Musings on ANZAC Day

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Landings. I had a great uncle who went ashore that first day as a stretcher bearer.

His religious views did not allow him to take life, but he felt he must do his bit. William Drummond survived, repatriated to Australia to recover. This photo from September 1916 shows him convalescing.

Harry Gissing, a medic whose diaries have featured prominently in Australian press coverage, was (I think) a friend of Uncle Will's. I'm not sure; I'm working from distant memories.

Gallipoli and ANZAC Day have become very complicated.

Our blogging friend Noric Dilanchian has been campaigning for recognition of the Armenian genocide. The Gallipoli landing coincides with certain critical dates, providing a platform. for e a world wide campaign.

I remember when I first heard about this. It must have been in the 1970s. On the way back from Thredbo, Uncle Jim called in at Queanbeyan. He gave me a lecture on the topic. I'm still not sure why, but I learned a fair bit.

This  is a photo of Great Uncle Morris. He enlisted later and was killed in France in 1917.So of the three brother, two served, one died. My grandfather would have done too, but he was very deaf and as the younger brother someone needed to stay home to look after their sister.

I think that these things are best dealt with as personal experiences.

Last year, Anna and I visited the war memorial at Dangarsleigh near Armidale.  Later, there was a story on ABC New England North West on the memorial..I shared it on Facebook and received this comment from JCW.

We always found that memorial immesurably moving, especially because it was so unexpected. And from the latest unpleasantness in Afghanistan, there is yet another TAS boy on the honour board. I didn't teach him, but I knew him well. He is one of three. My darling friend and director Aarne Neeme lost his son in law, and the man who installed our security system lost his son. The One Day of the Year is an immesurably moving play. I am so grateful to have been part of Canberra Rep's amazing production of it. My elder son trained, but thank God, never had to go. Peter had 2 tours in East Timor, and they were some of the loneliest and scary days of my life.

I don't think JCW will mind me sharing that message.

I'm not going to any of the ANZAC day commemorations. It's too complicated. I am treating ANZAC Day as personal time.

Postscript

On My New England Australia blog, I have brought up a few shots of ANZAC Day across inland New England: ANZAC Day 2015 across inland New England.

The mystery of Armenia

One of my friends, Noric Dilanchian, is Armenian. Over the years we have known each other, he has often Educated (lectured?) me on Armenia. Now this quote from Wikipeda, "the important role played in the history of Byzantium by that talented minority, the Armenians, has been generally unrecognised" may seem like special pleading, but there is a grain of truth to it.

This is a map of Armenia in Byzantine times. A brief comment follows the map. 

Despite all Noric's lecturing and my own writing on the Byzantine period, I do not have a firm historical picture of Armenia or the Armenians. Maybe it's time that I properly educated myself!

Postscript

In a comment, Ramana pointed me to this Wikipedia entry on Armenians in India. From time to time I have written about the way location affects our view of the world. Growing up in a Western European/Australian/Greek-Roman centric view of the world, I was impressed by the way that Alexander the Great struck of east into the apparently unknown. We can see the same mind-set in classical or ancient history and the way it centres on Rome, Greece, and Egypt.

We tend to forget that between the Mediterranean sea and the Indian sub continent lay a series of big empires. If you look at the Persian invasions of what is now Greece, we (those with a Euro-centric view) see them as Persian invasions of Greece, a threat from the east. If you look at it from a Persian perspective, they were trying to tidy up on the eastern edge of their empire.

When Alexander headed off to India, he wasn't heading into the unknown, just the opposite. There were well travelled routes. To the Persians, I am using that phrase as a generic term to cover all state entities, what is now India was on the western edge of empire. Remote perhaps, but in world view.

To be worth a "history", you have to have an entity in which to centre the history. At a tiny parochial level, I write about my New England, a place that never existed in a formal sense. and is therefore not recognised. The Armenians are New England writ large. They had entities, but they are a people who generally always "belonged" to others, to the various larger bodies that controlled them.

Just interesting, that's all.