ANZAC Day 2016

For the first time in many, many years I went to the Dawn Service at the Cenotaph in Royal Park this morning. I was staggered to find nearly every parking spot in the Launceston CBD already taken – at 5:45 am! – and had to park opposite Holy Trinity (half a mile away), whence I walked smartly so as to arrive in time for the start of proceedings at 6 am.

The RSL chaplain took as his text Psalm 26(27):3-4, “If armies in camp should stand together against me, my heart shall not fear. If a battle should rise up against me, in this will I be confident. One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. That I may see the delight of the Lord, and may visit his temple.”

After the short service (during which, sadly, the choir seemed virtually silent rather than leading the crowd of thousands – 7,500, so The Examiner reported the next day –  so the traditional hymn “O God, our help in ages past” and the National Anthem were both all but inaudible), I went to a nearby pub for breakfast, then walked back in the cold light of dawn through now-deserted streets.

In 1916, Tasmania had a population of 200,000; of those, 15,485 enlisted (38% of eligible men), and of those enlisted, 2,432 were killed – a 16% death rate.  In memory of the fallen, I have said the Dirge (Matins and Lauds of the Dead, so-named after the first antiphon at Matins, Dirige, Domine, Deus meus); at nine o’clock, I will join the choir at the ANZAC Mass at Apostles.

Entrance Antiphon (Cf. Rev 14:13)

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Let them rest from their labours, for their good deeds go with them.

Collect

Almighty everlasting God, who sent your Son to die that we might live, grant, we pray, eternal rest to those who gave themselves in service and sacrifice for their country. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Prayer over the Offerings

Grant, O heavenly Father, that the sacrifice of Christ, who laid down his life for his friends, may raise all those who have died in war to the victory of eternal life. Through Christ our Lord.

Communion Antiphon (Cf. Jn 15:13)

Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends, says the Lord.

Prayer after Communion

By our communion with this Sacrament, O Lord, grant us, we pray, fortitude in the cause of right, and may our remembrance of those who have died in war make us ardent defenders of your peace. Through Christ our Lord.

ANZAC Day

Over one hundred thousand Australians have died in wars; for them, and all slain in warfare, we pray:

Almighty everlasting God, who sent your Son to die that we might live, grant, we pray, eternal rest to those who gave themselves in service and sacrifice for their country. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

— Collect for ANZAC Day (Roman Missal)

Launceston ANZAC Day Service

His Worship the Mayor (in his furs, lace ruff and chain of office), with the President of the Returned and Services League (Launceston sub-branch), and the Chaplain to the Mayor, presided over to-day's 95th anniversary ANZAC Day service at the Cenotaph.  It's a good thing to hear short speeches of unabashed patriotism in this day and age.  A high school student, who last year had won a prize to travel with other Tasmanian youth to visit Gallipoli and the Western Front, likewise spoke with newfound knowledge and conviction about those who died that we might live in freedom.  

Behind them stood the Cenotaph, with the serried ranks of names of the fallen, beneath "For God and Country", "1914-1919", "1939-1946" and further lists of years when Australians fought in Korea, in Vietnam, and so forth.  During the minute's silence, I said a private De profundis for the glorious dead (the Chaplain being a Protestant, there was no direct prayer that they rest in peace, though he prayed well for all other ends).  After the service, I came up to its base to see the many wreaths laid as part of the commemoration, by politicians, veterans, schoolchildren and more.

There was an interesting choice of Scripture reading: the beginning of David's praise of God for his deliverance from all his enemies, which is given twice in Holy Writ, as II Kings (Samuel) xxii, 1-7 and also as Psalm 17(18):1-6 (plus the superscription).  I quote here (from the former passage) what was quite aptly described as the prayer of every soldier in the midst of battle:

And David spoke to the Lord the words of this canticle, in the day that the Lord delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul, and he said: The Lord is my rock, and my strength, and my saviour.  God is my strong one, in him will I trust: my shield, and the horn of my salvation: he lifteth me up, and is my refuge: my saviour, thou wilt deliver me from iniquity.  I will call on the Lord who is worthy to be praised: and I shall be saved from my enemies.  For the pangs of death have surrounded me: the floods of Belial have made me afraid. The cords of hell compassed me: the snares of death prevented me.  In my distress I will call upon the Lord, and I will cry to my God: and he will hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry shall come to his ears.

I was very pleased that we sang both the Royal and the National Anthems at the end.  After all, it was "God save our gracious King" that the soldiers sang right down to the last few decades, and it is their day; and since the defeat of the Republic Referendum in 1999, Australia remains what it has always been, an indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown.  We have the freedom to determine our government and way of life, a freedom maintained by those who died in its defence and in defence of the free world (or, as used to be said unabashedly, "For God, King and Empire").

ANZAC Day

By this moment, first in New Zealand and then, a few hours later, from the East to the West of Australia, Dawn Services will have been held in every city, town and hamlet, commemorating the day and the hour in 1915 when the men of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps landed at ill-fated Gallipoli, bound for death and glory...

Soon – they're marshalling now – the ANZAC Day marches will begin (at least in this time zone).  I have fond memories of attending the Melbourne march back in 2006, was it, with an American friend: he was amazed at the fact that all returned servicemen march, together with current troops, bands, and so forth.  The Melbourne parade (beginning with several fellows drest as Australian cavalrymen of the Boer War) lasted for 3 hours!

It's 95 years since Gallipoli, and the days when you saw real ANZACs in the marches are now over; the last soldiers of WWI have gone to their reward; now those who fought in WWII are getting very old.  A sobering thought: as I've grown up, I've seen the last Diggers of the Great War fall: when I was a kid, taken by Dad to the March, those soldiers were only a little older than the Diggers of the Second World War are to-day.

Soon, I hope to go down town to attend the Launceston march (which begins at 10:15), and certainly to be at the Cenotaph for the 11am Service.  I feel it my civic duty.  "They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old: age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.  At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them." — "Lest we forget!"

Pericles for ANZAC Day

While walking through town away from the cenotaph, I had much in mind the immortal words attributed to Pericles, when making the funeral oration over the Athenian dead in 431 B.C., by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War (II, 43):

Each has won a glorious grave – not that sepulchre of earth wherein they lie, but the living tomb of everlasting remembrance wherein their glory is enshrined. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of heroes. Monuments may rise and tablets be set up to them in their own land, but on far-off shores there is an abiding memorial that no pen or chisel has traced; it is graven not on stone or brass, but on the living hearts of humanity. Take these men for your example. Like them, remember that prosperity can be only for the free, that freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

Let us now praise famous men

I walked to the war memorial to-day, and surveyed the concentric rows of wreaths laid there this morning; so many flowers, soon to wilt, fade and decay - cut down in their prime, as were so very many lives in war.

Some prayers: a De profundis for the dead, that they may rest in peace; a Pater noster for the advancement of the Kingdom, that a time may come for all swords to rest; and, yes, the royal anthem, God save the Queen, as a prayer for our temporal authorities and against those who would harm us...

God save our gracious Queen,

Long live our noble Queen,

God save the Queen:

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us:

God save the Queen.

O Lord, our God, arise,

Scatter her enemies,

And make them fall.

Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

On Thee our hopes we fix,

God save us all.

Thy choicest gifts in store,

On her be pleased to pour;

Long may she reign:

May she defend our laws,

And ever give us cause

To sing with heart and voice

God save the Queen.

Since the Maori Wars in New Zealand, when some Australians crossed the Tasman to fight for the Empire, and the colonial contingents we sent to help defeat the fanatics of the Mahdi in the Sudan, the infamous Boxer Rebellion in China, and the Boers in South Africa, my countrymen have joined in battle.  Above all, our nation was blooded at Gallipoli (as every child learns in primary school), then in the killing fields of the Western Front, during the Great War - as our Prime Minister rebuked President Wilson's highflown rhetoric at Versailles, "I speak for 60,000 dead": a majority of all Australian war dead date from World War I.  

I have always thought, by the way, that the peace treaty with Germany was too gentle, and did not so much provoke as permit, first a breathing-space, and then a resumption of wrathful tendencies: the German army's orderly retreat from the battlefield gave rise to the vile "stab in the back" legend which allowed militarism to rise again, never having been slain, whereas an occupation and thorough reordering of society after invasion (as done in 1945) could have crushed it once and for all; similarly, Hindenburg, Ludendorff and the Kaiser should indeed as war criminals, whippers-up of malignant evils, and enemies of the public good, the people, and the peace of the world been hanged.  (A funny thing, how nearly all merchants of death, dictatorial rulers and their ilk live on, while the masses they drove to the slaughter perish.)  Similarly, the Rhineland ought have been annexed by France for all time, as a true wergild unable to be avoided as the monetary reparations were, they proving in the event to have been an illusory and harmful measure, and Belgium dissuaded from the illusion of neutrality which later betrayed her again.  And who is to say that a Germany thus punished would not have been spared its later and more dreadful devastation at the end of the Second World War?

I was glad to see in The Weekend Australian that Prime Minister Rudd, heeding the advice that whoso desires peace should prepare for war, is planning a large-scale long-term buildup of our armed forces in the face of current and anticipated geopolitical threats; and about time, too - the defence forces in Australia have historically been far too underprepared and poorly equipped, as is the case even nowadays, when we can hardly sustain our present overseas commitments, and the submarine fleet hasn't enough sailors to put to sea!  Between the Wars, Australia slumbered too long; while in hindsight it is now evident that Japan's aggression was unsustainable against the might of the United States, back in 1942, with the fall of all imperial outposts in South-East Asia to the Japanese prior to the American counterattack, Australia faced the awful prospect of invasion - the cabinet was warned by our military that a defensive perimeter could only be strung between Melbourne and Sydney, abandoning the vast majority of the continent.  Only geographic isolation and the intervention of the U.S. saved us, and not we ourselves.  As it was, so many of our troops fought, first in North Africa, then in Papua New Guinea (our territory at the time) and elsewhere, with many enduring defeat, captivity, maltreatment and death as after the fall of Singapore.

Since World War II, there have been combats in Korea, in Malaya, in Borneo, in Vietnam, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan (where our troops continue in harm's way), to say nothing of peacekeeping missions in hotspots around the world, as in East Timor and still to-day in the Solomon Islands.  Since Vietnam, over 100,000 Australian troops have served overseas.

It is good not to forget, too, that ANZAC Day commemorates our New Zealand brethren alongside of whom we fought and died.

We will remember them.

Lest we forget.

Furthermore, why should we not pray for fallen enemies, and mourn their loss, and their widows and families and devastated lands?  How many German and Japanese conscripts died horribly for their masters' dreams of conquest? and how many Turks fell at Gallipoli defending their shores?

I am no militarist, but there is a time when wars must be fought lest our freedoms and liberties perish undefended (nothing to me seems more inane than foolish talk of war being in essence unjust - surely to fight against Hitler was absolutely justified!); yet of course the horrors of war, and those innumerable maimed, killed, bereaved, outraged, must not be forgotten, lest conflicts be multiplied without most necessary reason: certainly if possible all diplomatic solutions and preventative measures should be seriously tried before force be used; and it must never be forgotten that it is incumbent upon ourselves and our allies never to act immorally, lest the justice of our cause to be vitiated (I hold the disgraceful way cruel ill-usage, even torture, that very mark of bestial inhuman savagery, has been slyly legitimised in certain quarters in the U.S.A. to be wholly disgusting and deserving of condign punishment).  To avoid open conflict through craven capitulation, as I fear is happening in Pakistan at the moment as the Taliban openly take over more and more areas while the Pakistani army hangs back, is to abandon the clear duty of defending the defenceless against aggression and oppression.

While the idea of being a soldier holds no attraction for me, so I would not join up in peacetime, if war came, yes, I would enlist if my country needed me: one must do one's duty - and I guess that is why (there being no conscription in World War I) so many Diggers gave their all, not out of bloodlust but because a serious and harsh test fell upon them.  As is often said, courage, mateship and self-sacrifice are the virtues they displayed: "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends."  (St John xv, 13.)

St George's Day

"Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son, / Endless is the victory thou o'er death hast won" was the Easter hymn of victory that I sang to-day; with Our Lord's Resurrection still the focus of all prayer, and ANZAC Day - the commemoration of soldiers fallen in the cause of right, as befits those who after the example of the Master disdained not to suffer and to die with courage and self-sacrifice out of mateship - but two days hence, how appropriate thus to welcome the memorial of the great martyr and trophy-bearer, St George, Patron of England (and thus of a part of my own parentage, and of Australia's ancestry).

Last year, when in Perth I was able to get to more or less daily Mass in the Traditional Rite (unlike here), I was able to blog about serving at the altar, as well as commenting on the truth behind the legend of St George, and giving some hymns for his feast - have a look back.

No more we doubt thee, glorious Prince of life;

Life is nought without thee, aid us in our strife;

Make us more than conquerors, through thy deathless love:

Bring us safe through Jordan to thy home above.

Sunday Ramblings

I went to Mass and sang with the other guys as usual: Vidi aquam, the Sunday Propers, Mass I, Credo I, and some psalm-verses with the Communion; for hymns before and after, we had "Now thank we all our God" and - a new favourite of mine, having only learned it this year - "Through the Red Sea brought at last" (tr. Ronald Knox):

Through the Red Sea brought at last, alleluia!
Egypt's chains behind we cast, alleluia!
Deep and wide
Flows the tide
Severing us from bondage past, alleluia!

Like the cloud that overhead, alleluia!
Through the billows Israel led, alleluia!
By his tomb
Christ makes room,
Souls restoring from the dead, alleluia!

In that cloud and in that sea, alleluia!
Buried and baptised were we, alleluia!
Earthly night
Brought us light
Shall be ours eternally, alleluia!

Then, deceitful world, adieu, alleluia!
Egypt’s land in distant view, alleluia!
Christ our love,
Draws above,
Dead with him, and risen anew, alleluia!

After Mass, outside with the milling congregants, a startling sight - Fr Rowe cradling a pet ferret! One of the young ladies had brought the family pets in for "show and tell"... They look kinda cute, but the teeth and their sinuous movement were a teeny bit offputting.


In the afternoon, I finally got around to driving out to John Forrest National Park, astride the escarpment on the edge of the city, and going for my favourite walk along the old railway tracks up past the falls. But behold! In the months since I'd last been up there, a bushfire had gone through part of the terrain, leaving the undergrowth burnt bare, tho' the blackboys [grasstrees] and gumtrees have put forth new leaves from their charred trunks. And furthermore, despite a record rainfall this April - 145 mm [Update: 153.6mm] - the creek through the valley was at best a few disconnected pools, and all the side streams and pools I remember were dry; and as for the waterfall, it was gone, and I walked over its stones. It was still a good walk, just beautiful out in the bush, in a landscape so old, a walk only about 50 minutes each way, and I even saw some kangaroos, plus enjoyed an icecream at the kiosk. Note to self: Must go to the pub there for a meal and beer sometime...

On the way home, I heard that poignant ballad "And the band played Waltzing Matilda" (Eric Bogle, 1972) on the car radio, and must include it as the just rejoinder to any inane glorification of the terror and horror of war, that scourge that may need be borne, but ought never be asked for:

Lest We Forget

Pete ("bell") and I ("book") served Fr's 9 am Low Mass for the Feast of St Mark, with commemorations of the Greater Litanies and All the Faithful Departed. I said Lauds of the Dead after Mass.

******

It was nearly 10 o'clock by when I finished, but I made it down a few blocks and caught a good part of the already-begun ANZAC Day parade, which finished about 10.50 am.

The very large crowds [a record, apparently - and some 40,000, could you imagine it, attended the Dawn Service at the WA War Memorial in King's Park!] enthusiastically applauded the returned servicemen, who marched together with the descendents of deceased Diggers. It was good to see the Vietnam Vets well respected.

One banner got me: that of one of the Western Australian regiments, which first fought for the Empire in the Sudan in 1885, to crush the fanatic hordes of the Mahdi, and restore Queen Victoria's civilizing rule. Over 120 years later, Australia again combats the same forces of perverted misbelief.


I was amazed to see, marching among the Allies, about two dozen Rhodesian veterans, behind a proud "Rhodesia" banner bearing such campaign names as Matabeleland 1893 and Rhodesia itself, 1965-1980. How I wish one of them had rid the world of Mugabe! There was also a sizeable contingent of former members of the South Vietnamese armed forces, behind flags and banners of the former Republic of Vietnam. Lest we forget.

Furthermore, as well as many Brits, there was a very small contingent of combined North American veterans, marching behind side-by-side U.S. and Canadian flags. I suppose some of the half dozen Normandy D-Day veterans that marched separately may also have been such - how astounding to see men who had faced that hell, and lived!

******

At the foreshore reserve we all gathered for the 11 am Commemorative Service, His Excellency the Governor taking first place at the ceremony.

I think the Order of Service instructive and moving:

The WA State President of the Returned and Services League welcomed all and gave an address; then all stood for some verses of the Kipling hymn -

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

(This was first written for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria: now it is we Aussies who rule "over palm and pine", but must remember that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and the will to defend what our ancestors won.)

An Anglican chaplain next read a prayer for The Queen and those who govern us under her. Following that, we sang the opening of the Royal Anthem -

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the Queen!

The same chaplain then read prayers for our armed forces, and for those who suffer because of warfare.

The massed choir followed this with "In Memoriam" by Summers -

Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends. (St John xv, 13)

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
we will remember them - lest we forget.

An army bugler played the Last Post, followed by a minute's silence in honour of the fallen, and then the Rouse; I always use the silence to say a private De Profundis for the dead.

Next, the Ode -

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
we will remember them -
(all repeated:) we will remember them.
Lest we forget -
(all repeated:) lest we forget

After that, part of the traditional hymn of Isaac Watts -

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

The hymn concluded, there was a special address from a young lady, who last year was selected to go on the WA Premier's tour of the W.W.I battlefields; she spoke well, as did the Governor who next addressed us. We must remember the ANZAC's, and practise their virtues, lest we forget.

The choir then sang part of the patriotic "My Country" by Dorothea MacKellar:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains,

I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me.

Though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown Country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold;

I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me.

Though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown Country
My homing thoughts will fly.

To conclude, there was a prayer of remembrance of the fallen by the chaplain, and finally the first verse of the National Anthem, Advance Australia Fair:

Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We've golden soil and wealth for toil,
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in Nature's gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history's page, let every stage
Advance Australia fair!
In joyful strains then let us sing,
"Advance Australia fair!

******

The Service being ended just before noon, I made my way to a pub as the custom is, and where to go but the Belgian beer hall? My forefathers died for Belgium and France. The large numbers of navy personnel in the pub must have agreed! Two beers and some pommes frites later, sufficit for me.

******

ANZAC Day always moves me to tears: over 102,000 Australians have given their lives in war, most of them younger than I am. As our P.M. Billy Hughes reminded President Wilson at the Versailles peace conference, "I speak for 60,000 dead".



I regard ANZAC Day as one of the closest approaches our civil society makes to pietas, to the praise and inculcation of virtue, true manly valour, and sacrifice, and to religion. It is a sign that the old tried and tested character of Australia is not yet dead. The ever-larger crowds of recent years seem to agree: people are searching and reaching out for something, something to aspire to amid so many distractions from the good.

Please remember in your prayers and at Mass those fallen in war, and especially my great-uncle Neil, who died for King and Country in World War II; he was sent to the Dominion of Canada as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, and perished there in the crash of an aircraft he and and a trainee were in.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis: requiescant in pace. Amen.

ANZAC Day

ANZAC Day... The long Parade of ever-thinning out, ever-older returned servicemen... The marching bands, some in Scottish kilts with bagpipes, playing "Waltzing Matilda"... The Last Post... The Ode... The old hymns they sing every time... You used to see the very last of the WWI Diggers being driven by slowly in special cars, but I think all have died*, and the WWII veterans are in their eighties now; the Vietnam Vets are middle-aged and older; Australian troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan must not be forgotten. Lest we forget.

* No - I was wrong: there is one still living: Jack Ross, 109, of Ballarat.

I had planned to get up long before dawn, and drive into town to go to the Dawn Service at King's Park, but a combination of factors forced a change of plan. We have Mass for St Mark's Day at 9am at the Pro., and I hope the road closures for the Parade won't block me from getting in and parking close by! After Mass, I'll go to the Parade and the late morning Service down by the foreshore.

Fr Rowe told me that he had the option (! - in the old rite! yes: by special decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, 23rd June 1961) to say a Requiem today rather than the festal Mass, and in the new rite in Australia (and N.Z. I suppose) the feast of St Mark is moved to tomorrow, so that a Requiem with proper texts and prayers can be fitted in today, in memory of all those fallen in war, "who gave their tomorrow so we could have our today". As I use the modern Office, today I'll do the Office of the Dead, and keep St Mark for tomorrow.

As for the Litanies, I can only assume Fr plans to say them privately.

I append some pictures sent me that were taken by Fr Bernard, when he came with me to the ANZAC Day Parade in Melbourne, back in 2006; it took 4 hours for all the marchers to pass by...