Challenging Anzac

Alistair Thomson is a world-leading oral historian who has published widely on war memory, myth, and oral history theory and practice. His book Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (1994) was a landmark study on Australian war experience. Thomson is Emeritus Professor of History at Monash University and served as President of the International Oral History Association and of Oral History Australia. 

In the 1980s, Al interviewed twenty-four working class veterans of the First World War. He discovered that not all working class veterans felt proud of their war service. Contrary to the Anzac legend of fierce, resourceful fighters, these diggers remembered fear and reluctance to fight. They felt powerless, comparing themselves to pawns on the chessboard or cogs in the war machine. Al found multiple instances of desertion, refusal, as well as quieter resistance among the working class ranks. Through his work, Al argues that rather than speaking to an Anzac legend of warfare, these diggers' memories reflect a universal experience of war.  

Margaret Hutchinson and Karen Bird are scholars working on a history of veteran suicide in Australia. Meggie is an historian in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, researching the policies and practices of care for Australian veterans and the cultural legacies of war. Karen is Deputy Chair for the National Advisory Committee for Open Arms: Veterans & Families Counselling and a Board Member at the Australian War Memorial.

Meggie and Karen argue that understanding how veteran suicide was understood in the past can help to improve program outcomes for current and future service personnel. Their contribution focuses on select case studies of veteran suicide after the First World War, exploring how veterans navigated civilian life and how their families and communities came to understand their trauma. Their work provides insight into the enduring cost of the war by examining the stories of men whose lived experience challenges the conventional codes of masculinity enshrined in the Anzac legend.

Jason Smeaton a social historian of Australian servicewomen. His forthcoming book, Nursing Aids at War (Cambridge University Press), examines the gendered experience of women who served in the Australian Army as nursing orderlies during the Second World War. is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Jason currently works as a Historian with the Australian Army History Unit and is a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Canberra. He continues to research and publish on Australian women’s history with particular focus on feminist issues and women’s history of the Australian Army. 

Jason's contribution to Challenging Anzac explores how Australian women who joined the military during the Second World War felt about their service and the war. Placed in positions that emphasised contemporary gender-based understandings of socially acceptable roles for women, such as clerks, telephonists, and, of course, nurses and nursing aids, they were were continuously reminded by the military authorities of their difference from the esteemed male soldier. Service women’s ambiguous position in the military prompted their opposition towards war and the military and led to a sense of disillusionment which, though often expressed privately and without public agitation, deeply affected their service experience and identification as a veteran after the war. 

Ben Wadham is an Army veteran and now Professor of Defence and Veteran Studies at Flinders University in South Australia. Ben has researched the ‘dark side of defence’ for over two decades. His research focuses on how the ADF use technologies of cultural camouflage to justify nefarious war policy while still celebrating the ideal of the Anzac warrior – a man of integrity, courage and justice. Ben has pioneered research on military institutional abuse in Australia and is currently leading a national study on veteran suicidality 1914 until the present.

The principle image of the Australian soldier is that of the Anzac, a larrikin with high integrity, just mind, and a willingness and capability to service Australia. Yet soldiers who exhibit these qualities are punished by the contemporary Australian Defence Force. Ben's research explores the experiences of Lt Col Lance Collins, former Army intelligence officer, head of the Timor Leste Desk during INTERFET operations around the turn of the century. Collins encountered a conflict between the reality of atrocities on the ground in Timor Leste and the narrative of the security crisis promoted by the Jakarta Lobby and the Howard government. In attempting to draw attention to the intelligence that contradicted the government line, Collins was denigrated and marginalised by the Australian military. His story highlights that the Australian defence force does not recognise or value the qualities of Anzac, instead prizing subservience and obedience.  

Bianca Baggiarini and Joan Beaumont are researching how the Anzac legend can coexist with autonomous warfare. Joan is an internationally recognized historian of Australia in the two world wars, Australian defence and foreign policy, the history of prisoners of war and the memory and heritage of war.  Bianca is a political sociologist researching the social, political, and ethical justifications and effects of remote and autonomous systems (RAS). Her forthcoming book, Governing Military Sacrifice: Privatization, Drones, and the Future of War (University of Toronto Press) analyses how drones and military privatization together reveal the breakdown of the citizen-soldier archetype and its links to sacrificial cults and idioms. 

Key to the Anzac legend are notions of courage, endurance, mateship, and the trope of sacrifice, yet it is unclear whether these aspects of the Anzac legend will survive the next “revolution” in technology of war: namely, the growing dominance of autonomous warfare, and whether it will be possible in the future to speak of ‘an automated warrior.’ Bianca and Joan's analysis of recent techno-centric ADF recruitment campaigns and specific weapons acquisitions, including the MQ-28A Ghost Bat, a ‘loyal wingman’ uncrewed vessel, reveals that the ADF is increasingly moving toward a disembodied and disembodying approach to war. This will have consequences for the Anzac legend, and how it practically survives in the contemporary moment, given its emphasis on embodied warrior traits. 

Carolyn Holbrook is the author of Anzac: The Unauthorised Biography which made the shortlist for NSW Premier History Award 2015 in the category of Australian First World War History. She is associate professor in history in the Centre for Contemporary Histories at Deakin University, and Director of Australian Policy and History, which connects historical evidence to contemporary political and social issues.

What lies behind the enduring power of group mythologies, such as the Anzac legend? In arguing that current explanations that prioritise the propaganda efforts of the state are inadequate, Carolyn draws from sociology, anthropology and evolutionary psychology to show how the mythology of Anzac has served to foster social cooperation and group cohesion within the national community of Australia. In understanding the emergence of Anzac and the abiding power of its rituals through a framework that incorporates scientific and social-scientific understandings, we can gain greater insight into human social behaviour in a range of contexts, at a time when longstanding explanations appear to be redundant.