Lest they forget

SO MUCH of World War I — and its early ending before thousands more were killed — can be ascribed to Australian general Sir John Monash prevailing where inferior British generals mounted disastrous follies.

The battles for Bullecourt were inglorious affairs where 10,000 Australians died under inept leadership (but through sheer pluck still broke into and took part of the Hindenburg Line).

To this day Australians are revered in rural France for the memories of their distinct valour freeing that country from German invaders.

Monash was one of the alltime great military strategists but he could have achieved nothing without the respect and loyalty of his men and the fierce fighting spirit of the diggers.

There is truth to the theory that Australia forged its identity on the battlefields of WWI.

Our troops and our Kiwi cousins, away from home en masse for the first time, realised on that world stage that they possessed a unique toughness, mateship and egalitarianism unmatched among the allies.

A century on, it is a historical conclusion rather than a national vanity that there was something in the Australian character, absent in the French (and frankly the British), that enabled them to deny the German onslaught in France.

For the French to plant turbines or other industrial machinery anywhere near the hallowed ground of Bullecourt where our forefathers still lay would be an act of historical amnesia and reckless ingratitude on the grossest scale.

Contrast the tenderness of Turkish general Kemal Ataturk who penned the moving tribute to the Anzacs killed and buried at Gallipoli.

“You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

Can we not expect the same grace from our former allies as that managed by those who we fought to the death?