Anzac Day, public holiday, Australia and New Zealand, Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga

Today we mourn the dead and the criminal stupidity of those who send them to their fate.

It is the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Turkey at the Battle of Gallipoli on this day in 1915. (The Anzac covering force, the 3rd Brigade of the Australian 1st Division, began to go ashore shortly before dawn at 4.30 am on April 25.) An estimated 131,000 Allied soldiers were killed and 262,000 wounded (sources vary widely); about 250,000 (some sources say 450,000) Turkish men were killed or wounded in an area measured in a handful of square kilometres.

Anzac (or ANZAC) Day, named from the acronym of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, commemorates the landing of British and ANZAC forces on the beach at Gelibolu (Gallipoli), Turkey, on this day in 1915, in a failed invasion of Turkey in World War One.

Total population of Australia in WWI
5 million
Total enlisted
300,000
Wounded
159,171
Killed
59,330
Total Casualties
218,501
Percentage of Casualties
72%

Below is the most moving version I have heard of Eric Bogle's song, 'The Band Played Waltzing Matilda'. It is sung by Bob Dylan's mate Liam Clancy, of the Clancy Brothers, an Irish folk band of great renown.



Categories: war, peace, australia, new-zealand, wwI, calendar-customs