Anzac Day 2013

Today it is Anzac Day here in Australia, and in New Zealand, where we remember the landing of our troops on the beaches of Gallipoli and then later on the battlefields of the Somme during WWI It is a day that has come to mean so much more than just remembrance of all our soldiers who have fought and died for our freedom but also in many ways these events shaped our cultural identities.

Over the years I have shared a number of different posts on Anzac Day from songs, books, explanations of two-up and, last year, a conversation with one of my favourite Kiwi bloggers Maree from Just Add Books.

This year, I thought I would share just one paragraph from Tom Keneally's book Daughter of Mars. I remember reading this paragraph numerous times when I came across it in the book, and even after having read it so many times I do find it quite a powerful passage.

The men arrived with a word on their lips - Pozieres. It might have been a village but it was vast in their minds: the birthplace of their pain. The English newspapers had a name even broader than Pozieres. The name of a bloody river previously unremarked in the earth's imagination. The Somme ran scarlet and was vaster than the Nile or Amazon now in the imagination of all those in France. It was the altar on which Abraham did sacrifice his son, and no God spoke out to stay the knife.

Lest we forget