Remembering

This Sunday November 11 is Remembrance Day marking 94 years since the end of WWI. It seems like a good time to reflect on how people are choosing to remember and connect.

Empirical observation suggests that Australians are attending ANZAC Day ceremonies in greater numbers. According to tour operators more people are traveling to overseas battlefields such as Gallipoli and the Western Front. It has also been reported that war tourism is booming in Sri Lanka.

As I’m writing my friend Tim will be taking his boots off somewhere in the PNG jungle after another day trekking on the Kokoda Trail.

Locally literature and documentaries about Australians at war are finding a growing popular audience.

Peter Fitzsimons has sold over 250,000 copies of his 2004 book Kokoda.

Last year Channel 10 screened the documentary Tour of Duty – Australia’s Secret War about the conflict in Afghanistan. The program was a top 20 show on free to air television for its premier broadcast and Ten’s third highest rating show of the day drawing almost 600,000 viewers.

The ability to engage through online resources such as the nominal roles made available by the Australian War memorial has opened opportunities to find out more about family members that served and Australia’s military history generally.

Veterans’ organisations are also finding new ways to reach people interested in reflection, remembrance or just connecting.

Veterans Affairs Canada has established a virtual war memorial that provides “information about the graves and memorials of more than 118,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders who served valiantly and gave their lives for their country”.

In the United States there are a number of veterans’ groups that tour replicas of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. If you happen to be in Monroe, Louisiana over the weekend head down to the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum to check out the Vietnam Travelling War Memorial.

Its competition, The Moving Wall, has been making its way through Mid-West and Southern states since June.

On a more ambitious scale, artist Jon Brunberg has been working on a proposal for a Polynational War Memorial since 2004.

The idea is to create “a global war memorial that will commemorate all who died in all wars since World War II, and for a global organisation that will work with education, negotiations and data collection. The memorial will include more than 10 million names of soldiers and civilians”.

Brunberg says he will be working on the project for the remainder of his artistic career.

When I started on this series about commemorating war I was aiming to cover all the bases. I’ve barely scratched the surface.

How and why we choose to remember and what resonates with each of us is a vast and complex subject. It ranges from the deeply personal to the overtly public, shallow box ticking to considered reflection, granite to bronze, virtual to actual.

As a few people I spoke to said when we started to plumb the deeper layers – “there’s a PhD in that”.

Off to Kokoda

My friend Tim doesn’t mind a punt on the Melbourne Cup. He’s usually the one who organises the office sweep.

But this year Tim and his mates Martin, Michael, Steve and Cameron are spending Melbourne Cup Day a bit differently. While the rest of us are wading through discarded TAB chits they’ll be trekking through jungle on the Kokoda Trail.

Tim along with two of his friends had grandfathers who served in Papua New Guinea during WWII. His own grandfather had never really talked about his experiences and Tim said he seemed nonplussed by his plans to walk the trail saying “what’s he going over there doing that for”.

To try and get a sense of what his grandfather and the other Australian serviceman suffered on Kokoda was part of the reason Tim was keen to walk the Trail.  But also taking on the challenge with a group of friends before other things such as having a family came along was important.

“There was a lot of pub talk for two or three years until we finally got down to four guys who were committed” he said.

Along with the training Tim says that learning about Kokoda and what happened there has been particularly rewarding. He has watched documentaries and read a number of books including Peter Fitzsimons’ bestselling popular history Kokoda.

“We didn’t study [Kokoda] in school and 6 months ago I didn’t really know anything about it” he says.

He’s looking forward to learning more during the trek and is also viewing other possible visits to battlefields such as Gallipoli and the Western Front as opportunities to deepen his knowledge of Australian military history rather than just something to cross off a list.

After more than 3 months of training including bushwalking and carrying a loaded pack up and down stairs Tim reckons he’s in the best shape he’s ever been in. At the same time he doesn’t have any illusions about how hard the trek will be.

But the things that’s worrying him most is the light plane flight from Port Moresby to the embarkation point at Kokoda.

Tim and his friends still have a few days left in the heat and humidity of the PNG jungle. I’ll be catching up with him when he gets back to get his thoughts on the experience. And to find out if the race that stops a nation reached as far as the Kokoda Trail.

Designing War Memorials

Designing a memorial is a challenging process. American academic and author Kirk Savage has dedicated a book to the subject.

It’s something that Sydney based architect Peter Tonkin of Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects is very familiar with having designed the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial and Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier in Canberra as well as the Australian War Memorial in Hyde Park London.

“The fact that [memorials] have to last forever is incredibly challenging both in a construction and a design sense” he says.

Tonkin also notes the difficulty of trying to maintain artistic integrity in the face of people wanting things changed because they don’t like it.

“Contemporary artworks don’t sit very happily with a traditional military background, they’re kind of like oil and water”

Savage has also written about this issue in the context of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., often sited as one of the greatest memorials and works of public art of the he twentieth century.

Time and budget add further challenges to memorial projects according to Tonkin.  Often insufficient time is allowed for completing memorial projects with deadlines set round significant anniversaries or attending dignitaries.

“[The commissioning body] won’t compromise the quality and you can’t compromise the time because they’ve got opening dates locked in so the budget goes haywire” he says

I asked Tonkin what he thought made a memorial successful.

“If not simple, they need to have all their elements pulling in the same direction. You can achieve this by being simple or by being ruthless in your co-ordination of the elements” he says.

Tonkin acknowledges that simplicity alone is not enough and that memorials “need a level of richness…hooks into other things so you spend time and not only contemplate what it is memorialising but what your minds links to”

He mentions this as being one of the reasons behind the text he included in the Vietnam Memorial with the aim of making people stand there for a longer time.

“The longer you stand in a place the more its atmosphere and qualities as a work sink in”, he says.

Tonkin also identifies materials as a key element in the design of a memorial.

“I think they are prime” he says “They are the surfaces that convey the meaning”.

He makes a reference to visiting the Australian War Memorial site in Hyde Park, London and immediately realising that a planned use of glass in a key element of the design wouldn’t work.

Although Tonkin feels that memorials are important he cautions against building too many.

“You have to be careful. If there are too many they cease to have any meaning”

At the same time he likes ANZAC Parade in Canberra, with its 12 memorials within 2.5 kilometres describing it as “a potted history lesson, not only of war but of the history of memorial building and sculpture”.

He said the Parade was instructive during the design process for the Vietnam Memorial and helped him develop a suite of design principles for that project. Chief among them he says was “ no bronze sculptures”. But he also sites the Australian Hellenic Memorial on the Parade as a positive influence, inspiring him to create an interior as part of the Vietnam Memorial.

Asked about other memorials he admired Tonkin pointed to specific elements such as Napier Weller’s mosaic in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra and the sculptures of soldiers at the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, London.

Of the memorials he has designed Tonkin wasn’t prepared to pick a favourite.

“You have to love all your children” he says.

Gallipoli 2015 – a crowded affair

Warren Snowdon, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, recently threw a spanner in the works for tour operators by announcing plans to limit attendance at the ANZAC Commemorative site at Gallipoli in 2015 and hold a ballot for the 8000 available places.

Despite this there is no shortage of operators offering tours to Gallipoli for the 2015 celebrations – there is even a cruise where you can be entertained by Bert Newton and Kate Ceberano.

Mat McLachlan, whose company provides tours to Gallipoli as well as other overseas battle sites says that he like most operators has seen the possibility of the ballot coming for some time so have made alternative arrangements such as putting on their own private dawn services at different locations.

“One of [the cruises] in particular has said they won’t even be bothering to go ashore on ANZAC day and will hold the service aboard the ship” he says.

While the operators are working around the problems created by the ballot, McLachlan points out that the ballot won’t really address the issue of people trying to get to the celebrations in 2015.

“In any given year the vast majority of Australians at Gallipoli are young Australians traveling from the UK and those backpackers that will be traveling to ANZAC in 3 years time are still in high school. The chances of them having the foresight to go in the ballot now is very slim” he says.

He believes this will lead to there being two groups at Gallipoli in 2015 – those with tickets and a larger group in “an overflow area”.

Brad Manera, Executive Manager/CEO at the ANZAC Memorial in Sydney is of a similar view noting that while it may be possible to monitor numbers with Australian tour operators its going to be impossible to stop overseas companies and individual travellers from heading to the peninsula.

“What are you going to to do stop then at the door” he says.

One thing seems certain – we’re going to see more people than ever congregating on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 2015 particularly when you add in the numbers of New Zealanders, Britons and Turks who will be having their own commemorations.

That cruise with Bert and the onboard dawn service is looking better and better.

Battlefield Tourism

Traveling to places of historic or cultural significance is hardly new. The Grand Tour was a rite of passage for any young man of means in the 18th and 19th centuries. Package tours have been around nearly as long when Thomas Cook started taking travellers across the English Channel in the mid 1800s.

Visiting battle sites out of curiosity or respect has probably been happening since the Battle of Marathon. Australian Historian Ken Inglis notes in his book Sacred Places that the names of the Greek soldiers who died in that most famous of battles are recorded at the site. Nor does this fascination with sites of conflict seem focused on the distant or near distant past. The BBC recently reported that as relative peace becomes the norm war tourism is booming in Sri Lanka.

For Australians, and particularly young Australians a visit to Gallipoli has become an essential part of their European adventures and they are heading there in their thousands each year.

Operators such as  The Fanatics offer a variety of options for visiting the peninsula from fly-in fly out trips to longer packages. According to their website they offer “affordable travel options to the world’s biggest and craziest festivals and parties plus annual Anzac commemorations at both Gallipoli & the Western Front”

This gives you an idea of what to expect.

It’s easy to stereotype Australians visiting Gallipoli as drunken twentysomethings passed out in sleeping bags but this overlooks the growing demand among other groups to get in touch with the history of these places.

Mat McLachlan has been operating tours to Gallipoli, the Western Front and other battle sites where Australians served since 2008. His company cater to older travellers, mainly couples, between 45 and 65 with the tours focusing on the history of the sites visited as well as the local culture.

McLachlan says that there were 34 people on his first tour to the Western Front in 2008. He estimates that this year his company will take around 1200 Australians to battlefields in Europe, Asia and the Pacific.

“It used to be all about ANZAC day”, he says. “ANZAC Day is still the most important day in the touring calendar but the thing that amazes me very year is how many people are interested in going to other battlefields now”.

I asked McLachlan if he thought the growth of backpacker targeted ANZAC tours was detracting from the cultural and historic significance of places such as Gallipoli.

“As a historian I’d obviously like people to spend more time at the battlefields” he said saying that a minimum you needed 3 days to a week to get the most from places like Gallipoli or the Western Front.

At the same he feels that the backpackers get a “bad rap”. “I did the same thing myself in my twenties and I remember thinking that the other people on the tour were there out of genuine respect”.

He also points out that while we often hear about how more Australians are visiting Gallipoli these numbers are dwarfed by visiting Turks. Depending on who you ask between  30,000 and 50,000 Australians visit Gallipoli each year. McLachlan estimates that 2 million turks travel there annually.

To the Turks the Gallipoli Campaign is known as the Battle of Canakkale after the city at the entrance to Dardanelles used by many tourists as their base to visit ANZAC cove. Canakkale is also where people visiting another historic site usually choose to stay. That place is Troy.

Are we really getting keener on ANZAC Day?

There is a view that since the 1980s there has been a resurgence in the celebration of ANZAC Day in Australia. I haven’t actually been able to track down any hard stats to support this or whether more people are actually attending Dawn Services or other official events. If you can point me in the right direction I’d be grateful.

It does seem that politicians and the media are invoking” ANZAC” and the “ANZAC Spirit” more frequently and in more tenuous ways.

Julia Gillard name-checked Gallipoli in her speech at the 10th Anniversary of the Bali Bombings.

Paul Kelly writing in the Australian seemed more willing to join the dots between the tragedy that occurred in Bali and that on a different beach in Turkey nearly a century ago. “The Anzac spirit was evident — compassion in death, unity in tragedy, resolution in the face of intimidation. It was one of John Howard’s finest hours as prime minister.” he wrote.

Whether this increased summoning of the spirit means more Australians are approaching the April 25th differently is a little harder to establish. Perhaps the Department of Veterans’ Affairs survey being conducted in the lead up to the Gallipoli Centenary in 2015 might help to clear this up.

From a quick chat with a few people outside the ANZAC Memorial in Sydney it seems that whether we’re taking a break from skating, spending time with family or attending a Dawn Service we choose to spend the 25th April (and other commemoration days) in different ways.

What do war memorials mean to us today?

Despite the increasing personal, geographic and temporal distance that now exists between most Australians and military conflict there remains a recognition of the importance of war memorials as symbols of respect, remembrance and reflection.

I met with Brad Manera,  Executive Manager/CEO of the ANZAC Memorial in Sydney, to discuss how war memorials and in particular the ANZAC Memorial remain relevant today.

Passionate and possessing an intimate knowledge of Australian history  Mr Manera estimates that over a quarter of a million people visit the ANZAC Memorial each year, and that many of these visitors are seeing it through different eyes.

“Visually [the ANZAC Memorial] is trapped in 1934 but it’s speaking with a slightly modified message to a new generation”.

The interest of a younger generation who are accessing information online through sites such as the Australian War Memorial is contributing to a new kind of connection Mr Manera believes. In particular he sited the children of parents who have emigrated to Australia and have not grown up with the same exposure to Australian history.

“Talking about the impact on Australia of WWI and WWII to the children of recent arrivals, they’re fascinated by it”.

At the same time he feels that older sites such as the ANZAC Memorial offer important touchstones for the families of those killed in contemporary conflicts such as Afghanistan.

“[they]  seem to relate to these places. They look at WWI memorials and say, yeah, that’s a journey I’m taking”

Pointing to Rayner Hoff’s sculpture Sacrifice, a central image of the Memorial he relayed the story of a recent visitor from the United States. Her son had died in Afghanistan. Weeping she described the sculpture as the most powerful statement she had ever seen.

Mr Manera is deeply conscious of the ANZAC Memorial’s place as an historical monument but is equally excited about its ability to connect in new ways. “The place isn’t remaining static.” he says.

He describes how on the 75th anniversary of the Memorial people were invited to write the name of loved ones on gold card board stars and drop them into Hall of Silence. The stars were then cremated and the ashes taken by history students to be scattered overseas at battle sites where Australia’s had served.

“Its really lovely to see a new tradition evolve”.

While clearly confident that war memorials continue to have a role to play in Australian society Mr Manera acknowledges that they mean different things to people.

“Its difficult to make sweeping statements. The Australian community has so many interests and there is so much information its creating a really complex range of attitudes”.

The complexities aside his genuine pleasure at how people respond to the ANZAC Memorial is clear .

He interrupts the interview at one point as a group of visitors leave the Memorial. “Did you hear that lady” he asks. “I’m so glad I came she said”.

Are we less connected?

When World War II mercifully ended in 1945 Australia’s population was 7.4 million. During the 6 years of war almost one million Australians had enlisted or were engaged with an arm of the military. That’s over 13% of the population.

During the the 13 years of Australian involvement in the conflict  in Vietnam 50,000 Australian men and women saw active service. By the end of that war Australia’s population was tipping 14 million. So about 0.4 percent of the population were directly involved.

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures as at June 2011 there were approximately 80,000 permanent personnel in the Australian Defence Force. Annually on average 1550 of these military personnel are serving in Afghanistan.

I dont make these observations to demonstrate a decline in Australia’s participation in war. A bald comparison of numbers from World War II and Afghanistan for this purpose would be an abuse of several of the arts and sciences.

But, it does seem reasonable to conclude that, over time, less Australians have direct experience of war or know someone who has seen active service.

In 1945 roughly one in seven Australians had served at war – and this is without counting the surviving veterans from World War I and conflicts such as the Boer War.

As at June 2011 that number was one in 46*.

As less of us are likley to know a service man or woman and with the passing of those who bravely served in past conflicts does this mean we are becoming less connected to Australia’s involvement in wars?

I asked people around the ANZAC Memorial in Sydney about their personal connections to war.

[* This ratio was reached by dividing the 2011 population figure of 21.5 million  by 462,000, being the estimated number of surviving veterans  plus the current permanent ADF personnel of 80,000.]

I was just walking by

nineoclockat is looking at the idea of commemorating war.

Is it important? How should it be done?

We’ll be asking questions and getting the views of veterans, academics, architects and anti-war protestors.

But we thought the best place to start was with the person in the street. Were they just walking by or did they have an opinion?

We recently spoke to the people below near the ANZAC Memorial in Sydney about how they feel about commemorating war.

Mothers and skaters, bankers and tourists – we’ll be posting their thoughts over the next couple of weeks.

Angelo and Dmitri

Arthur

Paul

Walid

Kevin

Claudine and Gabriella

Robert

Marcus

Celia

James

Beryl and Margaret

Magritte

I’d never been inside

When I first worked as a waiter I wasn’t very good and would panic as the chaos of service really came on. A colleague, older and wiser counseled that when things got crazy the best thing was to stop and look. Take stock and ask what each table in the room was doing.  They are on entrees. They need water. They need to order. It was good advice.

Stopping and looking.

I don’t know how many times I’d walked passed the ANZAC Memorial in Hyde Park on my way to work. Probably hundreds. But I’d never been inside.

For most of us in Australia we are fortunate that war is a distant thing. Either refracted through the media or cast adrift in history; its flesh and blood petrified by dates, statistics and myth-making. Our memorials too, often seem distant and detached. Grim, classical mausoleums, shrines to pigeon shit that feel only colder on the sunniest day.

How we feel about commemorating war and those that served is complex. These complexities have recently been brought into sharp [bas] relief by the to-do over Frank Gehry’s proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington D.C.

I have to admit my own feelings about the ANZAC Memorial were largely non-existent. It may have been the “no sitting on the steps” sign glowering behind a cyclone fence that put me off. But really I’d never thought about it. Never stopped to see that Rayner Hoff”s sculptures weren’t soulless knockoffs from the classics but were real and Australian and rich with toil and sacrifice.

Inside the ANZAC Memorial is… well monumental. There is the substance of the Halls of Memory and Silence, wreaths behind glass and Hoff’s Sacrifice with its tribute to courage, endurance and those left behind. It is also extremely quiet, as if the walls have soaked up the hum and hustle of the city that surrounds the memorial.

But to me it was the little things , the personal things that spoke loudest. Handmade silk postcards from a soldier to his sweetheart,  an airman’s uniform, the rusted key from a Bully beef tin, a bible, boots . Things touched, treasured, needed, worn and wept over.

When the ANZAC Memorial opened in November 1934 100,000 people turned up.

It got me thinking. How many of us have been inside? What of those that have and are already in there? And how do we all feel about it?