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ANZAC Day Ceremony
Berlin 1939-45 War Cemetery
25 April 2009

Address by the Australian Ambassador
H.E. Mr Ian Kemish

Here we stand again, in this beautiful cemetery – so well kept by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission - to commemorate ANZAC Day. It is the fourth time I have done so, and it will be our last in Berlin.

It must be hard for those whose history is not entwined with Gallipoli to understand why we do this each year.

It’s not as if this is a day remembered only by a select few. Australians, for their part alone, gather to remember in their millions in the small towns and largest cities across our country, and join their New Zealand comrades and others at former battle sites across the globe - from northern France to Thailand, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, the North African desert and Gallipoli itself.

It is quite natural that others find it all a bit confusing.

Why this day of all days? After all, the Gallipoli campaign was a bad war that began with a series of serious misjudgements. The 25th of April was, on our side of the conflict at least, a real mess.

As Les Carlyon writes in his great history of the campaign,

In myth and legend the landing is about poetry and derring-do, Hector duelling with Ajax. In truth there was much derring-do but not much poetry. In truth the landing was mostly confusion.

And how , it might logically be asked, have the Turkish people and government come to join so actively and generously on this day in joint ceremonies marked by firm friendship? Ceremonies which recall a vicious conflict in which our forefathers – a generation many of us still remember quite clearly - were working very hard to kill each other, and succeeding at it rather well?

An important part of the explanation for ANZAC Day lies, of course, in the core human qualities that shone through on the battlefield 94 years ago.

Courage was clearly one of them – the courage with which the Turks defended their homeland, and the courage with which soldiers of all those countries represented here today – of the Commonwealth, of France - followed what they understood to be their duty and, in their hundreds of thousands, died.

Comradeship, too, was a core value on display at Gallipoli. We Australians call it mateship.

The Australian war correspondent Charles Bean tells a story of a man who arrived at the first trench before the Australian assault at Lone Pine in August 1915.

“Jim here?” he asked.

A voice on the first fire step answered “Right, Bill – here”.

“Do you chaps mind shifting up a piece, said the first voice. Him and me are mates, and we’re going over together.”

Respect was also on display – including, importantly, respect for the enemy, for his courage and his skill. This sentiment emerged quickly on our side as the Turkish forces demonstrated a fighting spirit that mocked the initial absurd, prejudiced expectations of some.

Another part of the explanation for what we do today is that the battle came, for different reasons, at formative moments in the development of modern New Zealand, Turkey and Australia. It carved its name – Gallipoli or Canna kale - deeply on the national psyches and mythologies of our countries.

It has certainly been a central element in the web of links that bind Australians with their mates and neighbours, the New Zealanders. Astoundingly, it has also become the bedrock of a joyous, mature friendship between our two countries and Turkey, the former foe. It has come to stand for something even more than Reconciliation.

For us ANZAC Day has evolved into a day when we commemorate all those who sacrificed themselves in war, and when we pay tribute to those currently serving the causes of peace and security around the world. ANZAC Day services have already taken place today in places like Afghanistan, Solomon Islands and East Timor.

This day may have developed a significance beyond Gallipoli, but its foundations remain there – as more than 20,000 young Australians and New Zealanders showed once again this morning, as they joined their friends from Turkey and across the Commonwealth at the Dawn Service at ANZAC Cove.

I have appreciated, on each of the ANZAC Day services I have attended here in Berlin, the steadfast support we have received from the German Bundeswehr and from the Volksbund Kriegsgraeberfuersorge. Ich bedanke mich sehr herzlich bei unseren Deutschen Freunden. The themes I have mentioned – courage, comradeship, respect and reconciliation – are well understood in this country.

Standing by the graves of so many allied servicemen, in a city that saw widespread suffering and death through war a generation after Gallipoli, I think we can all take inspiration from the surprisingly joyous symbolism of ANZAC Day. What more inspiring thought than the great grand children of former mates and foes, coming together to remember the sacrifice of all?

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