Iluvbertie
Imperial Majesty
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2004
- Messages
- 14,527
- City
- Bathurst
- Country
- Australia
Probably because it isn't that big a campaign in the overall history of WWI. Around 10,000 ANZACs died, along with 34,000 British, 7000 French, 1300 from India and even 49 Newfoundlanders. It was a massive defeat for the Allies and didn't achieve any of its goals. From the Allied perspective it was a disaster so it makes sense that most of the royals will be ignoring this event.
To Australians and New Zealanders it has an important part of play in our History as it was the first time that we fought in a major campaign in the war and for Aussies actually the first we fought actually as Australians (in the Boer War the troops had represented their colonies and not the nation as a whole). My great-grandfather died at Gallipoli so I grew up with a feeling that it was where my grandmother lost her father (she was just past her 6th birthday when he died).
I am pleased that we will be able to commemorate this event here, at home without the need for some representative of a foreign royal family being sent here. They can go to Gallipoli to acknowledge the British war dead of course as well as go to services in the UK but they have to commemorate a massive defeat and the seeds of a lot of distrust between the Aussies and the Brits - they landed us on the wrong beach which contributed to our high casualty rate and then later in the campaign sent wave after wave of young West Australians to be slaughtered at Lone Pine (watch the Mel Gibson movie 'Gallipoli' to see how bad things were and the mistakes that the British made in that campaign).
To Australians and New Zealanders it has an important part of play in our History as it was the first time that we fought in a major campaign in the war and for Aussies actually the first we fought actually as Australians (in the Boer War the troops had represented their colonies and not the nation as a whole). My great-grandfather died at Gallipoli so I grew up with a feeling that it was where my grandmother lost her father (she was just past her 6th birthday when he died).
I am pleased that we will be able to commemorate this event here, at home without the need for some representative of a foreign royal family being sent here. They can go to Gallipoli to acknowledge the British war dead of course as well as go to services in the UK but they have to commemorate a massive defeat and the seeds of a lot of distrust between the Aussies and the Brits - they landed us on the wrong beach which contributed to our high casualty rate and then later in the campaign sent wave after wave of young West Australians to be slaughtered at Lone Pine (watch the Mel Gibson movie 'Gallipoli' to see how bad things were and the mistakes that the British made in that campaign).
