lines. It’s a sight that gets to me every time, especially when you see the words ‘A soldier of the Great War. Known unto God.’ inscribed along the top. Like all the other Commonwealth cemeteries, it was a beautiful tribute to those it remembers – green lawns, neat, well-maintained graves, with a flower planted beside each gravestone. Then we went to Langemarck German Cemetery, and the contrast between the two is striking. For a start, while the Belgians bequeathed the land for all our cemeteries to us, the Germans were forced to purchase the land for Langemarck. Langemarck has a totally different outlook to Tyne Cot – the grass is still green, but cut short, and the trees completely shade the engraved black stones that lie flat upon the lawn. It’s as though the Commonwealth cemeteries are a celebration of life, while the German cemeteries are a mourning of death. I think the visit to the German cemetery helped me gain a bit of perspective – you have to remember that the other side lost the ones they loved, as well.
I was also in London, on ANZAC Day, and I got the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the service at Westminster Abbey, acting as an usher, and taking collection during the hymn. There was one thing, however, that struck me. In all the places I went, I didn’t see anything that even came close to our Shrine of Remembrance. London only had a cenotaph, and even Thiepval, the world’s biggest war memorial, did not have that special something that our Shrine has. Our Shrine is such a meaningful place.
And now, a year later, ANZAC Day has so much more meaning for me. I’ve tried, and tried, to find the right words to describe it, and the only ones I can come up with are these: get on a plane. Go to Turkey, France, Belgium, Singapore, Vietnam, any of them – walk into a cemetery, walk on the battlefields, talk to the people there. ANZAC Day is no longer just the one day of the year when we put on badges and stand around with solemn faces; it’s every single day of every single conflict all rolled into one, it’s the way your stomach cramps when you see your surname, your ancestor’s surname, engraved on a wall for all eternity, it’s the way you nearly cried when you stood with your toes just touching the water at the edge of ANZAC Cove and thought about all the people who died there. It’s the feeling in the air as you walk into another cemetery full of young men, older men, brothers, fathers, uncles, it’s the way the Turkish people you met couldn’t wait to say hi and wear your Akubra, even though your grandfather fought against theirs 90 years ago, it’s the way you sang every single Australian song you know on the bus between ANZAC Day services in a country ten of thousands of kilometres from Australia. Now there are 10 more young Australians who’ve learnt to hold high the torch that John McCrae wrote of in his poem “In Flanders Fields”.
And just to conclude – before I left for Europe I spoke to Jon Faine on ABC radio about my trip, and he told me about the sign in the Villers-Bretonneux Primary school, and how moving it was. I saw it when I went there – in big black letters in the courtyard of Victoria Primary School, just past Melbourne St, it says ‘Do Not Forget Australia’. But there was something else that happened in that part of France that I found much more moving, and left me with a lasting impression about the universal nature of peace. In a town called Bullecourt, not far from Villers-Bretonneux, there is a museum run by a lovely man called Jean. It is a beautiful museum, full of souvenirs from both sides of the war that he collected himself over many years. Just before we left, I said to him in French, “You have a lovely museum here,” and when he replied, even now, I’m not sure what language he was speaking, but I clearly understood every word he said to me.
“After all they did for us, it is the least I can do for them.’
I stood on that hill, 92 years on, and I don’t envy those ANZACs one bit. Gallipoli was a total disaster for us – after 9 months we pulled out, having gained no ground, no strategic advantage, and having lost nearly 11, 500 men – and for any of them to still be alive was a miracle; or maybe a testament to the hardiness of the Australian and New Zealand characters. If you stand at the top of any one of the hills at Gallipoli, you can see right to the next hill, and everything in between. The snipers just had to pull the trigger. And then when you stop and think; you remember who was here before you, and it’s almost too much. My great-great-uncle, James Nowlan, fought at Gallipoli. Now I’m following in his footsteps.
He wrote of ANZAC Cove in his diary just a few months before he died, aged only 18. Now I’ve been there as well. It is more humbling than any cathedral, more peaceful than any shrine, and more beautiful than any place in the world. Or maybe I just scored a lucky day. On the day that I went to ANZAC Cove, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the grass was green, the poppies were blood-red, and the water was lapping softly at the edge of the sand. Standing there, in the bright sunlight, so far removed in time from all that happened, I can’t even imagine this peaceful, beautiful place being the centre of a war; I can’t imagine that ‘the water ran red with blood’ as the soldiers ran for cover from the fire of the Turks. The place that was once the centre of a brutal war is now a living reminder of international peace and friendship.
If you’ve ever actually looked closely at the cenotaph behind me, you’ll notice there’s a handful of names of Creswick boys who left for the First World War and never came home. The graves and memorials of seven of them were scattered along my path through Europe, so I stopped for a moment at each one and left a poppy at each name. At Lone Pine Cemetery, Turkey, listed on the memorial: Robert Anderson, Francis Arnold Canning, Frederick Charles Clifton, William Knight Dean, William Joseph Lambert; in Lijssenthoek Cemetery, Belgium: John Constantine Caddy; and on the Menin Gate, Belgium: Absalom Peters. There are around 20 other Creswick diggers from World War One buried or memorialised overseas, scattered from Egypt right across Europe into England, and if you imagine every town the size of ours across Australia losing 25 young men, then you have some idea of the effect of the war.
I was in France as well, on April 21st; the day the French remember what happened. My nine friends and I spent the day attending ANZAC services across the Somme valley with our tour party. But often it’s not the official ceremonies, beautiful though they are, that show you what it means to be an ANZAC, and what it means to be Australian. Often it’s the little things that happen in the forgotten places, things that only last a few seconds but leave a lasting impression on you.
There’s a place near the border of Belgium and France called Hill 62. It was busy during the war, and they’ve preserved all the trenches, so it’s absolutely wonderful if you enjoy ducking through pitch black, muddy tunnels only a metre high. But the place has atmosphere – it reminds you that it saw blood and guts all those years ago; it reminds you that’s it a memorial, of sorts, to those who fought there; it reminds you, in short, that we mustn’t let it happen again. It’s one of those places that you occasionally find that talks to you, and you kind of have to go there and listen for yourself. The places I went really have to be seen to be understood.
Another day, which I found rather remarkable, was when we went to Tyne Cot Cemetery, in Belgium. It’s huge – literally thousands upon thousands of white headstones, standing upright in their straight lines. It’s a sight that gets to me every time, especially when you see the words ‘A soldier of the Great War. Known unto God.’ inscribed along the top. Like all the other Commonwealth cemeteries, it was a beautiful tribute to those it remembers – green lawns, neat, well-maintained graves, with a flower planted beside each gravestone. Then we went to Langemarck German Cemetery, and the contrast between the two is striking. For a start, while the Belgians bequeathed the land for all our cemeteries to us, the Germans were forced to purchase the land for Langemarck. Langemarck has a totally different outlook to Tyne Cot – the grass is still green, but cut short, and the trees completely shade the engraved black stones that lie flat upon the lawn. It’s as though the Commonwealth cemeteries are a celebration of life, while the German cemeteries are a mourning of death. I think the visit to the German cemetery helped me gain a bit of perspective – you have to remember that the other side lost the ones they loved, as well.
I was also in London, on ANZAC Day, and I got the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the service at Westminster Abbey, acting as an usher, and taking collection during the hymn. There was one thing, however, that struck me. In all the places I went, I didn’t see anything that even came close to our Shrine of Remembrance. London only had a cenotaph, and even Thiepval, the world’s biggest war memorial, did not have that special something that our Shrine has. Our Shrine is such a meaningful place.
And now, a year later, ANZAC Day has so much more meaning for me. I’ve tried, and tried, to find the right words to describe it, and the only ones I can come up with are these: get on a plane. Go to Turkey, France, Belgium, Singapore, Vietnam, any of them – walk into a cemetery, walk on the battlefields, talk to the people there. ANZAC Day is no longer just the one day of the year when we put on badges and stand around with solemn faces; it’s every single day of every single conflict all rolled into one, it’s the way your stomach cramps when you see your surname, your ancestor’s surname, engraved on a wall for all eternity, it’s the way you nearly cried when you stood with your toes just touching the water at the edge of ANZAC Cove and thought about all the people who died there. It’s the feeling in the air as you walk into another cemetery full of young men, older men, brothers, fathers, uncles, it’s the way the Turkish people you met couldn’t wait to say hi and wear your Akubra, even though your grandfather fought against theirs 90 years ago, it’s the way you sang every single Australian song you know on the bus between ANZAC Day services in a country ten of thousands of kilometres from Australia. Now there are 10 more young Australians who’ve learnt to hold high the torch that John McCrae wrote of in his poem “In Flanders Fields”.
And just to conclude – before I left for Europe I spoke to Jon Faine on ABC radio about my trip, and he told me about the sign in the Villers-Bretonneux Primary school, and how moving it was. I saw it when I went there – in big black letters in the courtyard of Victoria Primary School, just past Melbourne St, it says ‘Do Not Forget Australia’. But there was something else that happened in that part of France that I found much more moving, and left me with a lasting impression about the universal nature of peace. In a town called Bullecourt, not far from Villers-Bretonneux, there is a museum run by a lovely man called Jean. It is a beautiful museum, full of souvenirs from both sides of the war that he collected himself over many years. Just before we left, I said to him in French, “You have a lovely museum here,” and when he replied, even now, I’m not sure what language he was speaking, but I clearly understood every word he said to me.
“After all they did for us, it is the least I can do for them.’