War is fundamental to the system. Anzac Day is a fitting time to look at the roots of war and ways to fight it.In the past century, over 30,000 New Zealand soldiers have been killed in battle, with more than half - 16,000 - being slaughtered in World War One alone. It is right and fitting that these soldiers should be mourned but Anzac Day is not a day for that - it is a celebration of war.
Of course the politicians, bigwigs, media bosses, bishops and army brass who dominate the day must make many concessions to people’s abhorrence of war, but fundamentally Anzac Day is about rallying popular support behind the New Zealand state and its organised means of violence – the armed forces.
We are trained from an early age to accept the state and the army.
If you asked New Zealanders in a poll tomorrow whether it was a good thing for Anzac Day to rally popular support behind the state and the army, the majority would probably agree.
But if you asked what 16,000 New Zealanders were killed for, very few people would be able to tell you, and of those who could, scarcely any would argue it was a good thing.
World War One was an insane bloodbath. The most famous Anzac engagement was a botched invasion of Turkey – the Gallipoli campaign. It has since been immortalised as the ‘birth of the nation’, where NZers showed their mettle by dying in their thousands because of a stuff-up by the British High Command (notably Winston Churchill, then Lord of the Admiralty).
After retreating from the Turkish disaster, the machine-gun murder continued in France. Army PR claims that ‘troops quickly became accustomed to the rigours of trench warfare’, before going on to record that in September 1916, just after arrival in France, 1560 soldiers were killed and 5440 wounded in just 23 days. The ‘rigours of trench warfare’ indeed.
It’s often remarked that the war was a struggle between cousins (the English, German and Russian kings were all first cousins). God, King, and Country were standard slogans on all sides – the only difference being which king and which country.The scale of the slaughter was tremendous, despite a stalemate across Europe – a stalemate that reflected the stale regimes that held the world in a corpse-like grip. It’s often remarked that the war was a struggle between cousins (the English, German and Russian kings were all first cousins). God, King, and Country were standard slogans on all sides – the only difference being which king and which country.
There was nothing to choose between one band of thieves and another and no end in sight to the slaughter.
The result was a contagion of mutinies, where troops called the bluff of their commanders and refused to fight. Mutinies ended the first world war.
Étaples, about 15 miles (24 km) south of Boulogne-sur-Mer, was a notorious base camp for those on their way to the front. Under atrocious conditions, both raw recruits and battle-weary veterans were subjected to intensive training. Conditions in the hospital were punitive rather than therapeutic.
Things came to a head on Sunday, September 9, 1917, after the arrest of Gunner A. J. Healy, a New Zealander, for desertion (he had been away without leave). A large crowd of angry men gathered and did not disperse even when told the gunner had been released. The arrival of military police only made matters worse and scuffles broke out. A military police officer fired into the crowd, killing Corporal W. B. Wood of the Gordon Highlanders and injuring a French woman.
Thereafter, the police simply fled. News of the shooting spread quickly. By 7.30 pm over a thousand angry men were pursuing the military police, who fled in the direction of the town. The Camp Adjutant describes how the men "swarmed into the town, raided the office of the Base Commandant, pulled him out of his chair and carried him on their shoulders through the town."
The following morning measures were taken to prevent further outbreaks and police pickets were stationed on the bridges leading into the town. Nevertheless, by 4 pm men had broken through the pickets and were holding meetings in the town, followed by demonstrations around the camp.
On Tuesday, fearing further outbreaks, the Base Commandant requested reinforcements. Meanwhile, the demonstrations gathered momentum. On Wednesday, September 12, in spite of orders confining them to camp, over a thousand men broke out and marched through the town.
But later that day, reinforcements from the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) arrived, armed with wooden staves. The HAC detachment was composed of officers, contained no working men and was supported by cavalry and machine-gunners. The threat worked: only 300 men broke camp and were arrested at Etaples.
Stacked up against the enormity of the war machine – the way thousands ran to their deaths – one mutiny may not seem much, but it was part of a wider trend. From 1914 to 1920, 1800 British servicemen were court-martialled for mutiny, while the French Army had between 25,000 overall to 40,000 in 1917 alone. Australian and NZ troops gained a reputation for “indiscipline” towards the end of the war.
On a much greater scale, in the Russian army soldiers’ mutinies organised by radically democratic means and informed by coherent socialist propaganda, forced first the end of Tsarist dictatorship and secondly, sparked similar mutinies in the German navy and army, which led to the end of the war. The Etaples mutiny and others like it, for their part, made it impossible for the victorious western powers to ‘strangle communism at birth’ as the bloodthirsty Churchill put it.
Anzac Day is a chance to remember the dead – but not blindly – to remember also the criminal imperialism that sacrificed millions for greed. Andrew T |
