Letters from France by C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow) Bean
page 162 of 163 (99%)
page 162 of 163 (99%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
The reason why they always avoid calling themselves "the Anzacs" is that
the term was at one time associated in the Press with so many highly coloured, imaginative, mock heroic stories of individual feats, which they were supposed to have performed, that its use from that time forth was, by a sort of tacit consent, irrevocably damned within the force. The picture which it called up was that of the "Anzac" in London, with his shining gaiters and buttons and generally unauthorised cock's feathers in his hat, reaping the glory of the acrobatic performances which his battered countrymen, very unlovely with sweat and dust, were credited with achieving in No Man's Land. This was before the Somme fight, when first these Gallipoli troops came to Europe. The regular British war correspondents were not responsible for it--this nonsense was not written by them; when the day of real trial came they wrote of it conscientiously and brilliantly, and nothing that could be written was too much. But the vogue of the wildest stories of the "Anzacs" was when Australians and New Zealanders were doing little beyond hard work in France, and knew it. The noun "an Anzac" now bears with it, in the force, the suggestion of a man who rather approves of that sort of "swank"; and there are few of them. The Australian and New Zealander are both intensely, overwhelmingly proud of their nationality; and only good can come of the pride. They are also intensely proud of their two-year-old units--and one of the drawbacks of the necessary rules of censorship is, that battalions of our army, which are famous throughout the force by name, have to be known to you only through vague references. Their character and history, as distinct and strongly marked as those of different men, will only come to be known to Australia when the history of these campaigns comes to be written. |
|