This is not an anti-war book, nor is it a book
glorifying war. Even the author himself is ambivalent to an extent. Of
Australian involvement in Afghanistan he writes that ‘had I been a bit
younger, a lot braver, and considerably more capable, I would have considered
joining the military myself.’ A few pages (and two years) later he tells us
that ‘I and about 200,000 other people marched in Sydney against the looming
Iraq War.’ Dapin’s openness and honesty in this revelation of ambivalence
is refreshing and allows the reader to feel an empathy with the author – he is
just like us; a bit uncertain, a bit conflicted, and wholly human.
Perhaps the most oft repeated phrase in Lest is
‘it did not happen,’ although he does once, in a pique of anger, use a
more emotive phrase. He relates an episode of when he was interviewed on radio
and a caller claimed that Vietnam vets were not allowed to march on Anzac Day. ‘That’s
nonsense,’ he rails.
Time and time again Dapin cites an event and then
shows that it is an entirely imagined happening. Whether it be bands of women
handing out white feathers, or returning Vietnam soldiers being spat upon; with
meticulous research Dapin shows that such incidents simply did not happen.
Most Australians, and New Zealanders, will be aware of
the wars referred to in the book – World Wars 1 and 2, Vietnam, Korea,
Afghanistan, and Iraq. Dapin devotes a whole chapter to one war that most
Australians, and New Zealanders, will have never heard of – the Emu Wars! Yes,
it seems that emus (those flightless birds) were declared war upon in Western
Australia in 1932. Myths aplenty arose amongst the feathers and dust of this
war, although Dapin makes no mention of any myths created by the emus
themselves.
Most of the first half of the book deals with myths
from the First World War, with particular reference to ANZAC2 war
myths. Australia and New Zealand both memorialise Anzac Day every year
on 25 April, the day in 1915 when troops from these two countries (and others
of the Allied forces) first stormed, and then retreated from, the beaches of
Gallipoli in Turkey.
Perhaps no other war event in Australian history has generated
as many myths as those resulting from that failed campaign. Today, thousands of
Australians and New Zealanders also storm the beaches of Gallipoli on 25 April
each year to remember the events of 1915, often leaving litter behind. Dapin is
bemused by this. ‘Exactly why travellers might choose to do this, more than
a century after the disastrous military campaign and the Anzac evacuation, is a
source of much faux-bemused debate among scholars,’ he writes.
Yet, as Dapin points out, this failed campaign has
come to be so mythologised that many today claim that 25 April 1915 was the
birth of Australian character and identity. Yet, many of the stories
emerging from the sands and cliffs of Gallipoli did not happen according
to Dapin, and ‘What was born on 25 April 1915 was a myth.’
Lest is a reference to a
phrase intoned daily in Returned Service League’s rooms all over Australia. The
full phrase is ‘Lest we forget’ and follows a reading of the fourth
verse from a poem written in 1914.3 The fourth verse refers to the
young people killed during the war and ends with the lines: ‘At the going
down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.’
Mark Dapin has done a splendid job in distinguishing
fact from myth, truth from falsehood, in the wars Australia has been involved
in.
Lest ensures that the myths are laid bare, lest we forget what really happened.
Notes:
1. Mark Dapin, Lest: Australian War Myths,
Scribner, Cammeray, NSW, Australia, 2024
2. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army
Corps
3. Laurence Binyon, For The Fallen, first
published in The Times in September 1914.
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