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.