Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

What a good day to start a history thread, to mark the hundred and tenth anniversary of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps' initial attempts to land on the marble-strewn beach of now ANZAC Cove at Gallipoli, near Istanbul, on 25/4/1915.

Can I be an absolute Aussie iconoclast and suggest that rather than making such a big deal of Australia and New Zealand's entry into the war at Gallipoli — which was an absolute bloodbath and a terrible waste of lives and was one of the worst moves of a failed campaign that achieved nothing in the long run — we could take the alternative that some people already do? 24th-25th April 1918, exactly three years later, was the Battle of Amiens in France, near the town of Villers-Bretonneux, in which the First Australian Imperial Force won a great victory, liberated the town, and actually did a lot to turn the tide of the war.

After the war, donations from school children in Victoria (Australia) were used to rebuild the school in Villers-Bretonneux, and to this day, every classroom has the inscription N'oublions jamais l'Australie — "Let us never forget Australia"! And I believe many of the streets in the rebuilt town were given Australian names too.

I remember back in 1998, my school in Melbourne sent a group of students there (from other year levels than mine) to visit that school and to perform a musical tribute to the soldiers who gave their lives to save the town, 80 years before — they gave us a performance in the school hall before they left, and I just remember it was so moving. I don't have any direct personal connection with the First World War (mercifully, it fell between generations for my immediate ancestors — too young or too old to serve), but I would love to visit Villers-Bretonneux myself some day. 

@Courtenay

Can I be an absolute Aussie iconoclast and suggest that rather than making such a big deal of Australia and New Zealand's entry into the war at Gallipoli...

Yes, I have amended the topic starter slightly, but I still needed to fill out the ANZAC initials to explain why we commemorate the 110th anniversary of ANZAC Day, today. Yes, you are completely right about Sir John Monash's splendid victory on 24-25 April, in 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux. I've even visited the town, in 2015, after I went to the ANZAC centenary at Gallipoli. But by that time, the Australian troops he had at his command had become the First Australian Imperial Force, as you, yourself have told me. What happened to the New Zealanders, by that time, I wonder? Were they sent somewhere else? Throughout WW1, the troops from both countries were acting as part of the British Army, rather than independently. This became more noticeable when after the Fall of Singapore (8-15 February 1942), John Curtin, our then Prime Minister, demanded from Churchill, the return of Australian troops en route to India, to meet the Japanese onslaught.   

On board the good ship Celestyal Crystal someone from the RAAF entertained us passengers & pilgrims by delivering three compulsory lectures, explaining how WW1 started, and why UK entered WW1 in August, in 1914 when the Germans had already breached Belgium's neutrality, invading it to bypass France's Maginot Line, I expect. The Gallipoli campaign was an ill-thought-out & ultimately futile campaign, which the War Correspondent, Keith Murdoch criticized heavily in his reports. But it was never a rout. I forget which general actually planned it, but Rupert's father who was afterwards knighted, by the way, thus was able to help initiate in December of 1915, a planned withdrawal, so successful that not even one soldier died in the retreat.

The Gallipoli troops were sent to Egypt, no longer part of the Ottoman Empire, & where the British were based. Combined with more recruits from Australia, including both of my great-uncles, they went on to the Western Front. They were mostly Victorian troops, featured in the little museum, we visited in 2015, at the back of the school in Villers Bretonneux, before the new Monash centre was built. The new troops arrived in March 2016, when one of them, married to my grandmother's eldest sister, might have learned about the 16th March birth of his son. But again, I ask: What happened to the New Zealanders, by that time, I wonder? Were they further north, perhaps?

The victorious Turkish troops, defending their territory at Gallipoli, were under the command of Kemal Ataturk. They have a great monument there, and we were told how a whole company of soldiers, as young as the ANZACS, some of them little more than children, kept fighting without surrender, even though they had run completely out of ammunition. The mutual respect earned on both sides is why the great mosque at Auburn in Sydney is called the Gallipoli Mosque. 

Today, 8th May, commemorates the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, in Europe. It was greeted with unadulterated joy and enthusiasm, in UK and in Europe. Famously, London, itself, went berserk with sheer joy, with even the heir to the throne & her sister, joining in the revelry. 

But in the Pacific, World War II didn't end until 15th August in 1945. 

The picture below, of Dancing Man, in Sydney, Australia, 15 August 1945 has become iconic of the mood at that time. It was even featured on our dollar.

Though 80 years is a long time, it is hard to believe that there aren't still people around who might remember those days and can share their reminiscences of such collective joy.

Though I'm the eldest here, I believe, what parental or grandparental memories might Narnia Webbers be able to share of this time in history? What pure unadulterated joy and relief spread around what seemed much of the world at such times!  

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @waggawerewolf27. I remember that dollar! (There were three commemorative coins in that set — that one, which you can see around the edge is titled "Peace"; a 20c titled (I think) "Returning Home", showing a soldier hugging his wife and child; and a 50c titled "Remembrance", with a soldier, a priest and I think one or two others standing by the graves of the fallen. I collected all three of them at the time, but if I still have them, they're back in my parents' house in Australia somewhere.)

My late grandfather (born 1912, died 1987) was in the Australian Army during the war, serving first in the Middle East and then in Borneo. He never talked about it much, though, except perhaps privately with others who'd been there and could understand, and he died when I was still in kindergarten, so I don't know much about what he went through. I know he had a number of medals, which I think one of my cousins inherited after our grandmother died more recently.

Back at the church where I was a member when I lived in Brisbane in the mid-2000s, there were older members who served in WW2 or could remember those days. One dear lady once told me her memories of VP Day (as we call it in Australia — Victory in the Pacific), 15 August 1945. I think she was in her late teens and was training to be a secretary, and she and her classmates were sitting in an upstairs room in central Brisbane, in the middle of doing their shorthand exam, when somebody burst into the room calling out "Peace is declared!" All the students went absolutely wild with joy, as other people were now doing outside in the streets all over Brisbane, and in the excitement, my friend grabbed her shorthand exam and flung it out the window in jubilation.   (I doubt any of them could have completed it under those circumstances, after all, but I'm guessing they did have to sit it again at a later date. I didn't find out that detail!)

Back to VE Day, that's a more important commemoration here in the UK for obvious reasons, as the war in Europe was much closer to home, quite literally. I remember once reading a reminiscence from somebody who was in London this day 80 years ago in 1945, and as darkness fell that evening, all the lights of London came on for the first time in five years. (There had been very strict blackout regulations enforced all over the country because of the bombing raids.) I don't remember all the details, but the person recollecting this described a little girl in the crowd, too young to remember what a city looks like when lit up at night, and she turned to the grown-ups and asked in absolute wonder, "Will it always be like this?" That brought me to tears when I read it. 

@waggawerewolf27 Thanks for sharing that!  I remember those commemorative coins and I think I have a few of them around.  Someone in my family who would well remember VE day is my grandfather who turned 100 in February - Arthur Knee.  Actually, he and his wife, my grandmother Lurline (who died in November last year) were for many years involved in the Tatura Irrigation and Wartime Camps Museum.  The museum they were heavily involved with was originally only going to be about farming and irrigation in the area, but soon after its opening in 1988 someone came inquiring about the local wartime internment camps in the area from people of German (and other European) and Japanese descent were held in these camps during the war years - some of the camps held German soldiers and some of the "Dunera boys" (Germans of Jewish descent who the British sent to Australia aboard the Dunera due to them being German) were held in these camps.  Many of the people held there settled in the area after the war.

The link is an interesting article (from nearly 10 years ago) about the cemetery there and the WW2 internment camps.  My grandparents are featured in the article.  If you're ever in the area - the museum is well worth seeing, and you can see the internment camps also.

Among the paddocks and grazing cattle, the POWs called this place home

It has been so great to read Courtenay's & Pete's replies, so I asked my husband, who was born in Scotland, what he remembered of 8th May in 1945. And he said that his class at school were told all about it, they sang a few songs, standing to attention, and he was aware of some fuss or other, elsewhere at the time. But he was only a lad of 9 years old, not even 10, then, and was suffering from an abscessed ear, that nearly killed him, around then.

But he did remember how excited and happy his family was when his eldest brother returned home once WW2 was finished. His brother was an Able Seaman on one of the boats used for the 6th of June in 1944 D-day landings. In 1948, he and a younger brother & sister left Scotland to migrate to Australia, to find somewhere their family could live, followed four years later, by my husband & the rest of his family, in 1952, as "10-pound" (£10) Poms as they used to be called, then. 

I should have imagined there was also much excitement and happiness in Canada, New Zealand and USA on VE Day at the time, though VP Day had yet to come in August. My own parents both passed away in the 1980's, though I can still remember my father insisting that I learn to swim, when he always said that he only survived the Bombing of Darwin on 19th February in 1942 because of being able to swim, when the USAT Meigs sank in Darwin Harbour.  After he died, in 1986, I proudly discovered that he had been awarded three medals, one for his Australian service, a 1939-1945 star, and another with George VI's head on the obverse, and a lion conquering a dragon on the reverse. 

Although I'm sure there was still much grief & suffering to contend with in Europe, I'd also imagine that there was relief as well, that the nightmare of war had finished. Especially in previously occupied countries like Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. 

15th August in 2025, that is to say, yesterday, was the Eightieth anniversary of VJ Day, in Australian terms, though elsewhere it would be called VP Day, I think. It marked the ending of World War II in the Pacific, fought every bit as bitterly as in Europe, Africa and elsewhere. Only nine days previously, the first of two Atom Bombs were dropped on Hiroshima, in Japan. The second, on Nagasaki had followed soon afterwards, making the Japanese surrender inevitable. The Nuclear age had begun for several countries both for civilian purposes, and, more menacingly, for military reasons, hence the ensuing Cold War against the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, and, concurrently, the rapid industrialisation of Mao Tse Tung's Communist Chinese regime, which replaced devastated chaotic China between the abdication of Emperor Pu Yi in 1911 to the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, called the second Sino-Japanese war. Hong Kong fell to the Japanese the same day as the raid on Pearl Harbour on 6th December in 1941. 

In so many ways, World War II was a continuation of World War 1, which brought four empires to an end, including the German & Austro-Hungarian Empires. Tsarist Russia in 1918 fell to the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin, which preserved domination over much of the old Tsarist regime under the USSR, including Belarus, Ukraine and some states, like Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, in the Caucasus mountains. The next-door Turkish Republic, established in 1922, was all that was left of the Ottoman Empire, decisively started on 29th May, 1453, when the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople, and under a subsequent Sultan, Selim the Grim, extended their sway right down past Jerusalem, at that time, Mameluke territory, including Egypt and onwards through North Africa as far as Ceuta and Morocco, to face the newly united Spain, having expelled the Almoravid caliphate in January, 1492.  

It was the loss of Constantinople, renamed now Istanbul, which triggered the European Age of Discovery, in 1488, when Portuguese captain Bartolomeo Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. European traders wanted to circumvent Arab & Turkish domination of the Middle East, which then blocked their access to India and China. But five centuries later, in 1922, the newly formed League of Nations organised what was called the Mandate of Palestine, under the administration of France and Great Britain, at the time. By the end of World War II, a Pan-Arab movement which had revolted against the Ottoman Empire, wanted control of all of the Mandated area, also, to the borders of Egypt. 

@pete  The museum they were heavily involved with was originally only going to be about farming and irrigation in the area, but soon after its opening in 1988 someone came inquiring about the local wartime internment camps in the area from people of German (and other European) and Japanese descent

Yes, I did have a look at that link to the Tatura camp in Victoria. There were other camps in NSW, at Hay and also at Cowra, which is now a beautiful & peaceful Japanese garden, bigger than the one at Auburn in Sydney. There was a breakout at the Cowra camp, on 5th August in 1944, in which four Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese soldiers were killed or committed suicide. The remaining escapees were re-captured and imprisoned, returning to Japan, afterwards.  I think the prisoners at Hay might also have had some of the Dunera Boys as they were called, but Hay had mostly Italian prisoners of war, who also stayed on after war ended. 

Yesterday was noted by King Charles III in UK, and also by our own Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. But after that big Harbour march on 3rd August, at short notice, too, I haven't seen much fuss about the commemorations in Sydney newspapers, which is a pity.

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

15th August in 2025, that is to say, yesterday, was the Eightieth anniversary of VJ Day, in Australian terms, though elsewhere it would be called VP Day, I think.

In my experience, we call it VP Day in Australia — definitely in Victoria, at least. Here in Britain it is most definitely VJ Day. I think that's a little unfair, since we all refer to VE Day (Victory in Europe), not "VG Day" (Victory over Germany). But I'm not in a position to argue.

My late grandfather fought in the Pacific theatre of the war, mainly in Borneo, I gather, though it's not something he ever really talked about (and I don't blame him).

The most moving war epitaph I know is the one used in the war cemetery for the Battle of Kohima (north-east India, April 1944) and also on some other war memorials:

When you go home, tell them of us and say:

For your tomorrow, we gave our today. 

@courtenay I think that's a little unfair, since we all refer to VE Day

I think the difference between VE day and VP Day is that the European VE day affected just about every country on that continent, regardless of whether that country was an ally of Germany, like Italy, neutral in the fight, like the Irish Republic, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, or whether they were on the Allied side, which, after it was invaded by Germany in 1941, included USSR. Many European countries were occupied by the Germans, even the Netherlands, which had stayed neutral in WW1. Finland, invaded by the USSR, at the outset of WW2, fought the Russian armies & repelled them, but as a precaution against another Russian invasion, fought on the side of Germany, thus losing Karelia to USSR at the end of the War, when the Russians invaded again. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia lost their independence the same way, when occupied by first Germany then the USSR, and though there was undoubted joy and jubilation in UK on May 8th, 1945, it wasn't long before the Warsaw Pact was assembling, from Poland, absolutely flattened by that war, Czechoslovakia, dismembered by the 1938 "Peace in our times" Munich conference between Hitler & Neville Chamberlain, Hungary, Romania, & Austria (either occupied or German allies), whilst the Balkans were horribly divided by WW2. Vichy France was Germany's puppet state after the north was occupied when UK's BEF was evacuated from Dunkirk. 

Whereas VP Day was the end of a war against mostly Japan, itself. I explained how Japan had already invaded China as early as 1937, with Britain's Hong Kong finally taken over by 18th December in 1941. From then on, the Japanese moved swiftly, taking over the Philippines, going down Southeast Asia to now Malaysia to Singapore, besieged between 8th and 15th February in 1942. The day afterwards, Timor was besieged, and my own Dad was in a convoy of soldiers sent to relieve the so-called "Sparrow force" who were fighting alongside the Timorese resistance, both from the Portuguese and Dutch sides. Like all of the then Dutch East Indies, Timor also fell, & Darwin, little more than a small town, was then bombed in two attacks on 19th February in 1942.

Two days after that bombing, USS Houston and HMAS Perth, along with most of the ABDA force were both sunk in the Sunda Straits separating Java from Singapore. ABDA is the acronym for the American, British, Dutch and Australian forces. Darwin was to be bombed a further 63 times. Wynyard & Broome in WA, and Mossman, Cairns & Townsville, in North Queensland, also received attention from the Japanese, who shelled the NSW coastline about that time, between Newcastle & Sydney, where visitors can still see the fortifications beside the old North Head Quarantine Station, at the entrance to Sydney Harbour. On May 31st, in 1942, Sydney had a very rude awakening when 3 Japanese mini submarines, entered Sydney Harbour, sinking HMAS Kuttabul, which was being used as a dormitory for troops. 

From July to November, in 1942, the Japanese invaded what was at the time Australian administered territory in Papua/New Guinea, along the Kokoda track, back towards Port Moresby. Had it not been for that successful Australian defence of the Kokoda trail, with the help of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, as the native Papuans were called, then later USA's success (with a bit of help from Oz) at the Coral Sea & Midway battles, & at others throughout the Pacific, like at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, Australia, itself, might possibly have been invaded after all. As the issue of those coins, that you have mentioned do show, there was much joy and jubilation at the time, in Sydney. 

Unfortunately, current events have tended to overshadow memories of those times.