At dawn on the 25th of April, old people, young people, war veterans, and their descendants in New Zealand and Australia will gather at each towns war memorial to hold a service in memory of all those lost in battle. The date is significant as the landing of the first troops on the beaches of Gallipoli in 1914, a date and a battle that have come to symbolize the sacrifice of young New Zealand and Australian men in wars that were none of their business. The effects of WWI are still deeply ingrained in the culture of both countries 100 years later.
New Zealand and Australia were still young countries at the start of WWI. England had acknowledged their dominion status only a decade earlier, in 1907. They considered England "the motherland" and England used this to ask for troops to support the war effort. Men in both countries met the news of war with great enthusiasm and rushed to enlist in this "exciting" war that was expected to be over before Christmas. By the end of the war 416,809 Australians and 98,950 New Zealanders had enlisted, equating to around 10% of each country’s population. [1], [2]
For Australia and New Zealand, Gallipoli was the most important part of WWI. It started when Russia asked …show more content…
The only news that got through England's censorship was of the glorious deeds of the brave and hardy ANZAC soldiers, not how thousands were dying or had not even moved from the landing beaches. In September, six months after the landing, a journalist named Keith Arthur Murdoch was asked to represent the Australian newspapers in London, on the way there he stopped by Gallipoli. Having seen what was going on, he wrote an 8000-word report as a private letter. The letter described the conditions and was the first to expose Gallipoli as a military failure to the outside world. Murdoch sent it straight to the Australian prime minister, Andrew Fischer, bypassing the military censors. [8],