Anzac Day 2022

Today is Anzac Day, in Australia and New Zealand.   It commemorates the landing of the New Zealand and Australian troops at Gallipoli in World War I.  Although the effort to take the Dardanelles was ultimately unsuccessful, the Anzac troops demonstrated great courage and tenacity, and the ordeal the troops underwent in this campaign has a vast meaning to the peoples of New Zealand and Australia.

This year I trust that the ceremonies in Australia and New Zealand will be more normal than during the Topsey-turvey years of 2020 and 2021.  Last year we looked at the Gallipoli campaign.  This year I thought we would look at Anzac troops on the Western Front.  A blog post of course cannot do justice to the years of fighting involved.  Some 295,000 Australian troops served on the Western Front.  Forty-six thousand were killed and one hundred and thirty thousand wounded.  Of one hundred thousand Kiwis who served on the Western Front, thirteen thousand were killed and thirty-five thousand wounded.  The Anzac troops, punching well above their numbers, quickly gained a reputation as shock troops, men to be sent in if a position had to be held or to be taken.  Anzac troops were at the forefront of the Hundred Days Offensive in 1918 that brought the War to a conclusion with the defeat of Imperial Germany on the Western Front.  The men of the citizen armies of Australia and New Zealand went home as victors.