Each Anzac Day I find myself struggling between a desire to honour the sacrifice made by those who went to war and the desire to dissociate myself from the idealisation of our soldiers as beyond critique and above reproach. I want to affirm the day is one on which we remember the horrors of war, yet am perplexed by the way such a memory is cast by surrounding ourselves with all things military...
Never Trust the Bastards. A Reflection On Anzac Day
Among the living lay the dead. As we dug ourselves in, we found them in layers stacked on top of one another. One company after another had been shoved into the drum-fire and steadily annihilated. Ernst Junger, German officer I came across the quote and photo above on Flickr. Each is a graphic, horrific reminder of what war does. It’s easy on a day like Anzac Day to focus on what is good...